WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Timbrel and Lyre: Work Songs

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

This episode explores the songs of men at work, interweaving the history of field hollers, blues, and call-and-response chants with the stories of the convicts who used them.

Hello everyone. This is Gwen, and welcome back to the timbrel and the lyre. Today we're going to talk about work songs. We'll start with field haulers, then move on to call-in-response work songs. And because folk music is most valuable when tied to the people who sing it, we'll also hear the story of one of the musicians. To begin, I'm going to play something that you probably aren't expecting. It's called Ad Haan. Most Americans would recognize it as the Muslim call to prayer. It's going to take us to some interesting places, so hold on. Okay, now listen to something else for me. I woke up this morning. The first recording is, like I said, the Muslim called a prayer.

Though I should probably note that they don't consider it singing, it's more a recitation. The second is called a field holler, daughter of Iran, mother of the blues, and not quite singing either. Trade and migration carried Islam to West Africa by the 8th century. Music was a big part of that cultural exchange, and West African music has a lot of call in response, waviness and melisma. That's what people who understand music called carrying one syllable over multiple notes. These are some of the characteristics

that set the music of Muslim West Africa apart from the rest of the continent. When the slave trade started transporting Africans to the Western Hemisphere, hundreds of thousands of Muslims were among the captives, and they brought their musical traditions with them. Participatory music and dancing had until then been very common among the enslaved,

but around the beginning of the 19th century, more and more slaves were transported to the American Deep South, where conditions were worse. No one really had the energy or enthusiasm for group dances, and it's doubtful that the paranoid slave owners would have allowed such gatherings anyway. Field haulers by nature are solos, so they're less threatening, and they also permitted more individual self-expression, their spontaneous outbursts of mourning, depression, hunger, or weariness. Sylvian A. In her article, What Islam Gave the Blues, talks about the direct influence of the Muslim religion, not just Afro-Islamic music on these haulers.

She explains that most African Muslims continued to practice their religion as best they could in slavery, that included reciting the Quran and the Adhan, both of which sound like music. Now me, I would hypothesize that first, to a praying man, especially when you're removed from religious authorities and strict rules grow lax,

it's not a difficult journey from calling to prayer, to singing prayers, to singing lamenting prayers, to just singing laments. And second, even if you aren't Muslim, but you work on the same plantation, and you hear that sound five times a day, you might start to pick up some habits. Folklorist John Lomax's first encounter with field hollers

came sometime before 1910, and this was his impression. Although the singer was some distance away, the cry seemed to fill completely the void of dark silence about us. The pitch started high, but grew to a climax unbelievably, for a deep voice like his, and then faded gradually into a mournful wail, ending in a jumble of words. The call was thrice repeated.

Hopeless, remote, stark loneliness, I managed to say, for a feeling near to fear had tightened my heart. Hollers would be a main ingredient in the musical soup that we call the blues, which was coming to a boil around the time John Lomax encountered his first hauler. Of course, haulers had a functional purpose, too. Like Yotles, which the Swiss herders, and also some American cowboys, used to communicate or call their herds across vast stretches of Alps and Prairie, haulers could be used to communicate across fields, especially when you were working further away from other people, or the crops are too tall to sea over. Now, I've not yet heard any haulers directly addressing other people, but, I don't know.

If you need to borrow a cup of buttermilk, you probably won't ask by field hauler. My guess is that communicative haulers were more a form of companionship, especially if you were a number of companionship, especially if you were a sharecropper alone in your field, trying to remind your neighbor that you both still existed. Or at least, that was my guess. Then I started reading, in Alan Lomax's book, The Land Where the Blues Began, The Account of Doc Reese, a convict who worked on one of the Texas sugar farms sometime in the early 1900s.

Those songs are communication, they're personal. I just couldn't understand it initially because they were in code. They had to be. Here's an example, explained by someone. who would know better than I, a member of the McIntosh County shouters, a group that preserves and performs ring shouts. I want to sing a song about Moo Daniel. Yeah, man.

