Two Josh White "Jim Crow" Songs

Edited by Azizi Powell

This post provides information about the term "jim crow" and lyrics & sound files of Josh White's "Jim Crow Blues" and "Jim Crow Train".

The content of this post is provided for historical, folkloric, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

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WHAT "JIM CROW" MEANS
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws:

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The separation in practice led to conditions that tended to be inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.

-snip-
A person of color who is "jim crowed" meant/means that person was/is treated in a discriminatory manner [treated worse than White people in general because of one's race/ethnicity.]

A "Jim Crow town" is one whose White residents had discriminatory laws & customs.

It seems to me that the phrases "Jim crowed" and "Jim crow town" have been rarely used since at least the 1980s. However, there are still mentions at least in political circles of people wanting to bring "Jim Crow" back.
-snip-
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/09/huddie-leadbetter-jim-crow-blues.html for information & my comments about the origin of the term "jim crow".

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sOUND FILE & LYRICS: JIM CROW BLUES [Josh White]

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE by Josh White 1941 JIM CROW SONG



Uploaded by cdbpdx on Jun 5, 2010

Joshua White sings Jim Crow songs on the Keynote record album Southern Exposure, recorded in 1941. The melody in this song sounds a lot like 'Careless Love'. Enjoy!

-snip-
LYRICS: JIM CROW SONG (Josh White)

[guitar playing]

Well I work all the week in the blazing sun.
Lord I work all the week in the blazing sun.
Lord I work all the week in the blazing sun.
Can’t find my shoes lord when my pay day comes

I ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat.
I ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat.
I ain’t treated no better Lord than a mountain goat.
Boss takes my crop and poll tax takes my vote.*

[guitar playing]

I’m leavin here ‘cause I just can’t stay.
Yes, I’m leavin here just can’t stay.
Lord, I’m lea, leavin here ‘cause I just can’t stay.
I’m goin where I can get more decent pay.

[guitar playing]
-snip-
Transcription by Azizi Powell from sound file. Corrections & additions are welcome.
(Note: I'm not sure if this is the correct title for this song.)

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SOUND FILE & LYRICS: JIM CROW TRAIN (Josh White)

JIM CROW TRAIN by Josh White 1941 JIM CROW SONG



Uploaded by cdbpdx on Jun 5, 2010

Joshua White sings Jim Crow songs on the Keynote record album Southern Exposure, recorded in 1941. Enjoy!
-snip-

LYRICS: JIM CROW TRAIN (Josh White)

[guitar playing ]

Can't you hear that train whistle blow?
Can't you hear that train whistle blow?
Can't you hear that train whistle blow?
Lord, I wish that train wasn't Jim Crow.

[guitar playing ]
Stop the train so I can ride this train.
Stop Jim Crow so I can ride this train.
Stop Jim Crow so I can ride this train.
Black and White folks ridin side by side.

[guitar playing ]

Now hear that train whistle blow.
Can’t you hear that train whistle blow.
Can’t you hear that train whistle blow
Oh-o Lord this train is Jim crow.

[guitar playing ]

Damn that Jim Crow.
-snip-
Transcription by Azizi Powell from the sound file. Additions and corrections are welcome.
-snip-
Here's a comment about this song from http://uncensoredhistoryoftheblues.purplebeech.com/2009/09/show-43-jim-crow-blues.html
"Like Leadbelly, Josh White began to address political issues in a straightforward manner in his songs. In 1941, he recorded Jim Crow Train, a classic protest song against the Southern system. It also features one of the great recorded train imitations: [lyric excerpt posted]"
-snip-
That blog includes comments & lyric excerpts from several other Blues songs about Jim Crow beginning with the 1925 song about leaving Jim Crow conditions behind, "Northbound Blues" by Maggie Jones.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT & THANKS
Thanks to Josh White for composing and performing these songs about Jim Crow and other great songs. My thanks also to cdbpdx for uploading these two songs files on YouTube, and the editor of the blog "Uncensored History Of The Blues" for showcasing information about & examples of Blues songs that mention or refer to "Jim Crow".

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Viewer comments are welcome.

Read More

Huddie Leadbetter - Jim Crow Blues (Comments, Lyrics, & Videos)

Edited by Azizi Powell
[revised 9/23/2012

This post provides information about the term "jim crow", lyrics of Leadbelly's song "Jim Crow Blues", as well as a sound file & a video of selected performances of that song.

The content of this post is provided for historical, folkloric, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

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WHAT "JIM CROW" MEANS
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws:

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The separation in practice led to conditions that tended to be inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.

