Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Rich Date: 26 Jan 08 - 10:34 AM I don't come on here much, but it appears that you can't seem to express an opinion of distaste for something, even if done in a polite manner, without it getting thrown back at you. All they said was something like "I don't like that..." and they got called "narrow minded" and "sanctimonious prigs" (whatever a prig is). I don't like these "videos" either... ...I await a barrage of insults
This discussion and the use of multiple identities got way out of hand, so it has been closed. -Joe Offer, Forum Moderator- |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Leadbelly at the youtube vidlad Date: 26 Jan 08 - 07:18 AM Howdy der its your old blues buddy Leadbelly cummin right at you here now I just wanna say dat o'l video thangy critter Jim Clark eees a good man,and dont deserve the sort a' abuse dat sum 'o' dem o'l Jonahs ave bin puttin out bout him lately round here so dont listen ta' a word 'o'it or um gonna get real angry,and I dont wanna end up in dat o'l penitentiary again jest getya purdy lil selves over ta' dat o'l vidlad youtube channel and dont take a blind bitta notice 'o' dem o'l sissyboy fellas who spend all der time typin snidey remarks like a cuppla dem o'l wimmin. At dat o' vidlad youtube channel you'll se fer yourself dat ders sumfin a might more creative bein'dun dan jest usin yer puter fer bitchin at strangers. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Lonesome EJ Date: 25 Jan 08 - 08:19 PM It's the first step to a cure, realizing there's a problem, Pop. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: PoppaGator Date: 25 Jan 08 - 04:10 PM He obviously doesn't realize that anything's wrong... |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Lonesome EJ Date: 25 Jan 08 - 03:43 PM What do you think is wrong with you? |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Barbecue Bob at dat o'l vidlad youtube chann Date: 25 Jan 08 - 03:41 PM Good evenin' der my blooze pardners down der at dat o'l Mudcat deescusion jukejoint ar jest thought I better stop by n let ya' all know bout my amazin' movin video thangy at dat o'l vidlad youtube channel.Fer da life 'o' me ar caint see where ta place ma' old 78 record Man-o-man deez new fangled video thangies on dat o'l ethereal internet thangy are mighty confusin,but you fine ladies n gents doan need' worry yer purdy lil heads bout deez thangs all you need ta do is type vidlad youtube channel into dat o'l google thangy and ya'all be watching yers truly Barbecue Bob sangin n movin before yer very eyes quicker dan ya' can say "Bobs Yer Uncle" Se ya dere pardners. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: PoppaGator Date: 24 Jan 08 - 12:00 PM ENOUGH ALREADY!!! |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Blind Lemon Jefferson at vidlad youtube chan Date: 23 Jan 08 - 03:24 PM Howdy doody blooze hounds jest thought ard letya al know dat ders one o dem o'video thangies of me sangin' "One kind favor" at dat o'l vidlad youtube thangy. All I ask is one kind favor when ya' all visit me and dat is dat ya' see dat my grave is kept clean.So please no dropping litter not dat I believe dat any o ya fine upstanding Mudcatters would do such a unwholsome thang. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Charley Patton at dat o'l vidlad youtube cha Date: 22 Jan 08 - 05:07 PM Howdy Brian just ta' let ya' know dat o'l inscription thangy 'o' ma' Dirt Road Blooze aint da' werk 'o' dat o'l high priest 'o' da blues Jim Clark eez just ma' teaboy. I thank he gawn un picked it up on one a is field trips round da't internet thangy,but I reckon ya' probably right yer version sounds more like ma' song dan is inscription duz.Trouble iz a caint even understand ma'self hairf da time coz um sippin dat o'l corn licker so much I dunno if um cummin or goin hairf da time. Hey man I sure got da' hots fer dat Memphis Minnie mamma ooz movin' n doing her thang right now sanging Bumble Bee Blues at dat o'l vidlad youtube channel.I'd get ma self over der if was you,its happy hour on dat white lightnin at da moment |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Brian Hoskin Date: 22 Jan 08 - 04:27 AM Jim, I had a look at the Charlie Patton Down the Dirt Road animation, I notice that some parts of your transcription are wrong. Eg 2nd verse should be: My rider got somethin', she's tyin'a keep it hid, My rider got somethin', she's tyin'a keep it hid, Lord, I got somethin', to find that somethin' with. 3rd verse final line should be: I been to the Nation, oh Lord, but I couldn't stay there. Brian |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Memphis Minnie at the vidlad youtube channel Date: 22 Jan 08 - 03:50 AM Hello you blooze luvin boys n Gals at dat o'l Mudcat house party I dunno wot dat crazy critter Jim Clark has got against us gals but I seem ta' be da only gas sangin' da' blues at dat lowdown vidlad youtube channel. I reckon 'e' doin like gals or sumfin considerin u'm da only one sangin ma' purdy lil' heart out at dat o'l vidlad youtube channel.Now if any a' ya boys n gals wanna have a real good time just get yer sweet lil' selves over ta' dat youtube vidlad jukejoint channel where a'm a' sangin "New Bumble Bee Blues" and I sure do look a picture a'movin and sangin like dat o'l proverbial Canary. