I WOULD LIKE TO MENTION THIS: I heard a song once by an old black man, from the south. And I said to myself: that does sound familiar — those guitar riffs, that old refrain; ah, yes — I remembered it was sung by a white rockabilly boy that winter of 1961 It was not made famous by this old blues man — this sad old blues singer from Mississippi; it was made famous by the be bop a loo bop
rockabilly boy with the white complexion, who could introduce the song to mainstream America — package it in a comfortable way to the girls who would not swing their dresses so high, wiggle too, too much.
It was a great song. At first, I liked the rockabilly version. The old man’s version seemed so strange — so foreign to me, that I did not accept it.
The record company wanted the old blues song that came from blood and sweat in that Mississippi delta. They wanted the guitar riffs, the lyrics. But they wanted it not so troubling, not so rough. They wanted to hide it away, and tuck it in. And they didn’t want the black voice husking out into the microphone.
But yes, they could profit from it. They wanted the song. They did not feel they had to tell you where this song came from. They did not feel a need to tell you that it came out of a person’s love of country and gift of life and tragedy when both have been taken away. They didn’t want those young college girls and boys who so desperately needed a song such as this — to know quite what it all was about.
And those record moguls knew that they didn’t need people to know the song’s history in order to sell the song. Nor did they consider that if people did not know the song’s history they might never know the song well.
But, as I say, I listened to it. I listened to the rockabilly version of this song in 1961 when I was a child playing hockey in the street. It was the rockabilly version under the cold sky that everyone tapped their toes to. It was the version that everyone heard which to them represented all the authenticity and spontaneity they believed the song had to offer.
Years later I heard the black man from the delta singing, in his gravelly voice this same song, in a house on a dark and solitary back street in Saint John, NB.
The rockabilly version is still out there. But now, nothing about it is so remarkable. It is a version with a mask, a front. It is still in its own way something you might dance to, buy, or send as a gift, as memorabilia of that long ago lost age. But the song, written and sung by the black man from the delta, goes beyond all of this. It is now, just as it was then. It has not lost itself in
nostalgia. It has not changed. It is not dated, because it comes as it was written, in sacrifice and courage and love.
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