-snip-
A person of color being "jim crowed" meant/means being treated in a discriminatory manner [being treated worse than White people in general because of one's race/ethnicity.]

A "Jim Crow town" is one whose White residents had discriminatory laws & customs.

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COMMENTS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM "JIM CROW"
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_Jim_Crow

The origin of the name "Jim Crow" is obscure but may have evolved from the use of the pejorative "crow" to refer to African Americans in the 1730s. Jim may be derived from "Jimmy", an old cant term for a crow, which is based on a pun for the tool "crow" which today we call a "crowbar". Before 1900 crowbars were called "crows" and a short crowbar was and still is called a "jimmy", a typical burglar's tool.

The folk concept of a dancing crow predates the Jump Jim Crow minstrelsy and has its origins in the old farmer's practice of soaking corn in whiskey and leaving it out for the crows. The crows eat the corn and become so drunk they cannot fly, but wheel and jump helplessly near the ground where the farmer can kill them with a club.

-snip-
Click that link for information about & lyrics to the 1828 USA minstrel song "Jump Jim Crow".
-snip-
From http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090505044409AAEFfdV comment posted by d_r_siva 2009

The reality of the term [Jim Crow] has nothing at all to do with crows, crow’s feet, or crow’s beaks. The term comes to English via the Nordic languages….probably as far back as Viking settlements in England.

The term refers to a cow’s foot. In Danish a cow is a kue. In Norwegian a cow is a ku. In Swedish a cow is called a ko and is pronounced “coo” like a dove sounds. And a crowbar today in Swedish is a kofot….a “cow’s foot.” And one must mention that the bar’s pulling end [two fingers around a nail] resemble a cow’s foot and thus the English derivation of crowbar has nothing to do at all with the crow, but with cows or a ko. Our crowbar is named after a cow’s foot. This is the true etymology of the word.

One false etymology is that the term crowbar derives from Jim Crow and that they were used by blacks to perform menial tasks, giving it racist origins. Jim Crow was alive at least 400 years after the origin of the crowbar, so it is highly unlikely that he had anything to do with its name. This has been discredited by Snopes.

A crow has a powerful pointed beak with which it can, crows being very smart birds, pry open darn near anything it wants. So when humans invented a long iron bar with a hooked end to pry things open, they named it after the clever crow. In fact, the original crowbar (known simply as a "crow" back in 1400) sported one end shaped into a beak, rather than the flattened surface seen on modern crowbars.

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LYRICS: JIM CROW BLUES [1930?]
(Huddie William Ledbetter (January 1888 – December 6, 1949)[stage name: Lead Belly; usually given as Leadbelly)

Gotta get together let it __
don’t be no stone
Well we’ll all be in the same boat rather* ["together"]?

Okay now you gonna want this “Jim Crow Boys” enn
That man mus makes a man wear out his shoes when I give en the Jim Crow playin. **


[Actual song]

Bunk Johnson told me too, This old Jim Crowism dead bad luck for me and you
I been traveling, i been traveling from shore to shore
Everywhere I have been I find some old Jim Crow

One thing, people, I want everybody to know
You're gonna find some Jim Crow, every place you go

Down in Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia's a mighty good place to go
And get together, break up this old Jim Crow

I told everybody over the radio
Make up their mind and get together, break up this old Jim Crow

I want to tell you people something that you don't know
It's a lotta Jim Crow in a moving picture show

I'm gonna sing this verse, I ain't gonna sing no more
Please get together, break up this old Jim Crow

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pejC6hFJcVM&feature=related [Video #3 below]

*Transcription of the first part of the film clip by Azizi Powell.

The first three lines appear to be the end of another song that Leadbelly sang before starting "Jim Crow Blues". The last two lines prior to the actual song are Leadbelly's introduction on that occassion for his performance of "Jim Crow Blues". My "translation" of the last sentence Leadbelly said is:
"That man's music [that song/my playing that song] makes a man wear out his shoes [dancing] when I play "Jim Crow Blues".
Additions and/or corrections to this transcription are welcomed.

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FEATURED EXAMPLES

Example #1: Jim Crow Blues- Leadbelly



Uploaded by 427monkeyman on Jun 9, 2010

This is a protest song from the 1930's written and preformed by the great blues musician Leadbelly. For those who do not know, the Jim Crow Laws where laws that prevented African Americans and other minorities from having the same rights as Whites. Many of the pictures are of blues musicians and civil rights activists such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and W. E. B. Du Bois. This video is intended to be anti-racist so I do NOT want to see comments saying I am.