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Ishman Bracey at vidlad channel youtube Date: 21 Jan 08 - 04:43 AM Howdy down der ar dat o'l Mudcat Penitentiary I just stopped by to let ya know dat ma'self Mississippi Delta Bluesman Ishman Bracey an ma' fellow blues bruv Robert Johnson have just gawn an found two new videos of us at dat o'l Juke Joint the vidlad youtube channel. Man o Man I just doan no 'ow dat o'l Hoodoo man Jim Clark does it,He's gotta be some kinda o'l Doctor Frankenstein I reckon. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Charley Patton at vidlad youtube channel Date: 18 Jan 08 - 03:58 AM Well stand me up and blow ma'down I just seen ma'self sangin' movin' "Dirt Road Blues" at dat high falootin'vidlad channel at youtube thangy. I reckon dat o'l Jim Clark critter deserves a place in dat o'l Blues hall 'a' fame fer what 'ees' bin doin' either dat or a long stretch down in Parchman Farm. 'Ees' gawn un dun annuva video of Blind Boy Fuller too sangin' "Homesick and Lonesome Blues" Man O Man dat vidlad youtube channel is shirley (who da hell is Shirley) the best o'l corn licqour joint outside 'o' Mussissippi. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Robert Johnson ay youtube vidlad channel Date: 17 Jan 08 - 12:54 PM Caint fer the life o' me understand why folks wanna cum onto ma' thread ta' promote a Liverpudlian gittar picker when dey can get right on over 'n' see the main man himself.Me Robert Johnson cummin right at yer outtaya puter screen sanging an' movin' fresh as a daisy. Now I dont intend cummin here more than once a day,but if critters wanna use ma' thread fer unrelated referals ie not ma 'n' ma blues compadres videos at dat o'l vidlad youtube channel den I gotta make sure folks know this a thread fer da' youtube vidlad channel 'n' not sum o'l gittar picker over in England )by the way how is that o'l Queen Doin'0 |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: katlaughing Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:11 AM Poppa, thanks for the heads up on the lesson videos. That guy is GREAT! Thanks to Lowden, too. vidlad, if it's you posting as all of the dear departed, I think you've done promoted it to death, no pun intended. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Robert Johnson at the vidlad youtube channel Date: 17 Jan 08 - 08:43 AM Hey Blues bruvs I hope ya come right on over and see me at that o'l vidlad youtube channel other Cats try 'n' play ma' stuff,but none of e'm can play like me 'n' ma blues pals like Charley Patton,Tommy Johnson,Leadbelly etc,and we aint afraid to show our face or butt in on other peoples threads. Now you may have seen ma' imitators,but now you can see and hear the real thang sangin' 'n' movin' over at dat o'l youtube vidlad channel.Accept no immitations is my advice our blues comes from the heart and from our hard lived experience,and maybe even from a deal wid da' Devil, it dont cum from no text book or gittar lesson.So judge fer ya'selves i'm playing right now at dat o'l youtube vidlad channel |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: PoppaGator Date: 16 Jan 08 - 01:48 PM It took a few days, but I finally got around to following Lowden Jamewright's link, posted back on 07 Jan 08 - 01:45 PM, where he advises us: If you want to pay homage to the great man via Youtube, you could do worse than learn how to play his music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4odyWzTmSM (See above for the blue clickifier.) I do most of my Mudcatting as a malingerer at work, where I have no speakers. At home in the evening, where my PC is multimedia-equipped, I don't always feel like sitting in front of a computer any more than I have to. But last night I spent hours viewing several great guitar lessons by one "deltabluestips," starting from part 3 of 4 of the "Four 'Til Late" tutorial to which the link brought me. So, who is deltabluestips, who never shows his face in the videos, only his hands? Is it you, Lowden? Is it some other British Mudcatter? (I can tell by the voice/accent that he's no American; I'm no expert on UK regional speech patters, but I think the guy's a Liverpudlian.) Anyway, this series of blues-guitar lessons (which seems to be still ongong) is a terrific resource. Thanks and praise to the instructor, who is a very good player and a truly excellent teacher, and whose work is a worthy homage to Robert Johnson as well as to the many nameless and forgotten artists who developed this music and handed it down to us. An even more worthy homage, indeed, than the cute little animation that started this thread, and even than vidkid's labor of love, creating all those many videos out of still photos and vintage recordings. I don't object to either of those other YouTube efforts ~ I just find the lesson videos even more worthwhile. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Tommy Johnson at the Vidlad youtube channel Date: 16 Jan 08 - 04:02 AM Golly Gee I reckon dat o'l White Lightnin' a bin drinkin' musta' numbed ma' senses beyond repair i just gawn and dum seen ma'self sanging right outta one a doze new fangled puter screen thangies at the vidlad youtube channel.MaN o Man dat Mojo man Jim Clark has just dun gawn an got me sangin' an movin' just like I was fresh as a daisy. Now you just go an get yer purty liddle selves over to dat vidlad youtube channel an go an join right in wid all the festivities,but bring yer own White Lightnin' coz ya aint gettin nunna mine. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Leadbelly sings old Hannah at vidlad youtub Date: 15 Jan 08 - 02:59 AM Listen up fellow Mudcat chain gang members I just spotted myself (before d'em o'l Bloodhounds do)at dat o'l Devil of a vidlad youtube channel somehow and I shirley (who is Shirley)dont know how that darn o'l critter does it,but he has sure as hell got me sangin' a cuppla dem o'l slave/prison chants "Aint Going Down to that well no more" and "Go Down old Hannah". Dat o'l Mr Lomax recorded me when he sprung me outta jail and I said ta' him "Thankyou Boss,Thankyou Boss, I'm gonna be yer man and drive you all over the United States in the end I just dun drove i'm up da' wall. Anyhow you best get over to see me at dat o'l vidlad youtube channel before I goes losing my temper and breakin' yer head |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Big Al Whittle Date: 14 Jan 08 - 07:24 AM I have no recollection of saying. Doesn't sound like me. Perhaps I was drunk. Still don't like the idea. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Folk Form # 1 Date: 14 Jan 08 - 06:59 AM Jim Clark, I thought it was funny. Good for you. Ignore the sanctimonious prigs who populate Mudcat. Weelittle drummer. "The music was built, freely played and enjoyed by people of color." What colour might that be, then? |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Tommy McClennan at youtube vidlad channel Date: 14 Jan 08 - 06:22 AM Howdy der blues hounds its Legendary Mississippi Delta bluesman Tommy McClennan here cummin at you from deep down in dat o'l Delta I just gone dun seen myself singing and moving at dat pesky o'l vidlad youtube channel.I dunno how that critter Jim Clark has managed to resurrect me I reckon he's some kinda' Voodoo man sure made me choke back ma' corn licqour when all of a sudden unexpected like der are was cummin' at me right out o' dat new fangled puter thangy screen.Man in my day you was lucky to own own an o'l cigar box with one string attached and dat a'd be on on a longterm mortgage Man u'm still A'shakin in my boots. Anyway Ithought sum o' you purty kind folks might enjoy seeing me at dat o'l vidlad youtube channel |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Blind Willie Johnson at the vidlad youtube c Date: 11 Jan 08 - 03:45 AM Hey Up! I reckon dat o'l blues critter Jim Clark has dun gawn un taken holy orders, now he's gawn un put up a movie of ma'self Blind Willie Johnson sangin' sumfin a little more wholesome dan dat o'l Devils music blues baloney.Now you just go an take yer pretty self over der and you can see me sangin' "Motherles Children have a hard time" Sure caint see it ma'self but I understand dees new fangled video thangs enable the folks out there in sumwhere called Cyberspace to see me struttin ma' stuff and I sure do sound good and wholesome. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Blind Willie Mctell at vidlad channel youtub Date: 09 Jan 08 - 08:03 AM Caint see ma'self fer obvious reasons,but I just dun heard ma'self singing "Boke Down Engine Blues" as sweet as a lark at dat o'l vidlad youtube channel boy o boy I dun sound reel good,and O'l Blind Boy Fuller dun gawn an got anuvva video (what are those pesky thangs) up as well he's dun singing "Weeping Willow blues" and I'll tell you sumfin its dun near made me weep into my o'l corn licqour bottle. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Dylan Thomas at the youtube vidlad channel Date: 08 Jan 08 - 03:58 AM I say Yakky da boyos I dont know whats going on down at Jim Clark's youtube vidlad channel I was halfway through giving a reading of "Do not go gentle into that good night" when some rough looking big brute of fellow wearing a convicts striped suit bellows out "The Rock Island line is a mighty good line" in a deep Southern American dialect which I am not familiar with being a simple boyo from the valleys as I am. Apparently he calls himself Leadbelly and I swear on al thats sacred and the Welsh Leak that he calls himself Leadbelly and if I am not very much mistaken he is an escaped convict. Excuse me now I think I will have to get some boyos in from the Rugger club to eject him.Yakky Da for now Boyos |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,W B Yeats at vidlad youtube channel Date: 07 Jan 08 - 05:09 PM I say old beans theres a rough tough looking chappie lurking around the youtube vidlad channel lowering the tone somewhat for us erudite poetry types he keeps on about "Waking up this morning" I dont think we usualy admit fellows of his sort in our club normaly pip pip. Apparently he calls himself Robert Johnson and insists on wearing his hat cocked to one side maybe I should get my butler to talk to him he's keeping us all awake singing "Walking Blues" I must say i've never seen him down in the Rhymers club before pip pip |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Lowden Jameswright Date: 07 Jan 08 - 01:45 PM If you want to pay homage to the great man via Youtube, you could do worse than learn how to play his music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4odyWzTmSM |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Jack Blandiver Date: 07 Jan 08 - 01:13 PM This is just nauseating; another crappy computer FX programme used without taste or imagination (though I did smile at the Yeats, but not for long...) |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Leadbelly at vidlad channel youtube Date: 07 Jan 08 - 04:51 AM Man o Man I dun just seen ma'self right up there in cyberspace at dat o'l youtube vidlad channel. I dunno where dat o'l video cat Jim Clark is cummin from I reckon e's bin playin with is Black Cat Bones or sumfin',but I sure do look a handsome fella sangin' away there alongside my blues bruvva's Robert Johnson and o'l Blind boy Fuller and Charley Patton (nevva could tell if he spelt his name with an ie or a ey) etc at old corn licqour koint better known as the vidlad youtube channel. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Big Al Whittle Date: 06 Jan 08 - 04:27 PM Please stop, you'll be blacking up next..... |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Robert Johnson at vidlad channel youtube Date: 06 Jan 08 - 02:05 PM Dog gone it ma videos aint no kinda joke theys the only existing film of ma'self singing you see in my day cameras were big bulksome thangs mostly operated by steam power you needed a couple of locomotives to hawl e'm round so they comcentrated on de artists face anything else was pretty near darn impossible. Anyhow a'm telling you that Jim Clark critter aint no joker i've seen dat guy at work and I swear he musta been down to that o'l crossroads I was at, the only dog gone problem the devil musta been outta town that day, that guy aint messin you know he dun love da blues,but he done know da difference between enjoyin da music and juvenile dumb arse hero worship by middle class white boys.So fellas I hope you'll enjoy seeing what da there is of me via steam video and realise it is dun wth only da most honourable intentions by the finest best looking most intelligient wise (modest) man I have had cause to meet during my short lived career running up and down Mississippi. By all means have a smile,but not as a joke on me,just realise dat what should make ya smile is the fact dat that after all dees years you've finaly had a chance to see me o'l Robert cumming at you thru dat old puter screen via the vidlad youtube channel |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Gene Burton Date: 06 Jan 08 - 01:39 PM Bob: Likewise. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Date: 06 Jan 08 - 01:27 PM Gene: "To each his own...". Wish you well. bob |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Gene Burton Date: 06 Jan 08 - 01:21 PM Bob: Yes, and yes, respectively. As it happens I have no great love for the British royal family (a view shared now by probably a majority of my countrymen). Although that's irrelevant to the original purpose of the thread. I just don't think these films are in fact making a clown out of Robert Johnson- what makes them funny and entertaining is that the expectations of the person clicking on the link and expecting to see unearthed footage of RJ are confounded, and from thence the humour arises. That and the technical skill of the animator. It worked for me, anyway. I expected, naiively I'm sure, to see live footage of Robert Johnson, was duped, and am perfectly willing to laugh at a joke against myself. A pity not everyone seems to be able to do that... |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Date: 06 Jan 08 - 11:55 AM Gene: And you would still say that your comments would remain the same for Princess Diana if your face was visible, and your voice heard, and you could be held accountable, say on T.V. and radio? Would you stand in front of a crowd in downtown London and do the same? I'm just trying to understand this Gene. Don't mean to be overbearing, as I enjoy a laugh under the right circumstances as much as anyone, but it's just a bit hard for me to understand...bob |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Gene Burton Date: 06 Jan 08 - 11:09 AM Yes. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Date: 06 Jan 08 - 10:14 AM Hi Kids: Just wondering if your comments would be the same if that were done to a photo of Princess Diana? bob |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Jaybird Coleman at the vidlad youtube channe Date: 06 Jan 08 - 05:00 AM Golly Gee blues critters I just done gone seen ma self up on that dat o'l youtube vidlad channel it seems dat pesky roustabout Jim Clark has been working hois roots again. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Gene Burton Date: 05 Jan 08 - 06:17 PM ...and I heartily concur. These films are a lot of fun, and it's not like the great man himself's in any position to be offended...so, really, why should anybody else be? (especially white middle class folk policemen with whom RJ would have absolutely nothing in common...) |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Blind boy Fuller at youtube vidlad channel Date: 04 Jan 08 - 08:17 PM Dog gone it blues hounds that O'l Deevil yah Deevil Jim Clarks been at it again and I just done gone and seen myself on his vidlad youtube channel Man o Man I sure look good |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: PoppaGator Date: 04 Jan 08 - 05:45 PM The Surgeon General wasn't born yet. Not any S.G. who would eventually advise against smoking, anyway. Cigarettes may not have been nearly so deadly back in