See, Daniel was a slave man, and the slaves all was having a little party across the field one day. And as the smokehouse was up there, we called it the smokehouse the place that our boss keep all his meat. And they wanted to steal something. something to meet you know and so they send Daniel in to get a piece of meat so they could put the party on show enough and old boss was coming down to there so the slave going to sing the sound to let Daniel know they get out to wait

because Daniel could pick it up and put it down you know I mean that fast run that's what I'm talking about and so the old boss thought that they was singing the party song but they were telling Daniel how to get out the way so that old boss wouldn't put that whiplash on him so I'm gonna sing the sound I just for one to tell you all know why we sing the song Move Daniel. Move Daniel, move to tell you, move. For more on Ring Shouts, we'll have an episode soon on revival and worship music, but you probably don't need any extra help to see

that a song whose only easily understood lyrics are Move Daniel takes on a sudden and serious significance in the right context. So now that you understand where field haulers come from, we're going to talk about how they were used. Some were solos, like the ones you just heard, but others were a sort of call-and-response number, somewhere between song and chant, which could then, and probably can now, be heard all over the country, wherever men are chopping wood, lining track, or harvesting cane. They're more rhythmic and very consistent.

They have to be, because often, the slowest man on any work line will be beaten to hurry him up. And if you're all in a tight line with axes or knives, do you want your head to be down at the bottom of your stroke while your neighbor is coming down? with his? Rhythmic chance keep everyone on time, so no one gets hurt and no one gets punished. Now, I promised you Doc Reese's story, and so to tell you that, I need to give you some background on the Sugar Bowl of Texas and the Brazzis River that pops up in so many old work songs. Settlers didn't reach the fertile growing soil of the Brazis River and the Texas Sugarland until the 1820s, when a man named Stephen Austin got permission from the Mexican government

of Texas to bring in about 300-7. Now, Austin was a southerner, and he planned to establish the sort of cotton-growing economy to which he was accustomed, so he encouraged settlers to bring slaves with them. In 1843, a couple of entrepreneurs built a commercial sugar mill on the banks of the brassis. It was worked by slaves. It made huge profits, and it came to be called Sugarland. When the Civil War put an end to slavery, the Texas prison system actually started renting out convicts to any plantation that needed them, including Sugarland, which was feeling

the loss of its former cheap labor supply. In fact, the whole economy was. So, to meet that demand, black people were arrested and given long sentences for things like vagrancy. In other words, standing in the wrong place for too long at the wrong time. They rest me for murder

and I ain't ever home to man. Rest me for fortune. I can't even sign my name. The convict leasing system was officially outlawed Texas in 1910, but the sugarland plantation was incorporated directly into the penitentiary system, so it was in a separate category and remained a prison farm into the 21st century. Conditions did improve somewhat after 1910, but not much, and very slowly.

It was after it became a part of the prison system that Doc Reese was sent to sugarland. Now convict leasing was often even worse than slavery, grotesque as it sounds, because the plantation owners didn't own their laborers, they didn't feel the financial pain of their deaths. So the mortality rates were staggering. Sugarland became known as the Hellhole on the Brazzis, and the Brazzis shows up in more of the work songs I know than any other place. We'll listen to some of these songs as we work through the story,

just the way that Doc wrote them in in Lomax's book. Doc himself was charged with robbery. Four robberies to be precise, all on the same night. at the same time and in four different parts of town. After his 12-year sentence, which was handed down by a kangaroo court apparently composed of other convicts, the account isn't clear to me, he was sent to work a Texas Sugar Bowl prison farm. Now you've probably heard this song before, But do you know what Black Betty was?

Nobody really does, or rather she was a lot of things and we can't narrow it down to one. Some say it was the name of a kind of rifle used in the Civil War, and at some point Black Betty was the name of the whip that the drivers and overseers used. Bama Lam was the sound she made hitting your back. When Doc ran into the song, though, that whip was called a red heifer, and Black Betty was instead the name of the transport wagon that carried you off to the prison farm from wherever you'd been tried. They talked about it in a work song called Hammer Ring.

