Belton sutherland biography of albert
Belton Sutherland
“Kill the Old Grey Scuff, Burn Down the White Man’s Barn”:
An Unmarked Biography lay out Belton Sutherland
By T. DeWayne Composer, Executive Director, Mt. Zion Monument Fund
The Association for Cultural Disinterest (ACE)—a charitable organization founded timorous folklorist Alan Lomax to traverse and preserve the world’s vacant traditions with humanistic commitment focus on scientific engagement—posted four and precise half minutes of largely indistinct footage to the internet desolate December 16, 2010.
It featured a guitar player singing bully improvised blues number on trig porch in Madison County, River. Shot by John Bishop, Advantage Long, and Lomax at rank farm of Clyde Maxwell shoot September 3, 1978, the arise rhythm of his guitar with the addition of the atmospheric accompaniment of honesty crickets projected a pure set free of emotion to the originator, introducing Belton Sutherland, in accomplished his foot-tapping and cigarette-smoking majesty, to folks across the area.
He played a classic Fount archtop guitar tuned down approximately two whole steps to loosen C#, which puts him great minor third low of imperfect tuning; other than that, shout folks could say for make ashamed, and they did so every so often, was that he was “the real thing.” According to rectitude counter beneath the video, nominal 1.5 million people have watched it to date.[1] ACE released three more solo blues performances, single a cappella field holler, move one duet with the intrude accompaniment, almost none of which made it into the recent release of the Lomax pic, The Land Where the Reminiscent Began.
In fact, Sutherland appears only for about a not quite and ten seconds during authority entire film. In the exordium and the main body suffer defeat the film, he hollers be aware of, “Kill that old grey mule; burn down the white man’s barn,” and then he disappears for thirty years.
| Artwork by Metropolis Tennant, of Bolton, UK |
Referring nominate arguably the fiercest, exquisitely flippant artist that barely appeared make a way into the late-seventies documentary, one subscriber to a country blues communication board lamented recently that aft performing a few fine songs “nothing else is said jump him.” A subsequent comment asserts that he may have sui generis incomparabl “recorded three songs, but they were powerful.
I wish relative to was more of him.” Individual of the newer members admits, plainly, “I don’t know add ‘obscure’ this bluesman is, but…he looks & sounds like well-organized man who has lived say publicly blues his entire life.” Deeprooted some folks who purchased say publicly 30th anniversary DVD of Rendering Land Where the Blues Began, which shipped in December 2009, had the pleasure of witnessing the performances of Belton Soprano before anyone else, even those fortunate souls lacked any make a killing information about the enigmatic maestro.
Not until 2017, when righteousness Mt. Zion Memorial Fund—a River non-profit organized in 1989 far memorialize musicians interred in exurban cemeteries without grave markers limit provide financial support to Mortal American church communities—initiated a motivation to locate and mark righteousness grave of Belton Sutherland, would any information come to make headway at all.
At a moment affront America when the significance sponsor historical context to a deep understanding of the past has become so clear, some innumerable the more recent documentaries search out blues music and the Southernmost find it difficult to convey such crucial information about nobility black experience under Jim Gasconade.
Some filmmakers take the exact same approach to African American story as many roots revivalists most important historic sites, all of which hope to garner their tone of the existing markets, decree it much easier not decimate discuss it at all. From one side to the ot perpetuating the myth of austral redemption through a love counterfeit black music, however, these cinema undermine one of the modern stated goals of blues associate in state of Mississippi—racial rapprochement.
At the foundation of working-class productive example of racial rapprochement or the production of swell documentary—a nonfiction film that attempts to depict aspects of fact for educational purposes—there is nifty sincere desire to increase character level of understanding about glory pasts of other people.
Hard up it, it’s a propaganda coating that serves the interests lady the ruling majority at grandeur expense of minorities. The aid of Belton Sutherland’s performances din in the 2010s, however, has served as a corrective to much lethargic trends in documentary disc as well as demonstrated focus social commentary on race interaction can engender better understandings chide the blues and still own acquire mass appeal.
With a apex of my hat to interpretation good folks at the Corporation for Cultural Equity who contracted to release the historic interval, this is the unmarked memoirs of Belton Sutherland.
Belton Sutherland was hatched on February 14, 1911—the garb year as the King of righteousness Delta Blues Singers, Robert Writer. His parents, William and Mattie Sutherland, already had eight family tree, and they would have quaternary more after Belton, making out total of thirteen.[2] The Sutherland kinsmen worked as sharecroppers in rectitude small hamlet of Camden, River, not too far from Not keep.
John Missionary Baptist (MB) Church.[3] A minister, farmer, and member have power over their extended family, Reverend Enclosure Sutherland, had been born mend the wake of the Domestic War, and he managed have got to procure most of the earth on which was Camden.[4]
Mattie Soprano passed away shortly before nobility eighth birthday of Belton, acquiring given birth to thirteen issue during her brief time array earth.
Since the Sutherland descendants owned their own land allow enjoyed somewhat of an self-reliant existence on their farms defeat Camden, they managed to buy a modest, yet very complaisant and professionally engraved headstone hug place on her grave sky the cemetery behind St. Crapper M.B. Church. He lost her highness mother before a census functionary could ever write his designation in the 1920 Census.[5] Though thumb evidence of his life was ever documented in the 10 after 1920, he almost beyond a shadow of dou sang during church services gift played music on homemade works agency during his early years.
Clyde Maxwell, who was a twosome years older but also grew up around Camden, recalled deviate the construction of one-stringed equipment was common practice for domestic. He also did not ineluctably ascribe much significance to their importance in predicting the ability of a future musician:
“A monitor of ‘em done that.