RJ's time, assuming that they were still made from unadulterated tobacco and a little scrap of paper. Nicotine is the addictive element that makes the tobacco business such a sure thing, guaranteeing that most buyers will become lifelong regular customers. You'd think that would be enough for the greedheads of RJR and their fellow profiteers, but no. They find it necessary to load their products up with hundreds of chemical additives, all of them designed to make the stuff even more addictive, and many of them downright poisonous. Ain't unregulated capitalism wonderful? |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Bobert Date: 04 Jan 08 - 05:30 PM Well, all I can say is this... If Robert Johnson hadn't been poisoned he wouldn't have made it mush into his 30's chain smokin' them non filterd cigarettes... Every time I see the guy he's gota cig ibn his mouth... Where was the surgeon general, anyway??? |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Robert Johnson Date: 04 Jan 08 - 02:53 PM Hey blues hounds I just done seen myself up on youtube and I reckon that o'l Jim Clark musta done some kinda deal with the devil he's darn well managed to resurrect me after all these years since I got shot and Poisoned by dem o'm pesky wimmen. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Tweed Date: 03 Jan 08 - 09:19 PM He's no deity and not the only one from down there that could play and sing. He just got noticed and it took off. Watch out for Steven LeVere though. He guards the rights to the R.J. photos viciously. If he gets wind of your animations he'll probably send you some legal advice to cease and desist. I know a fellow in the Netherlands who'd put RJ's photo up on his website a few years back and had to take it down pretty quick. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Knock-off Nigel Date: 03 Jan 08 - 08:14 PM Let's keep this one going! Respect where it's due, to a guy who's obviously paid his dues, learnt his trade, and applied it tastefully to adorn the memory of a seminal figure. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Big Al Whittle Date: 02 Jan 08 - 06:02 PM I don't want to offend you Jim, as I obviously have. And Les (the villan) has asked me to behave myself - so I will try to make amends. I think the video with Robert Johnson's mouth moving like that looks grotesque. he was a man who lived a life of terrible poverty and degradation. and yet he left us this beautiful and complex music. If you want to know how difficult it is to play - I would urge to get a copy of Scott Ainslie's wonderful tuition video. I would feel the same as if you did that to the face of Ann Frank. people like this paid at the office. they don't need that sort of humiliation of their memory. okay so - I'm acting like a humourless bore - I'm sorry. I leave those of you with patience to dip into at least an essay by the aforesaid Scott Aislie that I received by e-mail. Part of it deals with the environment that Robert Johnson lived in:- BluesNotes, May 2007 ©2007, Scott Ainslie Examining the historical context of the Blues is tricky for anyone, though perhaps doubly so for whites. The music was built, freely played and enjoyed by people of color whose lives, livelihoods–and, sometimes, deaths–were shaped by forces on the loose in the American landscape that are unexamined and unfamiliar to many listeners. I do not believe this is out of callousness generally, but is more due to the fact that this dark history is glossed over or entirely absent in our schools. History, in fact, is the worst taught subject in America–not out of disability, but out of fear. The actual history of America contradicts cherished myths of America. To study our actual history– to question the myth of America–is widely considered to be subversive and unpatriotic. Our popular history is littered with familiar myths, startling omissions, and sometimes outright lies that allow uneasy truths about our actual history to slip ever deeper into a forgotten past so as not disturb our collective sleep. Many of these myths surround issues of greed, race, and violence. And, sadly, they continue to color our perceptions of each other. When our perceptions are based upon myths, our understanding and our actions will be based on myths, as well. Truth needs a place at our table, no matter how startling. We can deal with a hard truth. We cannot deal with lies; we cannot heal with myths. How we heal our communities, understand our circumstances, and endeavor to create measurable progress, depends on whether we continue to regard each other dimly through a history crippled by myths, half-truths, and lies, or see each other and how we got here in the clear, cold light of the truth. Years ago, Desmond Tutu, after thanking us for the examples we have given the world–Dr. King, the Civil Rights Movement, engaged nonviolence–said that South Africa wanted to return the favor, offering us a gift in return, something America badly needs: a truth commission. As a nation, we have yet to take him up on it. But it is something individuals attempt. Without widespread agreement on our history, we are going to be condemned to not just repeat it, but carry it, a millstone around our necks. No one person can put down this burden. It doesn't work like that. It will take all hands to get it off our necks. The power to lift