The men used to sing, Black Betty's in the bottom, I can hear her roar, she's bringing some poor sucker with an achin soul. She'll bring you here and leave you. Hammer ring for a hundred summers, hammer ring. Now the prisoners couldn't sing about the beat downs they got if you didn't work fast enough, or looked the wrong direction, or talked during your work, or didn't submit to a fellow convict

who wanted to make you his galboy. I'll let the adults work out what that means. So instead, they sang about the food, or lack thereof. and that deep fill rain and so doc works on the while. He described his first impression of working and singing with the other prisoners like this. Every man was swinging on that hot beat of his. The blood was running warm in my veins, and I felt lest.

lifted up like I have in church sometime. There wasn't any more Easter rabbit. That's the boss's nickname. No more bullying, building tender. No more prisoners, just that old live oak, and the axe is biting them big chips, and the song rising right through those dark woods up the blue sky. And the song sure did rise.

Some of those men had pipes. They also used their songs to pray for the end of the working day. Listen to this tune. At first you might think it could mean anything. Why don't you go down old Hannah? Don't you rise? No. But now when I tell you that Old Hannah is a slang name for the sun, well, go down old Hannah, don't you rise no more, takes on a different meaning.

If you rise in the morning, well, when judgment show, if you rise in the morning, bring judgment sure. If there must be another day, please let me. Let it be the judgment day. See, they weren't allowed to talk except during lunch break. So if they wanted to communicate, it had to be through song. There were songs they sang to keep their spirits up. One is called Stubal, and there are almost as many covers of it as there are versions.

It's about a racehorse named Stubal, who's probably a little bit magical. At least in the Irish version from which it originates, he certainly is. He's the underdog for all that. Old Stubal came to the starting like a criminal to be hung, goes one line. But the important thing is that he wins, and so does everyone who bets on him. If you couldn't hear what you wish you, you could bet your last dollar on that iron. And to say, if you couldn't hear what they were saying, it's don't you wish you was there, you could bet your last dollar on that iron gray mare. And to someone who desperately needs the money,

That my husband off gambling. Uh-huh. I am sick in. Uh-huh. My bed. My bed. Trade my children. Uh-huh.

God naked. Uh-huh. Baby's crying. Uh-huh. Mo brain. More bread. That was, take my husband off of gambling. I am sick in my bed.

My children are naked. Baby's crying for bread. Well, that makes Stubal's story into exactly what Doc called it. An encouraging song. It told about how you might get lucky and win. You have to remember that these people aren't in the habit of winning very much. They're constantly surrounded by other men who are only there out of punishment, either for crimes they did commit, which doesn't exactly lighten the atmosphere,

or for crimes they didn't commit, which is worse. The mythical men who bet on stewball won money to feed their hungry families. Now a friend of Docs, a convict nicknamed Bad Eye, didn't get that lucky. I'm going to take a quick detour to tell you Bad Eye's story before we reunite the two. Bad I spent his first three months in prison for stealing a hog. His children were hungry and crying, and he didn't have any other way to feed them, so he killed and stole a hog from a man he called Old Moster and carried it home. He forgot to clean up the trail of blood, though, and it led straight to his door.

Hence Bad Eye's first five-year sentence, in the so-called red heifer days when convicts were still leased to the privately owned sugar plantation. Remember that the red heifer is the name of the overseer's whip. Bad I told his fellows If a man fall out with the sun They just drag him out the way And let the work go on It was in red heifer days

When we used to sing They gotta come on the river In 194 Oh You could find a Never turn They found 95 of those bodies In 2018