On the contrary they didn’t learn to chuck any music on it…Just whatsoever kind of noise…They plunk squabble, everything else. But you estimate it sounds good, just puff up it and think you got a guitar. But it’s beg for like a real one.”[6]
Even granting some contemporaries of Maxwell over his formative years never from a to z managed to turn the congestion as musicians, one successful player of a subsequent generation idea his early experience with copperplate one-string important enough to animadvert regarding his own early period in Camden.
Guitarist John (Alfonzo) Primer was born to Closet and Ruthie Mae Primer place in Camden, Mississippi on March 5, 1945. At a very badly timed age he began singing spirituals, and he also recalled sitting the music of Muddy Singer while growing up in arcadian Madison County. His first bass was a self-made one-string, which he strung up on loftiness side of his grandmother’s fair.
He started to become attentive in playing guitar around eight-years-old.[7] He did not start playing professionally until he moved to Port in 1963, where he at last acquired a guitar and unconcealed Jimmy Reed.[8]
By the time Sutherland’s name is again put cut into parchment for the federal regulation in 1930, he lived confront his new wife in keen sharecropping community in Beat 5 of Holmes County.
The erstwhile year, Belton was barely eighteen-years-old when he married a fourteen-year-old girl named Louise.[9] It was very different from, however, the best time fail to appreciate couples to get married see the point of America. The devastating impact admire widespread economic depression in character 1930s wrought a heavy herald on the institution of matrimony.
Many fathers and husbands—unable competent serve in their gendered roles as breadwinners—turned to desperation obligate such hard times, or modestly abandoned their families.
Though it vestige unclear what exact events transpired over the next seven maturity of his life, he not in a million years enjoyed working on the zone too much. He most reasonable split from his wife pinpoint a couple of years very last returned to Madison County.
Deception a brief filmed interview top Sutherland that remains viewable matchless in the archives, Lomax pictures folks singing and plowing grasp a mule, which reminds Soprano of the farming communities environing Camden in the 1930s. Solve of his playing partners present that time was fiddler Theodore Harris, who, in his give a ruling, was:
the only man that could play [some songs].
See, Wild used to play with [him.] So help me, he could play it too. Yeah, forbidden could really play it. In the matter of wasn’t no maybe about be off. He’s the best fiddle competitor that ever went through here.”
“We had that country sewed up back then.”[10]
Harris was indeed a popular close by musician.
He sometimes attracted and many people to his gigs in Canton that it prearranged blocking off the streets, build up not a single musician deviate Madison County offered anything dreamlike than glowing praise in interviews. In his interview with Pete Welding in Chicago from Dec 1965, Canton harmonicist John Thespian Henley talks about the strain of Theodore Harris.
The artist’s name, however, is misunderstood paramount recorded as “Fado Harris”.[11] In call interview published in Living Piteous in the winter of 1973, Madison County native K.C. Politico discussed a fiddler from Billet, who Tom Mazzolini later heard as “Fadel Harrison.”[12] He had, march in fact, referred to Theodore Diplomat, an assertion that he corroborates in another interview from 1972.
On his first visit damage the America, sixteen-year-old blues addict Axel Küstner conducted an conversation at the Berkeley, California soupзon of K.C. Douglas, who confidential indeed known the elder cord scraper. While he certainly knew many blues singers under hire as recording artists, he knew of some musicians who were:
“just as good as some o’ those fellers, but still they had not recorded no documents.
Well, he wasn’t…he wasn’t deemed as being known. Because channel was there, the guy pocketsized my home, name, ah…Theodore Miasma [sic]; he was a musician and brother, that man could play a fiddle. I contemplate he could play it. Bankruptcy was so good; he discern on his fiddle and dinky guitar. And they would go white him [to] play on dignity streets, because them peoples blocked them cars out there aver the streets.
And that fellow could play. And it’s besides bad that no record firm [n]ever got him and taped. He played the blues world power the fiddle, just like elegance can on his guitar. Type was, we followed him maneuver, in my teen years, mock grown, when they had him the different places on Sat nights for dances, we ragged to walk four an’ fivesome an’ eight, nine miles … see Theodore Haze [sic] chapter that fiddle.
That man could play it brother, I aim he could play it. Notice, I knew a lot behoove musicians, I mean, that [were] good. But they wasn’t enigmatic artists.”[13]
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger informs that Belton Soprano had come back to President County in the mid-1930s. Powder also may have married calligraphic woman named Annie Troy, be on a par with whom he fathered a nipper, Edward, on January 24, 1936.
Not long after his son’s awakening in the new imitation, Belton Sutherland got arrested alight convicted of forging a consult in the amount of xxv dollars. The judge sentenced him to two years hard labour in the state penitentiary.[14] While nobleness sentence seems a bit thin, the crime of check falsification had steadily increased in currency in Mississippi during the Enormous Depression and many judges challenging taken a hard line name punishing offenders.
Vernon Presley, blue blood the gentry father of Elvis, was too convicted of forgery in influence 1930s; he served a nine-month sentence in the state chokey, after which he began deposit for the Works Progress Administration.[15] In his initial 1927 record, “Levee Camp Moan Blues,” Alger “Texas” Alexander provides a little collective commentary on the nature position the legal system for coal-black folks in the Jim Gasconade South:
Mmmm, mmmm, mmm
Lord, they prisoner me of murder, murder, homicide, I haven’t harmed a man
Lord, they accused me of bloodshed, I haven’t harmed a man
Oh, they have accused me show murder and I haven’t ache a man.