it is agreement. We need an agreed upon past. The burden of our history must be shouldered, and later surrendered, together. We are not alone in preferring myths over reality. The Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese, and to a lesser extent the English and the Germans have all subscribed to sanitizing their histories, and all at the same cost – if truth will set you free; lies enslave you. Well-taught, history makes the present more comprehensible: not by providing answers so much as by raising questions. Every new fact blazing into our skies brings with it a trail of questions: some worthy, some not. The trick, as always, is to find a good question. A proper history makes the road we're on clearer; a tenaciously held myth gets us lost the weeds. As a matter of record, I was not taught this history either, but have come across it in the reading and work that I do to deepen my understanding of African, African-American, and American culture, music, and traditions, as part of my attempt to make myself more useful on stage. I thank you for reading along. This spring in New England, I'm drawing on three remarkable books to fill in some of the potholes in our history: "After Appomattox: How The South Won The War" Stetson Kennedy (University Press of Florida, 1995) "Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War" Nicholas Lemann (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006) "The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America" Louis Menand (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001) One of the most startling myths about our history–a pat lie endlessly repeated in general history books and courses at almost every level– is that following our bloodiest war, the Civil War (the North's 'War of Rebellion'; the South's 'War of Northern Aggression'), Reconstruction of the South 'failed'. The sheer passivity of this description belies the truth. Reconstruction didn't have a chance to 'fail'. It was violently and brutally murdered along with hundreds-to-thousands of Black American citizens who were terrorized and abandoned to organized White mob violence by a Federal unwilling and State governments unwilling, or in some cases unable, to exert themselves to protect the Constitutional rights, lives, and property of their newest citizens. The history of the violent end of Reconstruction is well-told in Stetson Kennedy's "After Appomattox: How The South Won The War" and in Nicholas Lemann's more recent "Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War". These books, provide chilling, detailed, historical accounts of how the North and the Federal government abandoned Black voters and citizens to organized bands of bloodthirsty vigilantes and Confederate veterans bent on winning after the war what they could not win during the war: the continued oppression of Blacks and the virtually complete suppression Black and Republican votes (back when Republicans were the party of Lincoln). Reconstruction was finished off by the wholesale terrorizing, lynching, and murder of innocent Black citizens, voters, and officeholders by marauding Whites. It is here that we find sad and shocking precedents in our own short history for the sort of barbaric sectarian violence ripping apart the neighborhoods of Baghdad, the countrysides of Darfur, Afghanistan, and Somalia today, where memories are far longer. We are rightly outraged at the torture killings by Iraqis who are now routinely drilling holes in the skulls of their living neighbors, removing fingers, noses, tongues, ears, and scourging them with fire before finally beheading or shooting them. But our outrage is untempered by the certain knowledge that Mississippians did these very things to their fellow Mississippians from 1875 until 1965 with deadening regularity and with assured impunity. In the white South, a jury of your peers regularly nullified the rule of law. And this violence wasn't committed in some abandoned neighborhood under the cover of night. In the early decades of the Twentieth Century, these mutilations, maimings, and executions were often carried out right in the town square, with women and children gathered around: picnics down by the courthouse. This is well- documented in contemporary newspaper accounts and photographs. Less than seventy-five years ago, postcards of lynchings were routinely mailed all over the country. Souvenirs. It is a wonder America doesn't know. Across the South, prompted by convenient, but unfounded rumors of imminent Black uprisings, 'race riots' erupted all over the country causing the wholesale killing of Blacks. Nicholas Lemann in Redemption assures us that there were race riots in Mississippi in the 1870s, but they weren't started by Blacks. These 'riots' were well-orchestrated acts of political terrorism planned and executed by Whites who took up arms against their Black neighbors to remove their Federally guaranteed Constitutional rights and take away their newly granted freedoms, property and lives. Starting in Mississippi in the mid-1870s, Whites launched campaigns of indiscriminate violence, assassinating legally elected black officeholders, local black leaders and voters, cutting the legs out from under the Union victory, won at such terrible cost to the nation. Black citizens were left unprotected by State and Federal