Analysis of Poor Man’s Blues by Bessie Smith (Essay Example)

📌Category: Entertainment, Music, Musicians
📌Words: 1503
📌Pages: 6
📌Published: 23 February 2022

Many songs struck a chord with me in this unit, but one track I came back to time after time was Poor Man’s Blues by Bessie Smith. The song immerses the listener in a symphony of brass and horns right from the start. Throughout the track's entirety, there is a beautiful call and response between Smith and a horn that makes the piece feel blues-esque. Smith's voice has a slight growl to it, and it perfectly compliments the horns' yearning sound making the song feel like a conversation between two weary friends.  Another aspect of the track that caught my attention was the political lyrics. Blues was an outlet for many different aspects of life, and Bessie Smith explored themes that filled every inch of the human experience. In this particular song, she focused solely on the classist and racial disparities of society. The title itself is pretty self-explanatory of what Smith will be singing about. This protest song is powerful, not only because it is a woman speaking her mind, but it is a woman of color criticizing America during such oppressive times. One stanza I find particularly interesting is when she sings, 

If it wasn't for the poor man

Mister Rich Man what would you do?

This lyric is the B portion of the AAB rhyme scheme, and it leaves such a powerful rhetorical question in the listener's mind. It is a beautiful way to call out all of the injustices that poor people (in particular poor people of color) have had to endure to build up a class that beats them down. Wealth in America came from slavery, especially in the south, where Ms. Smith was from. In Poor Man's Blues, she acknowledges the adversity people of color faced before her while also giving a sad glimpse of the future to everyone who will come after her. Smith asks the country, why are the middle class and lower classes left so far down in the dust? There is enough money to help everyone in this nation prosper, so how do we keep the rich from getting rich and the poor from getting poorer? Smith was a woman who wanted to see change, and Poor Man's Blues was her call to action for a country that was and still is in dire need of reformation.

Another song that captured my imagination was the song, No More, My Lord by Jimpson. The pounding, of what I assume to be an ax, keeps melodic rhythm with the artist's soulful singing and leaves the listeners hypnotized. The ax echos and reverberates in the audience's ears leaving them with a hauntingly lonely sound. The piece gives an idea of what a field song during the years of slavery would have sounded like. Its lonesome atmosphere portrays the feeling of isolation that slaves felt in the 1700-the 1800s and what prisoners felt during the 20th century in American prison systems. This song may not sound particularly bluesy due to its gospel-sounding lyrics, but the lyrical pattern models the AAB formatting of blues. Also, like most blues songs, No More, My Lord expresses a deep kind of pain. The lyrics are simple and easy to follow, but the listener feels such intense emotion because of the note bending and me·lis·ma by Jimpson. At times it sounds like he is moaning or crying rather than singing. The lyrics are powerful, but their tone is what makes this piece of work art. The physical and mental exhaustion of the African American People gets captured by Jimpson's powerful chest voice (a technique used by many blues Arties, e.g. Charlie Patton). The deep growl gives a sense of longing for rest and freedom many dreamed and still dream about. This sense of longing is further expressed when he switches to his head voice. The tonal shift grabs the listener's attention because it sounds like a strained beg or cries for freedom. Slave hymns and works songs are the foundation of blues, so we have to see the similarities between the two singing styles.

Many Delta blues artists arguably built up the genre to what it was, and on an integral hand in that building was Charlie Patton. He was a generation before the renowned Robert Johnson and was involved in music at a very young age. Patton was taught guitar by a white Delta blues artist named Sam Chatmon of the Mississippi Sheiks. Though Patton was an excellent guitar player, his voice is what caught everyone's attention. Most who interacted with Patton reported him as “frail, [and] of small stature” (48 Gioia), but he had a voice that was referred to as “nasty” by Sam Chatmon, in the best way possible. The grit, deepness, and rasp of Patton's voice were raw and could portray the most real and most unfiltered emotion. Listeners can hear his style of singing especially well in the song High Water Everywhere Pt. 1. His words can be a bit hard to disprove (an aspect of his singing style, which many admired), but the lyrics' political statement is not hard to miss. This song was a response to the deadly outcome that followed the 1927 Mississippi flood which disproportionately killed and displaced people of color. The natural disaster highlights the racial discrepancies of the time, with 100,000 people drowning and 90% of them being people of color (Charlie Patton lecture). This flood was not centralized in one area but spread everywhere through the Mississippi delta. When Patton sings,

Oh, Lordy, women and grown men drown

Oh, women and children sinkin' down

Lord, have mercy

I couldn't see nobody's home and wasn't no one to be found

No one was able to escape. People of color were at mercy to the elements and were not receiving government aid or assistance to help them in such a detrimental disaster. This song was one of Patton’s more political songs, but its central theme of Black Americans being jeopardized by their country is a theme that resonates to this day in music. His voice captures the pain and worries that people felt during the flood, but he also embodies the feeling that all African American people have been running. Running from slavery, running from unjust laws, and at that time, running from water. We see this idea of being on the run especially prominent in rap music. For example in J Cole’s song Apparently, he opens with hollers and lyrics that are blunter than Pattons:

I keep my head high

I got my wings to carry me

I don't know freedom

I want my dreams to rescue me

J Cole embodies the idea of running with the image of wings and also clearly expresses to his listeners that he has endured struggle and hard work only because of what he aspires for. Both of these artists, nearly a century apart, speak of the same core issues. There is a struggle in Black America, and there will continue to be if people don't take action to fight against unjust laws and policies. 

Huddie Leadbetter (commonly referred to as Leadbelly) was an artist who mineralized and took advantage of the entertainment of white Americans' interest in the African American experience. But this label of a minstrel should not discredit Leadbelly's success as a Blues and Folk artist. By working with the Lomaxes, who were on the search for capturing America's musical heritage, they found Leadbelly as the man to “awaken America to Its folk roots' ' (Feline 609). What separates Leadbelly from many other Delta blues artists is the style in which he sings. Many of the songs recorded and archived by the Lomaxes follow a different style than conventional blues music. For example, Leadbelly’s song, Where did you Sleep Last Night has a slight rhythmic difference. His words follow the AAB pattern but there is an element of folk style storytelling when he sings, 

Her husbands was a hard working man

Just about a mile from here

His head was found in a driving wheel

But his body never was found

Though this is not a radical shift from the lyrical pattern of blues, it makes Leadbelly’s work stands out as something a bit different than Charlie Patton or Ma Rainey. The lack of the AAB pattern for the stanza gives the song a haunting feeling because it breaks the otherwise pretty set and stone rhythm. It also should be mentioned that many of his works, including Where, Did You Sleep Last Night, were songs not written by him. They were either work songs or folk songs he learned in prison or as a child. This oral history that Leadbelly was the gatekeeper of makes him so critical to music history as a whole. Even though Leadbelly was characterized as a criminal by the Lomaxes to sell his name, “most people who met him commented on his gentleness' ' (Feline 610). The juxtaposing personalities of a violent and deadly criminal to a soft-spoken man is sadly not an uncommon stereotyping of African American men. Stereotyping of Black men has created an ingrained fear of people of color in the white population. Black Men historically have been portrayed as dangerously violent criminals, but in reality, they are loving brothers, fathers, and sons. Leadbelly was a continuation of the minstrel show because the Lomaxes made a profit off of his false racist persona. Leadbelly was an asset to the Lomaxes, and he lost freedom every day he could not control his finances. A modern example of conforming to stereotyping for profits is in hip-hop/rap culture. Some rappers play up violent personas to capture the attention of their white audience. Black artists continue to fill the role of an entertainer even if it goes against their moral code because a paycheck and attention can be a blinding payment.

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