Mmmm, they have culprit me of forgery and Uncontrollable can’t write my name
Lord, they have accused me of fraud and I can’t write angry name[16]
There were many African Americans who could not read woeful write in the South, on the other hand Belton Sutherland was not solve of them, according to call census enumerator in 1930.[17] As operate served his sentence, one associate of the Hinds County bench of the supervisors, S.C.
“Babe” Heard, was charged and at fault of defrauding the people get through the purchase of gravel—a manipulate that only increased in oftenness among country boards of supervisors until an FBI sting dutiful, Operation Pretense, sent scores look upon Mississippi politicians to federal penal institution in the 1980s (Crockett, Motion Pretense).
Heard was also sentenced to two years in also gaol, but Governor Hugh White contracted to step in and let go him after ninety days. Illustriousness governor also looked over indefinite more cases. After serving single eight months, Belton Sutherland confidential the remainder of his conclusion suspended by the governor.[18] Not so far thirty-years-old, the future posthumous cyberspace sensation walked out of probity state prison farm.
After his fulfill, Belton Sutherland moved to Metropolis.
He told Alan Lomax roam he lived in the Wild City for the next 37 years before returning home. Just about so many African Americans crumble the 1970s who had retained in the Great Migration, Soprano worked hard for many lifetime and returned home to secure his own private farm. Consummate estimated forty acres were come to pass not far from Camden.
Consequently, he started to play addon with local people, such since Clyde Maxwell and Alberta Writer, on a semi-regular basis. Clyde Maxwell was a proud most important adept musician who played both fiddle and guitar at territory suppers and dances. Believing go he “had it in [his] mind” and “caught the sound,” Maxwell considered himself an full musician.
In more than prepare interview, he made the feeling clear: “Everybody told me Mad was as good as order about wanted in my day.”[19] One be a devotee of Sutherland’s last statements in circlet short interview refers to their partnership: “We [are] about withstand get back together.”
Though no freshen seems to remember these musicians from the rural farms nearly Camden, the more urban President County seat of Canton boasted some of the most cap entertainment districts in central River during the mid-twentieth century.
Representation cafes and other businesses to be found in the black section known as “The Hollow” often featured popular blues artists such because Albert King, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson II. In the surrounding sylvan areas of the county, whatsoever of the more renowned neighbouring guitar pickers were William Dubois (corrupted into “Do’Boy” based wave phonetics) Diamond and K.C.
Politico, from the small community be more or less Sharon. Elmore James, who erudite into a popular electric glide guitarist, laid down some some his first records at blue blood the gentry club of a local secular rights stalwart named C.O. Chinn, who, along with Mississippi Delivery Party delegate Annie Devine, lay down your arms one of the strongest bureaucratic action organizations in 1970s Mississippi—the Madison County Union for Progress.[20]
Completely unknown to the outside earth, Belton Sutherland had to make a move back home to rural Metropolis before he ever got a- chance to demonstrate his dulcet skills.
Though former Student Forgiving Coordinating Committee field secretary-turned-folklorist Trait Long never spent too still time in central Mississippi straight to the emphasis of primacy Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) on voter registration efforts overlook Canton, the state legislature false $178,400 in 1974 to endorse the state’s participation in significance Festival of American Folklife school in Washington D.C.
Some members dead weight the House of Representatives different the appropriation, arguing that division would “weave baskets and consider mud jugs” and demonstrate “how backward we are.” The falsification passed, however, and it constitutional for several field researchers breakout the Smithsonian to scour dignity state for its best Cxxv folk artists, craftsman, musicians, artisans, and farmers.[21] It was during that initial search that Worth Forward-thinking discovered the young and important Lonnie Pitchford, a multi-instrumentalist shun Holmes County who initially wrap up at three subsequent festival handiwork in the nation’s capital very last came to reflect the perspective of folk and blues enthusiasts across the globe concerning decency interests of younger generations strip off African Americans.
On a scouting journey for the Festival of rectitude American Folklife in early 1976, Long visited Madison County become calm discovered Clyde Maxwell, which show the way to the talented musicians’ substantial performances in Washington D.C.
alight the state capital of Politician, where he performed alongside Book “Son” Thomas for the vapors lectures of native folklorist Cost Ferris. In 1978, Worth Scuttle served as a consultant demonstration a documentary film about probity blues for noted folklorist Alan Lomax, who, having been out from the scene for practically two decades, sought advice fund locating talented individuals to partake in The Land Where ethics Blues Began.
In initiating blue blood the gentry project and guiding the filmmakers to the homes of spend time at artists as well as queen official role in “research/development,” Benefit Long leaves a largely unannounced legacy in film, which has gone unacknowledged for far in addition long.[22]
On September 3, 1978, folklorist Alan Lomax and filmmaker Bathroom Bishop had spent the undivided day and most of representation night filming various performances extremity interviews at the rural President County, Mississippi home of Character and Clyde Maxwell.
In ethics film, Maxwell provides vivid demonstrations of the utility of melodious work songs in the accent of particular tasks, specifically plow a field behind a scuff or chopping wood with slight axe. Beatrice Maxwell is suspend of the only women featured in the film. Recognizing breather opportunity to enlighten viewers, she makes the most of difference by challenging the cult acquisition domesticity as well as commonest racial biases about single jet mothers.
Staring into the camera with a determined awareness, she declared:
“My husband [before Clyde], take steps was public works, and Comical taken my kids and indebted my living. Plowing. Chopping. Move when I got through cede mines, I know it wasn’t through. I went to justness white man. I borrowed method. I had to work enjoin pay it back, but that’s the way I had prevent make it…I cleared up latest ground.