authorities and had to fend for themselves against the White Liners, White Leagues, former Confederates soldiers, and the Ku Klux Klan. These groups rampaged across the South, often crossing State lines, to participate in raids and attacks bent on stopping Black participation in what Whites considered 'their' society and 'their' democracy. In Lemann's "Redemption"–his title, a term used by the Whites to spin the campaigns of terror and unprosecuted murders that ended Reconstruction–it is clear that the key to the success of this strategy lay in a deadly combination of the war weariness of the North, the political timidity and hedging wariness of President Grant, and the long-standing willingness of northerner Whites to ignore the ugliness, violence, and inhumanity of white Southerners and slavery–so long as that unpleasantness remained out of view and out of mind in the South. According to Louis Menand in his prize-winning book, "The Metaphysical Club," the ground work for both the Civil War and for the violent resurgence of Confederate veterans in the South was exposed by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Menand writes: "The Fugitive Slave Law was the least-debated item in the Compromise of 1850, but it radicalized the North. It pushed many previously passive unionists into active animosity toward the South–not because they considered the law an encroachment on the liberties of black Americans, but because they considered it an encroachment on the liberties of Northern Whites. "It was 'a degradation which the North would not permit,' wrote Ulysses S. Grant near the end of his life, and he regarded it as the prime instigator of the war: '[T]he great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution.'" The Supreme Court ruling that affirmed this law in the Dred Scott decision enjoined Northerners to participate in the return of escaped slaves from the free soil of the North to the torment and vengeance of their Southern owners. This law, and the shameful Supreme Court decision upholding it, quickly transformed a fringe radical Abolitionist movement into a major force in American politics, polarizing Northern voters and the Congress, thereby setting the stage for war. The willingness of Northerners to parse their concerns about the treatment of Blacks and the institution of Slavery in this way–going along with it, so long as Northerners could remain at some comfortable moral distance from it–played itself out again a quarter of a century later in 1875 when rampaging Whites began terrorizing and slaughtering black voters and officeholders, bringing Reconstruction of the South to a violent end and ushering in the Jim Crow era. This time they were not forced to look upon it or participate in it. Federal forces stayed home. Rumors of armed Black uprisings were used over and over again across the South to whip up fears and then to justify violence by the white community. Northerners were unwilling to re-fight the Civil War, or even to return Federal troops to guarantee Black voting rights and guarantee the peace. Northerners and the Federal Government turned a blind eye to the killing, fatally content to let the South be the South. This was an attitude that was to hold sway for nearly a century. Detailed in Lemann's "Redemption", Mississippi's senators and congressmen, knowing full well that they were fronting a violent overthrow of will of the United States government, Reconstruction and the Constitution, stood calmly in the chambers of Congress and assured their colleagues in Washington of their determination to guarantee, in the absence of Federal troops, Black participation in state and federal elections. Even as their constituents were scourging, hanging, shooting and burning the bodies of Black voters all across their state, Mississippi's politicians busied themselves in laying the ground work for segregation, the myths of White Supremacy, Black uprisings, and the 'failure' of Reconstruction. To the lasting shame of the Federal government,dishonoring the sacrifices of Northern soldiers in the war, Northern interests turned a blind eye to the slaughter of Blacks in Mississippi. As Lemann notes, in one representative Mississippi county where 20,000 Republican votes were tallied in the early 1870s, following the unremitting violence of 1875, in the following election, only four Republican votes were cast. And it is likely those were cast at the cost of their lives. It was this lethal combination of Southern violence and Northern indifference that did more than anything else to preserve the desperate privations of Blacks and to maintain the privileges of Whites in the Old South for the ninety years between 1875 and 1965. The effects of these ninety years have proved quite durable. The news of Mississippi's success at suppressing Black voter participation by pairing distant calm assurances of their statesmen in Washington with the brutal savagery and indiscriminate violence of lower class Whites against their black neighbors quickly spread across the former Confederacy. Following their example, Whites in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Florida, South and North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia did the same. It should be noted that violence was not the only tool used to remind Blacks of their perilous place in the