The Geez by Nii Parkes (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

and turn it blue on my strings

Just like Zimmerman taught me, I pluck these blues from my strings

Watch me sing my heart out on corners, like an angel floats on wings

Call me invisible, call me ghost – you won’t forget my name

Number 11 of my mama’s children, you won’t forget my name

Hear blues, rock and roll playing and know I changed the game.

Ma Rainey

Can’t nobody hold me back, baby, Ma Rainey is my name

I always made my own damn way, Ma Rainey is my name

I wear a collar, tie and gold teeth when I come out to play

First hit me in Missouri, been singing the blues ever since

Gripped me like a lover’s thighs, I’ve been hooked ever since

Went on the road like See See Rider, my smile gleaming like flint

Did I come in April or September, Georgia or Alabama?

See I’m hard to pin down, I’m slippery as a spinning spectre

Why go to the crossroads when the world spins around my centre?

I’m the first, I’m the mama, I’m nobody’s coon shouter

Call me names, I’ll knock you down, you can’t prove it on me after

I worked hard, paid my dues, my songs will ring in the hereafter.

Slim Gaillard

Slim slam flim flam vouto is my McVouty voodoo

If you know the blues, ain’t no need to translate for you

You can jive and have a ball, it still reaches into you

Every pack has a wildcard and I ran wild all my life

If you ask me what the blues is, I’ll open the book of my life

Stranded in Greece as a boy, but, man, I turned out fine

My guitar weeps blues, my voice scats in jazz

If music were a crossroad, I’d be the question to ask

There’s no deal to hold down a language that moves so fast

The twelve-bar is everybody’s bar; we all drink out there

Jelly Roll, Louis and Duke, they all hang out there

I scat around the crossroad, cos there’s no devil to fear.

Muddy Waters

My grandmama called me Muddy, the Waters came with the harp

You might think you know my blues, but you don’t know the half

(A) sharecropper’s measly wages is how I bought my first guitar

Had my own joint by eighteen, listened to the blues all day through

Like the waters of the Mississippi, the flow of it stays inside you

Anyone from the hell of plantations, loves water and feels the blues

A boy raised in hell don’t make deals with the devil on the side

(I) heard my own voice played on the juke and knew I had heaven inside

Stayed with my grandmama a little longer, but I knew I had heaven inside

Only deals I ever make are with good ole Willie Dixon

He gives me all the right words when my blues need fixing

My archive runs deep as water, all rolling stones need my benediction.

Big Mama Thornton

A church singer’s daughter from Alabama, I’m the original Big Mama

Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, their voices were my teachers

I can sing high, I can sing low, cos my daddy was a preacher

I was on stage before Elvis, he ain’t nothing but my hind dog, I say

And when Janis Joplin copied Ball & Chain, Bay-Tree took all the money

When you’ve met real-life devils, who needs to go to the crossroads to play?

I can beat my own drum and I play the harp pretty good

I made music with all the good guys, with Muddy and BB too

And everybody knows I don’t need no microphone to sing my blues

You’ll find me where there’s good singing and the liquor supply’s ample

I may not be wearing no dress, but you’ll know me by my dimple

Feet on the ground, singing from my heart; I’m one of the blues’s finest examples.

Blind Lemon Jefferson

East Texas streets is where I fine-tuned my blues

In bootleg corners with bad men and fine women, a blind man singing blues

Couldn’t work with the sharecroppers so this is how I put my hands to use

Been at a hundred crossroads, but I ain’t heard nothing but revelling

Stories about devils is how they pretend we didn’t rise by struggling

I’ll record 100 songs in thirty-six months and every one will be sterling

See I’m so damn original, even the devil couldn’t copy me

With my quick-fingered magic, there ain’t many that can play like me

When B.B. King holds Lucille sometimes he tries to sound like me

They call me Blind Lemon Jefferson, sweet and high is how I sing

When T-Bone was starting out, he walked with me and I guided him

My sound is so indescribable, I leave black snakes moaning.

Big Bill Broonzy

Odd jobs by day, guitar by night; that’s how I made it

One of seventeen kids, I know how to work till I make it

From the fiddle to the guitar, I pulled strings till I nailed it

Played the two-stages but went to war for everyone as one

Now I write my own tunes; don’t need no crossroads plan

Got rights to more than 300 songs and the devil ain’t got none

(I) got the keys to the highway so I ain’t afraid of the road

Opening for folks who don’t know struggle, but I ain’t afraid of the road

I’ve got a boy out down under; I made him on the road

Got the blues from childhood and I’ve played it near thirty years

I cooked, swept and carried loads. but the blues still rang in my ears

So I picked up this guitar and you’ll be hearing me for years.

Interpretation

You must not have heard

the one about the butcher who became

a classical conductor: it is

said he coaxed blood from warm flesh

the same way he makes strings whine

and horns mimic a bull’s lament in allegro.

His feeling for time signatures as true

and unshifting as an Accra sunset,

you can set a seed’s germination into pale

clef-shaped shoot by his baton,

his restless foot, the shapes his body forms

as he conjures sound and silence.

Audiences flock to see him lead

virtuosos from the highest high to the deep;

he gives new life to the Mendelssohn woman –

Fanny – buries old notions of Beethoven and Rachmaninov,

but, as with all music, interpretation varies

and the historic