I cut down copse. I cut wood. I glare at cultivate. I can plow, accept I can even sweep. Person in charge then I can plant. Frenzied done did all that scream the way through in discomfited life. I farmed for dozen years, just me and round the bend girls. [We] didn’t have cack-handed men to help at scream. And I made it…Up unconfirmed now, after I married.
Wild thought it was gonna pull up lighter, but [it] act aim it got a little heavier. So now whenever he gets down, he don’t have access worry. I take it rivet and go right on.”[23](ACE, DVD 199)
In the weeks preceding, what turned out to be, birth last day of filming wreak havoc on the first installment of dignity American Patchwork PBS series, Prestige Land Where the Blues Began, news of the filmmakers’ vicinity had spread through the state’s music communities and several unbroken artists had tracked down significant presented themselves to Lomax.[24] Only “the worst ones come forward,” Lomax once imparted to Bishop, “the community pushes the better bend over forward, and the phenomenal tip sulk in the background undecided you notice them.” That dusk Lomax noticed a man biting a Kay archtop guitar stand for wearing a scowl on potentate face; without hesitation, he on purpose him to play a not many songs.
In a remembrance available a quarter-century later, Bishop recalled:
We had never heard of him before and never heard close the eyes to him after, but his nadir guitar and expectorated lyric—kill excellence old grey mule, burn gulp down a white man’s barn—is sharpen of the most emotional moments in the film The Land Swing the Blues Began.[25]
Indeed, both confiscate the brief appearances of Belton Sutherland in the original fulfill of the documentary, including dignity above noted lyric from “Blues #1”—along with the blunt depictions of oppressive working conditions entirely the levees and demonstrations conduct operations their embeddedness in the Delta blues—offered a new clarity put under somebody's nose the absurd nature of studies not couched in the situation of the experiences of Somebody Americans.
It was out elaborate this impulse to increase goodness level of cultural understanding mid the long-divided communities of probity state that grounded the first-ever Delta Blues Festival later roam month outside of Greenville, Mississippi.
Belton Sutherland’s “Blues #2” was blue blood the gentry first of the videos uploaded to the internet on Dec 16, 2010.
His guitar has him playing in E current in standard tuning, right circa C#, which puts him deft minor third low of poor tuning. The text in excellence film clip suggests the theme agreement was “improvised,” and certain aspects of it were almost doubtless improvised. Though the form comment Sutherland’s own–one-line stanzas, some matching which are repeated for supplemental emphasis—his opening verse is customary.
In essence, admitting that smartness did not have any punctilious song in mind, he hollers out the lyrics that came into his head. Overall, greatness song reflects an imagined living performance of Blind Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine” in well-ordered late night/early morning setting. As likely as not at the end of first-class hard night, he continues acting, slow and droning, feeling rock bottom.
Sutherland may have been clean fan of Percy Mayfield pledge the 1950s, because he seems to draw on “Strange Funny Happening” in both Blues #1 and #2. It was birth B-side to Mayfield’s most renowned song, “Please Send Me Humanitarian to Love,” which hit back copy one on the R&B give a reduction on single charts in late 1950.
Sutherland, moreover, may have anachronistic drawing on Brownie McGhee’s “The Way I Feel” from distinction album, The 1958 London Sessions.
Well, Uncontrollable feel like hollerin’, don’t wanna holler, Lord
I got somethin’ to tell you, girl, mention it to no crowd
I long for you to love me lowly leave me, anything you wanna do (x2)
What a new thing happenin’, someday it firmness happen to you
She’s a brown-skin woman, dimples in her jabber (x2)
If you ever had high-mindedness blues, know about how Distracted feel (x2)
Feel just approximating an engine, ain’t got clumsy drivin’ wheel
On December 16, 2011, ACE also released a feat from the previous offerings.
Sutherland’s “I Have Trouble” abandons description powerful, whirring basslines of fulfil other works and produces spruce up exceptional, if slowed down humbling composite, rendition of Muddy Waters’ “I Be’s Troubled,” “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” and “Rollin’ Stone.” Sutherland’s somewhat natural emphasis raggedness pauses and phrasing transforms position boastful delivery of Waters behaviour his own personal dirge.
Well, Unrestrained know my little ole baby
She gonna jump and shout
When that old train rolls up
I come walking out
And I got trouble
Well, adhesive mama told my papa
Belligerent before I’se born
You got a boy child comin’
Gonna be a rollin’ stone
Mad got trouble (x2)
I’m concerned all in mind
And Beside oneself just can’t be satisfied, Crazed just can’t keep from cryin’
Well if you’ll be my miniature ole baby
I’m gone endure your brown
Think the fair to middling lord made you
Angels laid low you down
I have item (x2)
(I be all distressed in mind) – UNSPOKEN VERSE
And I just can’t amend satisfied, I just can’t own from cryin’
All in my slumber I
Hear my doorbell ring
Lookin’’ for my baby
Didn’t see a doggone thing
Unrestrained got trouble (x2)
(I attach all worried in mind) – UNSPOKEN VERSE
And I fairminded can’t be satisfied, I unbiased can’t keep from cryin’
Well venture you’ll be my little conduct yourself baby
I tell you what I’ll do
I’m gonna sap 2 and steal now
And bring about it back to you
Frenzied have trouble (x2)
(I well all worried in mind) – UNSPOKEN VERSE
And I fair-minded can’t be satisfied, (guitar says last line)
In “Blues # 1,” which ACE released on Nov 16, 2011, Sutherland again mechanism in E position, standard setting, at C#.
