Lyr Add: Migrant Jesse Sawyer (James Talley)

Subject: Lyr Add: MIGRANT JESSE SAWYER^^
From: Stewie
Date: 27 Oct 99 - 10:11 PM

MIGRANT JESSE SAWYER

It was 94 degrees in Sapville, Georgia
The air hung like syrup from the trees
And on a dusty, county road
This story I was told
From the lips of Jesse Sawyer's weary soul

He said, my body and my mind are so hungry
I'm hardworkin', but I know I'm a beaten man
I was born on the road
Never called no place my home
I pick the food for the people of this land

I'm a migrant and I move with the seasons
Many years, many miles and many days
There's nothing that I own
Just to travel on and on
Bend my back, break my body for my wage

I've got a wife, Sandy Belle, and 6 children
We just plan on the pickin' day to day
We ain't liked much anywhere
Got the law to duck and fear
We just pray, we pray the Lord will make a way

Sandy Belle, Lord, she works right here beside me
Bore her children right there on that road
But when the moon is down
I know she cries without a sound
And the tears are lined upon her face

Ain't no schools for me to send my little children
And I hate to see them spend their lives this way
Well, I do the best I can
But I don't understand
I don't know who made the world this way

Well, it might help if I could see some way to change it
If I thought that we could make it another way
But it's my life, it's all I know
It's a sickness in my bones
And I know some day I'll die out on that road
And I know some day I'll die out on that road

Author: James Talley
Source: James Talley 'Blackjack Choir' Capitol ST-11605. This album has been reissued (with another Talley Capitol album – 'Ain't It Something' – on a single CD) by Bear Family: BCD 15435.

James Talley is a fine, but sadly neglected, writer of country, blues and folk idiom songs. In the 1970s, he recorded 4 wonderful albums for Capitol – these have been reissued by Bear Family. The albums received critical acclaim, but lay like dead fish in the record racks until, finally, his record company dropped him. One of his - perhaps somewhat dubious - claims to fame is that he was invited to perform at Jimmy Carter's inauguration. Talley agreed when he learned that Carter had cited James Agee's magnificent study of rural poverty, 'And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men', as one of his favourite books. Talley felt that anyone who respected Agee's work couldn't be all bad. In the early 198Os, he made a disappointing album, 'American Originals', for a Nashville label. In the 1990s, he returned to form with a studio and live album for Bear Family. More importantly, Bear Family released a box set of CD and lavish book that adopted an approach similar to James Agee's and Walker Evans' 'And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men' : 'The Road to Torreon – Photographs of New Mexico Villages by Cavalliere Ketchum, Love Songs and Other Writings by James Talley'. Talley has a Ph.D in the art of the Depression. The curious may find more information on Talley in the chapter devoted to him in Peter Guralnick's 'Lost Highway'.