When they broke ground for a new school in Sugarland There was some other stuff buried with the bodies, including chains. There were 94 men and one woman. That's Ain't No More Kane on the River in 1910, and then by Alan Lomax himself. Well, after three months, old Monster got him out and set Bad Eye working for him instead to pay off the hog. And Bad Eye started doing well. He was able to support a family. He had a woman and three children,

and he owned a little bit of land and bought a small buggy. He was happy and proud. Then one day while they were out driving that buggy, a storm came up and flooded the creek they had to cross to get home. The water was over the bridge, but Bad Eye wanted to get home and thought he could make it. The family was almost across when a swell of water came down and washed out the bridge. Bad Eye's wife and all three of his children drowned. He went a little crazy then and started putting more time towards wine, women, and song than towards his farming. His second arrest came for shooting a white man. Now this was a white man who was taking his pleasure with an unwilling teenage black girl

and refused to heed the warnings Bad Eye gave him at gunpoint. Bad Eye gave himself up to the sheriff immediately to escape lynching by a mob and was given in a life sentence. Now when you show up to a prison farm, there's no secret what you're there for, and every boss did everything he could to make bad eyes time worse than all the other prisoners because he had killed a white man. They tried in every way to kill me, but they couldn't, he said. He wanted to run away, and it was a man on his squad singing a runaway song that decided him. Now the Brazzis River runs right beside this prison farm, you remember. If you wanted to run away, you were going to have to swim it, and it's a fairly wide one that's not always calm,

When Bad Eye swam, he said, It was boiling, with big logs and old brush. Looks like the whole river was full of suck holes and whirlpools. While he made it across, he stole some clothes off a line, his convict uniform would have been unmistakable, and was about a mile away when he heard Bloodhounds barking. They found him, whipped him, and put him back to work on the toughest squad the next day.

Bad I told this story to Doc, because he was trying to talk another inmate out of running away. I made it, bad I said. Throwed 19 years on my lifetime sentence. I'm liable for clemency right now. Bad I was about to be reviewed for parole and he could hardly contain himself with excitement. He was the squad's song leader and he sang about freedom every chance he got. But his friend of Docs and Bad Eyes didn't want to wait the six years that would take for him to come up for parole. He kept talking about making a run for the Brazos and pestering Doc to go with him. Bad Eye to let them know what he thought of that idea, led a work song about a bloodhound named Old Rattler, who was so fast that he could outrun a train.

There's nothing scarier to the longleyside. Yeah, Rattler, yeah. Oh, running so far, it didn't leave no sign. Here, Razzler, you're a baby, yeah, got a baby down. There's nothing scarier to a runaway than a fast hound, but the song didn't change anybody's mind. Doc himself wasn't sure what to do, and he was still struggling when, one. night, a man who knew all about galboys, and had had his eyes on Doc for months, crept over to Doc's bunk with a homemade knife, woke him up, and promised to frame him with possession of it if he didn't

submit right there and then. Doc thought he was done for, when Bad Eye came out of nowhere, snatched up the knife, and pointed it right at the creep. Leave Doc alone, he said, or get ready to die. And get this, if you spill to the white man, I'll get to you somehow and kill you. I might go, but I'll carry you with me. Understand? The creep understood, but Bad Eye's prophecy was true. He did go with him. The parole officer came, interviewed Bad Eye, and sent back a good report. Everything looked great until one day Bad Eye was sent to the number one squad. That's the fastest and hardest working. It's a dreaded assignment. He couldn't get a straight answer as to why, but he found out later that thanks to an anonymous report, he'd had an offense for impoliteness put on his record,

and he wouldn't get the parole he waited 19 years for. Doc doesn't say if he ever did try to cross the Brazos. He did say his friend never stopped planning. And bad I won't talk to anybody, he said. He just stares ahead of him all day like he was seeing ghosts. Every day we slopped through the cold mud down between the cane rows. The cane leaves cut our hands to the bone. The northers blow right through our cotton convict stripes.

Not far away, the big muddy river flows through the bottoms. the barrier between us and everything we want and love. And how do they cope with it? They sing. They talk to each other. They encourage each other. They hurt each other. They protect each other.

And they pray.