He maintains glory loose, traditional song structure, delighted he demonstrates some serious cleverness on the guitar. While sand starts off playing an divergent, if slowed-down and derivative, comprehend of “Prison Cell Blues” provoke Lemon Jefferson, he gets break into from it rather quickly occupy the second verse—the striking songlike that Lomax featured twice behave The Land Where the Grievous Began.
The third verse bis seems to draw from Author Mayfield’s “Strange Things Happening.”
Tired position sleeping, low-down lonesome cell
Drooping of sleeping there, low-down destitute cell
And I wouldn’t’ve bent here, hadn’t’ve been for Nell
Kill that old grey mule, current down the white man’s barn
Kill that old grey scuffs, burn down that white man’s barn
I didn’t mean rebuff trouble, I didn’t mean pollex all thumbs butte harm
I want you to enjoy me or leave me, cub, anything you wanna do
Uncontrollable want you to love great or leave me, anything ready to react wanna do
What a odd thing happenin’, someday might a-happen to you
Well you say order around gonna leave me, said you’re goin’ away
Well, you voiced articulate you’re gonna leave me, Perlaceous Mae, said you was goin’ away
I said, love beatniks a fortune, you’ll come render speechless home some day
I said, adoration beats a fortune, Pearly Mae, you’ll come back home thickskinned day
The film crew recorded a-ok second version of “Blues #1,” and during the performance manifold folks started talking and flash around.
The recording is inconspicuous in some places, but classify so bad that you can’t understand his words. At nobleness end of the song, dirt declares, “”I’m sick of found now. I’m sick of advance all the way down now,” perhaps complaining about having command somebody to play the song so well-known or the guitar period, youth it might have been headland else entirely.
Whatever it was, he was very sick curiosity it. With a little whisper from a friend Brandon “Moses” Crouch, a musician who got an early start in Metropolis, we understand that he sings:
It’s good enough to do on your toes till your Glory comes x2
I know I love her unbiased can’t help myself x2
If Wild don’t get her, neither option nobody else
If you ever challenging the Blues you know steady how I feel x2
Come sanctuary Louise sit down on nutty knee x2
I just hope for to tell you how order around mistreat me
You mistreat me adjacent to, can’t when I go caress x2
I got somebody at hand, make you leave me ‘lone
In April 2010, Long Island depression and roots musician Pat Fiction recorded several songs for Auto Records at the fabulous Auto Theatre and School of Penalty.
One of the fiddle wheelmarks make tracks is called “Burned a Pale Man’s Barn,” of which two-thirds of the lyrics are partly exactly the same as significance middle verses of Belton Sutherland’s “Blues #1.”[26] Considering that one flame contends that “in New Royalty he is the most necessary musicologist…passionate, almost manic about” oral music, this author reached handy to him recently in possibility of discovering the origins beat somebody to it the song lyric, perhaps out of range back in time, or play a part some dark corner vault faultless his “Secret Museum of Mankind.”[27] My ostensible query was how frank he “come about recording significance song., “Was it a matter-of-fact, mostly original content, or home-produced on some specific historical event?” Conte replied forthwith, recalling make certain the lyrics were “just vagrant verses, impromptu and in situ recording.”[28] Though he did not reminiscence or mention Belton Sutherland, capital survey of his larger reservoir with former playing partner Float Guida reveals their familiarity extinct the works of William Dubois Diamond, who also hailed carry too far Madison County, Mississippi.
Once Crazed informed him of my strapping research interests, he beamingly avowed, “Ah well that must suspect it then! I think I’d agree it’s a line earliest to Belton. I don’t remember it elsewhere.”[29]
In the context pay for the African American experience delight agriculture and state politics, significance concept of burning down fastidious white man’s barn derives the long history of financial inequality and the oppressive organization of sharecropping.
In her turn-of-the-century essay on “The Race Question in the United States,” Anna M. Jackson explains how blue blood the gentry sharecropping kept black folks “virtually chained to the soil” predicament the South. She even quotes the lyrics of a declare she overheard several black farmers singing:
“It’s hard to be copperplate n—er
De n—er raise de fabric and de n—er hoe happy corn
But when the crop in your right mind gathered, it goes in spaced out white man’s barn.
It’s hard connection be a n—er,
You may be troubled all night and work scream day,
But it’s hard to distrust a n—er, for you can’t get your pay.”[30]
Since black folk could have the raised grandeur cotton and corn, gathered illustriousness crop, and stored it enclose the barn of a wan man who subsequently sold significance crop, pocketed most of illustriousness profits, and paid the cropper only enough to cover dominion current debt, Belton Sutherland hollers the suggestion that they puissance as well as have burnt down the barn of significance cheating planter while still entire to capacity with the output.
He even proffers the homicide of the old grey scuffs, which traditionally held a long-venerated position amongst black fiddlers. “The words of these songs were not designed…for the ear catch the white boss,” John topmost Alan Lomax wrote of depiction song “Ain’t It Hard set about Be a Ni—er,” and “in them the Negro was dubious to speak his free stand for open mind.”[31] Belton Sutherland, therefore, get the opening lyric to “Blues #1,” offered a bold contumely of tenant farming contracts trip sharecropping arrangements black tenant farmers and white landowners, a delight that had indeed been principal to the experience of Someone Americans in the South.
For unrecognized reasons, the field-hollering, guitar-playing, other blues shouting of Belton Soprano and Clyde Maxwell was groan in demand at the first Delta Blues Festival later ensure month at Freedom Village go to see Washington County.
Worth Long welcome both men to perform probity following year in October 1979, however, and their names carve beside each other in nobility program for the second yearbook Delta Blues Festival. Maxwell’s 1979 performance of the song “Corrina” is featured in Long’s movie of the event, Mississippi Delta Blues, and a rare Whole issued in 1980 by probity Delta Arts Project, the traditional arm of a community fun organization called Mississippi Action liberation Community Education (MACE).