society. They were routinely jailed, fined, and confined. Convicts were leased to businesses and landowners and provided a ready supply of cheap/free labor. The law was not their friend. The legal apparatus became simply another tool to harm and intimidate them. And this sort of oppression cannot be safely tucked away in pages of the history books either. The New York Times recently reported the results of a study of the American justice system which showed that when a person with no previous criminal record turns up before a judge for sentencing, Blacks are incarcerated eight times as often as Whites. If an illegal drug is involved in the charges, Blacks are imprisoned 49 times as often as Whites. This sort of treatment of Blacks by our legal system clearly has deep roots. Even today, in 2007, there are far more Blacks in prison than in college. Second chances go to Whites. Finally, in the 1960s, Northern consciences–and the Federal government–were offended by the widely televised attacks on well- dressed and well-behaved civil rights demonstrators by white policemen with fire hoses, clubs, and police dogs. They were also roused to action by the killing of northern civil rights volunteers. It was clear to the North who the more civilized participants in this Southern drama were. Not quickly mind you, but eventually, after nearly a century of unprosecuted lynchings and murders of Blacks, Federal authorities finally dispatched Federal troops into the South; troops that could have – and should have – been sent in 1875. And so, in the mid-1960s, the Reconstruction of the South began once again. Any attempt to deepen one's appreciation of the Blues while ignoring the circumstances of the lives of the people who made it will fall desperately short. This dark part of our history has echoes in our present day race relations, our economic, and our civic lives. I also has an unsettling resonance in the world events, sectarian violence, torture, and terrorism in which we have embroiled ourselves today. The Blues were noticed at the turn of the Twentieth Century, as the first and second generations born out of slavery came of age. The generations that birthed the Blues were raised on the desperate turmoil, hope, bloody terrorism, and final violence that shut the door on social and political change in the South for almost a century, conclusively ending the postwar Reconstruction initiatives. This violence locked Southern Blacks in an artificially brutal and constricted world where the Constitution of the United States and the laws of our land simply would not protect them. There they remained throughout nearly all of the 20th Century. To borrow a phrase from Alan Lomax's book of the same name, that is 'the land where the Blues began'. That is the social landscape. Hemmed in by what Jonathan Kozol refers to as a 'surround of force'– poverty, despair, and violence–these folk sang. They sang! And part of the triumph of this music is a profound testimony to the plain fact that, no matter what's happened to you, if you can get up in the morning and sing: you win. But of course, you have to be breathing to sing. Scott Ainslie May 7, 2007 Brattleboro, VT |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: Nerd Date: 02 Jan 08 - 05:41 PM I also don't much like the "video." Among other things, it looks creepy to me in a way the still photos don't. Still, I'm not offended by it... |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Date: 02 Jan 08 - 04:54 PM Jim Clark aka vidlad: Oh my, how to begin this one. The people who have posted(weelittledrummer & Lonesome EJ) are not at all narrow minded. They are merely observing, quite accurately, that your animation will be interpreted as an insult to the memory of Robert Johnson. Many people will not have had the opportunity to access YouTube via Mudcat, and that your attempt to "bring to life" Robert Johnson in what I interpret as a genuine admiration of the man and his music will be misconstrued. It reminds me of the guy who thought he had a great idea by coming up with "The NEW taste of Coca-Cola" and bombed. So much so that Coke had to spend BILLIONS to introduce what is now known as "Classic Coke"(North American viewpoint here.) And this issue, like Coke, is about TASTE.. Jim, I believe that you wanted to do the right thing, but sometimes re-evaluation can be a learning process. Perhaps using your skills as an animator to do a montage, or something along those lines. Does anybody want to see The Mona Lisa speak? The photo of RJ is locked in the memory of millions of his fans, me included. And we all know the songs, and wonder, "what was he like?" Many people will think you are trying to make a clown out of Robert Johnson..Not good. The whole mystique of the Robert Johnson legend is best left as it is, in my opinion. Or, as some of my "motorcycle enthusiast" friends, aka "Bikers" have so eloquently said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it..." bob |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST,Gene Burton Date: 02 Jan 08 - 04:41 PM VERY amusing, Jim- made me laugh out loud! Compliments on your innovation. |
Subject: RE: Robert Johnson films at youtube From: GUEST Date: 02 Jan 08 - 04:05 PM Jim Clark, you should be ashamed! Awful, horrible, patronising garbage! |
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