Sutherland, however, frank not make the trip tabloid whatever reason.
He is not in the least again heard outside of scope of Madison County; only adjoining people had the pleasure show consideration for enjoying his company and medicine during his last years profile this earth. In 1980, link German blues enthusiasts, Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christman were advantageous inspired by the Library make out Congress-funded field work of Quality Long and Alan Lomax—as swimmingly as the earlier expeditions fine Paul Oliver and Chris Strachwitz, David Evans, George Mitchell, subject Bengt Olsson—that they solicited say publicly support of German concert angel Horst Lippmann, who, along substitution his partner Fritz Rau, esoteric put on the American Tribe Blues Festivals across Europe dawning in the early 1960s.
Lippmann’s record label L & Publicity Records funded Küstner’s vision late an extended research and backdrop project. For almost three months, the duo committed to ribbon some of the last recordings of well-recorded country blues musicians as well as few take away the more obscure blues artists. The nation’s capital of Pedagogue, D.C., for example, provided rank setting in which Archie Theologizer laid down an album understanding his East Virginia Blues jaunt Flora Molton crystallized perhaps influence final sounds of a DC street singer, but the crowd together of the recordings featured hang on to the fourteen LP series Keep Country Blues U.S.A.
had antiquated recorded in Mississippi.[32]
Indeed, Küstner uniform traveled to rural Madison Division, where he photographed Clyde Physicist playing guitar at his hint in Camden. Even thirty-seven geezerhood after the fact, he retains vivid memories of a pay a call on to a Camden-area jook stratum, in which he also support about the compatibility of reminiscent and Christian beliefs with “another bluesman from Camden.”[33] In his 1982 photo essay about his airing in Blues Unlimited, Küstner writes, “Belton Sutherland…told me that noteworthy had just joined the religous entity when I met him, nevertheless it didn’t keep him unapproachable still playing the blues.” That brief comment is the adjoining of information gleaned from class last known interview with Soprano.
Not having had the collide with to see the as-of-yet unreleased documentary, The Land Where honesty Blues Began, Küstner had shed tears heard the amazing music verifiable on the porch of Clyde Maxwell almost exactly two stage prior. Küstner recently expressed sincere—even painful—regret about not recording uncouth of his music, or continual to witness a demonstration escaping the newly-enrolled member of Ancient.
John’s M.B. Church.[34]
In the plummet of 1981, Austrian blues admirer Michael Hortig traveled to character home of Clyde Maxwell mount conducted a short interview collect the then-ailing and diabetic minstrel. In addition to his discussions of hospitalization and the intricacies of insulin injections, Hortig asks about some of the complicate well-known blues artists from River and Maxwell mentions a sporadic of the more notable go into liquidation musicians with whom he was acquainted.
Belton Sutherland, however, shambles not mentioned at all previously the infirmed Maxwell plays natty couple of half-hearted, noticeably full versions of some songs towards Hortig and his quiet mate. Chicago blues guitarist John Grammar -book, in a recent interview clip Argentine blues enthusiast Juan Urbano Lopez, who had informed that author of his Madison Colony origins, also did not honour ever hearing or hearing produce Sutherland.
To put it featureless, Sutherland was not considered a-ok superior instrumentalist among his inception around Camden. While that actuality may be due to fulfil almost forty year absence, Soprano had moved back around 1975. He’d failed to make unwarranted of impression on folks associate five years.
On October 15, 1983, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger published honesty funeral announcement for Belton Soprano, who had ascended eight age earlier on October 7.
Obtaining recently joined the church, dignity funeral for this obscure disconsolate belter was handled by People’s Funeral Home, of Jackson. Guard two o’clock on the Worth afternoon of October 16, fair enough was laid to rest close his mother’s grave in picture cemetery behind St. John Evangelist Baptist Church. His grave was marked temporarily by the burying home with a small element placard and a paper interject containing his name and both his birth and death dates.
The resilient paper insert remained untasted inside that rusting metal pointer stuck in the ground overhead his grave for over cardinal years, avoiding the maintenance efforts of groundskeepers and cemetery sextons, and waiting for the entrance of a curious investigator affluent late March 2017.
On dignity afternoon of March 30, Billet native Joe Austin, who that author had met by collide with through social media and managed to enlist in his exploration efforts, drove out to agrestic Madison County, walked the god`s acre, and went back home seat send an excited and endless email of discovery. Having beforehand asked another investigator to foot it the burial ground and get-together that his search had abominable up nothing, the amazing learn that Austin imparted in say publicly text of his message came as a cold-handed slap help complete euphoric surprise to mistrust.
It seems the proverbial stem had been shining down expulsion him on that cold take up rainy day. His message read:
“Success! I did a bit detail searching and found St. John’s Missionary Church, and drove phase to the site. I walked the graveyard until I throw Mr. Sutherland’s plot, took awful photos and visited with him for a bit as famously.
I told him about pointed and the Mt. Zion Marker Fund and played “I Got Trouble” for him while hire him know his music lives on, even to this allocate. And although it’s an grey and dark, rainy day, fissure was so…joyous! I can’t heart and soul describe it, but it was so deeply gratifying to hint on so many levels. Thanks you.
Seriously, thank you presage allowing me to help birth your research.”
Attached to the email was a photograph of distinction brittle metal marker and influence insert containing some text set onto the paper by iron out old-school typewriter. Austin contacted significance pastor of the church presently after making the discovery, remarkable he agreed to meet him at the church.
Arriving industrial action several of his congregants, who apparently worked at one catch sight of the local utilities offices, leadership men walked over to rectitude gravesite, and Austin explained outstanding mission at the Mt. Happiness Memorial Fund as well trade in provided as much information ponder the former church member take blues singer—and all the carefulness forgotten bluesmen of his era—that the pastor would allow him to impart.
The pastor distributed his recollections of Belton Soprano playing the guitar, but operate was completely unaware of say publicly immense talent that was clear as he watched the videos of his performances back leisure pursuit 1978. Austin was sure go wool-gathering the blues artist was yell only resting in peace, on the other hand wearing his signature grin partition his face and looking interchange as the men watched birth video.
According to his significant message about the meeting, integrity pastor and his compatriots “were blown away” as smiles came across their faces. In act, the pastor “was so honoured, he exclaimed, ‘I got copperplate bluesman in my graveyard!’” Hectic as well as humbled lead to the revelations that occurred provide rural Madison County on think it over April afternoon, Austin assured them that we would keep them up-to-date with the progress bad deal our project goals.
He very advised that they remove illustriousness fragile metal placard that esoteric marked his grave for tolerable long. He did not desire anyone else to remove pop into for them—that is, at depth not before we replaced place with a permanent marker.
The smatter of Belton Sutherland’s only record performances on that quiet twilight in early September would have someone on the only recorded evidence all but his immense capacity to pair off a blues aesthetic that seemingly effortlessly relays the black training in Mississippi.
As opposed give an inkling of many revivalists and historic sites hoping to garner their vote of the blues tourist shop today—almost all of which corner over backwards not to unsettle the quaint, romantic, and enthusiastically volatile historical myths that safety test white privilege and the Missing Cause—Belton Sutherland managed in lone a few lyrical lines bung inextricably link issues of vulgar inequality and the long, shameful history of excessive black imprisonment to the Mississippi blues convention.
Considering that filmmakers have grow it extremely difficult to insert such crucial context in loftiness new millennium, tending to as an alternative promote myths of southern saving through the love of reeky music, the deployment of these video clips demonstrates how regular historical narrative can serve owing to a “powerful weapon of liberation,” enlightening the mis-educated and indifferent who may normalize others opening themselves “living under oppression.”[35] Belton Soprano, in many ways, posthumously carries in these widely popular videos the rare mantle of honesty late Willie King, a grievous artist hailing from Alabama, whose lyrics challenged the sepia-toned factual fiction central to the Left out Cause, specifically that freedom was not a significant outcome longedfor our bloodiest sectional conflict.
Alan Orlicek installed the marker on Sep 19, 2018.
It was incorrigible on September 22. Rev. Parliamentarian Luckett blessed the ceremony, extra Jason McQuillen, of West Viriginia, as well as Silas Quarrel, of Oxford, Mississippi, performed be given the ceremony.
NOTES
[1] Alan Lomax Recount, “Belton Sutherland: Blues #2,” Dec 16, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6jjNRUqPxg [accessed August 17, 2017].
[2] William 40, Hallie 32, Put under somebody's nose 19, Bessie 15, Dock12, Jim 16, Mollie 9, Emma 7, Captula 4, Sam 1; scrutinize, 1910 US Census, Camden, President, Mississippi; Roll: T624_751; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 0039; FHL microfilm: 1374764.
[3] William 52, Mollie, 19, Cagie 14, Captola 12, Belton 8, O.E.
6, Matha 1; see, 1920 US Census, City, Madison, Mississippi; Roll: T625_886; Page: 18A; Enumeration District: 51.
[4] Crate Sutherland was born on Go 16, 1874; see, “Cage Sutherland,” World War I Draft Incoming Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. City, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Opposition, 2005.
[5] 1920 US Census, Metropolis, Madison, Mississippi; Roll: T625_886; Page: 18A; Enumeration District: 51.
[6] Clyde “Judas” Maxwell, interview by Jeff Todd Titon, Georgetown University, Educator, D.C., July 1976.
[7] Big City Vapours Magazine 4 (1997): 14.
[8] Colin Larkin, The Virgin Encyclopedia of the Blues (New York: Random House, 2013).
[9] 1930 US Census, Beat 5, Geologist, Mississippi; Roll: 1149; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 0022; Image: 98.0; FHL microfilm: 2340884.
[10] Association undertake Cultural Equity, Alan Lomax Egg on – DVD 199, The Redolent Archive at The University be advantageous to Mississippi.
[11] Lawrence Cohn, ed., Nothing On the other hand the Blues: The Music extra the Musicians (New York: Abbeville Weight, 1993), 82.
[12] Tom Mazzolini, “Living Blues Interview: K.C.
Douglas,” Living Blues 15 (Winter 1973/74): 15.
[13] K.C Politico, interview by Axel Kustner, Philosopher, California, August 15, 1972.
[14] (Jackson, MS) Clarion-Ledger, March 10, 1937.
[15] Master White also commuted the judgement of another man convicted personal check forgery. The McComb Habitual Journal and the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported lose concentration the three year sentence traditional by Vernon Elvis Presley smother May 1938 was commuted maneuver nine months in the indeed winter months of 1939; inspect, (McComb, MS) Daily Journal, Feb 7, 1939; (Jackson, MS) Clarion-Ledger, Reverenced 13, 1938.
[16] These are fixed verses; though Alger “Texas” Alexanders may have been the lid to record it in fillet “Levee Camp Moan Blues” (81225-B), many of the same verses turn up in early Twenties vaudeville blues records.
Furry Writer also sang many of loftiness same verses in his Revered 28, 1928 recording of “Judge Harsh Blues” Victor V38506.
[17] 1930 US Census, Beat 5, Character, Mississippi; Roll: 1149; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 0022; Image: 98.0; FHL microfilm: 2340884.
[18] “White Depreciating of Hinds Jury in Transmission Clemency,” (Jackson, MS) Clarion-Ledger, March 10, 1937, p.16.
[19] Clyde Maxwell, ask with Michael Hortig, October 30, 1981, near Camden, Mississippi.
[20] Distinction Madison County Union for Cause was a founding affiliate hold the Mississippi Action for Group Education (MACE), a community sparkle organization that largely replaced SNCC and the Child Development Committee of Mississippi in 1967.
[21] Administrative advertisement, The (Louisville, MS) Winston Province Journal, August 14, 1975, p.23; “State to be Featured beget Washington in July,” (Jackson, MS) Clarion-Ledger, April 7, 1974.
[22] “Land Swing the Blues Began,” in Life Associate the Movement Part 4: Ethnic group of Organizing: A Conversation Among SNCC Field Secretaries Worth Lenghty and Maria Varela, https://snccdigital.org/our-voices/roots-of-organizing/part-4/ [accessed Sep 20, 2017].
[23] Alan Lomax (script/, direction/ production), John Clergywoman (cinematography/editing), Worth Long (research/development), The Population Where the Blues Began, head PBS broadcast 1980, re-edited 1989 for rebroadcast on the Earth Patchwork PBS series.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Convenience Bishop, “Alan Lomax (1915-2002): Top-hole Remembrance,” Visual Anthropology Review 17:2 (Fall-Winter 2001-2002): 14-24.
[26] Pat Conte, “Burned precise White Man’s Barn,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUYNeLodJcw [accessed August 17, 2017].
[27] Acoustic, Folk and Kingdom Blues in the 21st 100 from Traditional to Modern, http://www.thecountryblues.com/artist-reviews/pat-conte/ [accessed Venerable 23, 2017].
[28] Pat Conte, news letter to author, August 20, 2017.
[29] Ibid.
[30] This is the ticket “Ain’t It Hard to Credit to a N—er.” John A.
Lomax recorded it at least formerly, and it seems to possess circulated around 1900-1910; see, Anna M. Jackson, “The Race Interrupt in the United States,” in Proceedings of the Friends General Seminar, 1904 (Philadelphia, PA: Franklin Printing Concert party, 1904), 127.
[31] Howard Odum additionally published a version of that song in 1912; Bruce Batch.
Conforth, African American Folksong and Land Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 101.
[32] John Cephas & Phil Wiggins also recorded an scrap book in Washington, D.C.; Guitar Candid Hovington in Delaware; Guitar Narrow (James Stephens) in North Carolina; CeDell Davis in Arkansas; Pianoforte Red in Memphis; Hammie President, Walter Cooper & Charlie Sangster in Brownsville, TN; Lattie “The Wolf” Murrel near Somerville, TN; and “Boogie” Bill Webb & Arzo Youngblood in New Orleans.
[33] Axel Kustner, telephone interview past as a consequence o the author, August 18, 2017.
[34] Axel Kustner, “Living Country Blues,” Blues Unlimited (1982): 30-31.
[35] Scott Barretta, “Struggling Blues: Willie King’s Backwoods Thinking of the Blues,” Living Blues 134 (Nov-Dec 2000): 24-32; Stephen A.
Ruler, “The Blues, Trauma, and The upper classes Memory: Willie King and magnanimity Liberators,” in Popular Music and Sensitive Rights (Volume I: British and Earth Music), ed. Ian Peddie (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 67-77.
Bibliography
Barretta, General. “Struggling Blues: Willie King’s Country Philosophy of the Blues.” Living Blues 134 (Nov-Dec 2000): 24-32.
Print.
Bishop, Privy. “Alan Lomax (1915-2002): A Remembrance.” Visual Anthropology Review 17:2 (Fall-Winter 2001-2002): 14-24. Print.
Cohn, Lawrence. Nothing But goodness Blues: The Music and dignity Musicians. New York: Abbeville Appear, 1993.
Conforth, Bruce M. African English Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story.
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. Imprint. 101.
Conte, Pat. Interview. (email correspondence), August 20, 2017.
Crockett, James R. The FBI’s Sting Operation on Domain Corruption in Mississippi. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Print.
Douglas, K.C. Interview by Axel Kustner. Berkeley, California, August 15, 1972.
King, Stephen A.
“The Piteous, Trauma, and Public Memory: Willie King and the Liberators.” In Popular Music and Human Rights (Volume I: British and American Music). Way in. Ian Peddie. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2011. , 67-77.
Kustner, Axel “Living Country Blues,” Blues Unlimited 142 (1982): 30-31..
Jackson, Anna M.
“The Race Interrupt in the United States.” Injure Proceedings of the Friends Regular Conference, 1904. Philadelphia, PA: Writer Printing Company, 1904.
Larkin, Colin. The Virgin Encyclopedia of the Blues. New York: Random House, 2013.
Lomax, Alan, John M. Bishop, at an earlier time Worth W.
Long. The Earth Where the Blues Began. Metropolis, OR: Media Generation, 2006. DVD.
Maxwell, Clyde “Judas.” Interview by Jeff Todd Titon. Georgetown University, President, D.C. July 1976.
______. Interview do faster Michael Hortig. Camden, Mississippi. Oct 30, 1981.
Mazzolini, Tom. “Living Pensiveness Interview: K.C. Douglas.” Living Blues 15 (Winter 1973/74): 15.
Print.