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Example #2 - Odetta - Jim Crow Blues


Uploaded by BilouBeBe on Jul 13, 2011

"Jim Crow Blues"
Performed by Odetta Holmes (2003)
originally performed by Lead Belly (1930)

From the movie: Lightning In a Bottle: A One Night History of the Blues
concert: New York's Radio City Music Hall (February 2003)
Director : Antoine Fuqua
Executive Producer: Martin Scorsese
Music Director: Steve Jordan
Producer: Alex Gibney & Margaret Bodde

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RELATED LINKS
Click http://uncensoredhistoryoftheblues.purplebeech.com/2009/09/show-43-jim-crow-blues.html for information about Blues songs which include the term "Jim Crow". Included in that post is a lyric excerpt of the 1925 song "Northbound Blues" performed by by Maggie Jones which contains the phrase “Jim Crow town”. That post also features an excerpt of a 1927 Blues song by Cow Cow Davenport which is also entitled "Jim Crow Blues".

**
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/09/john-crow-part-i-what-john-crow-means.html for Part I of a three part Pancocojams series on the Jamaican character/symbol "John Crow".

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT & THANKS
Thanks to the composer & performers of this song. Thanks also to those whose comments I quoted and to the uploaders of these videos.

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Viewer comments are welcomed.

Read More

What "John Crow" Means

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part I of a three part series on the Jamaican character/symbol "John Crow". This post provides information about the meaning of "John Crow".

Part II of this series features two Jamaican mento songs that mention "John crow". Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/09/two-jamaican-mento-songs-that-mention.html for that post.

Part III of this series features the Jimmy Cliff song "John Crow".
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/09/jimmy-cliff-john-crow-lyrics-video.html for that post.

The content of this post is presented for historical & folkloric purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

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INFORMATION ABOUT JOHN CROW
From From http://www.golocaljamaica.com/readarticle.php?ArticleID=784

The John Crow - Graceful or Disgraceful Bird
(Apr-22-2003)

John Crow, the common Jamaican vulture, was once widely known as a carrion crow or turkey vulture. In towns and throughout the countryside, these birds can be seen tearing at carcasses in the streets. Sometimes they circle in the sky or simply perch in trees or on housetops, often with outspread wings.

Many stories abound as to how the name John Crow came about...
[Frederic G. Cassidy and R.B. Lapage indicate that] the first record of the bird being called John Crow was 1826. In a later book Dictionary of Jamaican English by Mr. Cassidy and R.B. Lapage it is stated that the origin of the name John Crow may be linked to Jim Crow, the American term. There is however no evidence to show that they are linked. Whatever the story behind the name John Crow, it is deeply embedded in Jamaican folk life.

The John Crow is a bird of great symbolic importance. In the Jamaican setting it is associated with ugliness, blackness, evil and disgrace. In abusive arguments people will call each other names such as "dirty John Crow, black John Crow or heng man John Crow". The John Crow is also an omen of death. It is believed that if the John Crow perches on a housetop, someone inside will die. It is also believed that if a John Crow appears in an individual's dream, it signifies death or some other form of destruction in the person's family.

The name John Crow appears in a few Jamaican proverbs. "Every John Crow tink him pickney white". This means that everyone thinks that his own children or his possessions are the best in the world. "John Crow seh him a dandy man but same time him hab so-so feather". Here the John Crow is a symbol of someone who is being very vain and pretentious. "John Crow a roast plantain fi yuh" depicting someone who is very meager and emaciated who may soon die. "If yuh fly wid John Crow yuh wi nyam dead meat" expresses the idea that a person is capable of doing the things that are done in the company that he or she keeps. Two popular folksongs also exist which speak about the John Crow. They are "Peel head John Crow" and "John Crow Seh".

Whatever the John Crow represents or however the name originated, it is one of the most significant birds underlining the culture.

Source: Jamaica: The Fairest Isle by Phillip Sherlock and Barbara Preston (1992) Plants, Spirits and the Meaning of John in Jamaica: Article Written in Jamaica Journal by John Rashford (May 1984)

-snip-
[Italics added by me to highlight that statement.]

For the record, "Jump Jim Crow is a song and dance from 1828 that was done in blackface by white comedian Thomas Dartmouth (T.D.) "Daddy" Rice."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_Jim_Crow. Thus the earliest documentation of "John Crow" predates "jim crow" by two years and the cultural meanings of these two symbols are quite different. In the USA, "jim crow" is a term used to describe a system of racial segregation that discriminated against Black people. "John Crow" doesn't have that meaning.

It's my position that the main reason why the male names "Jim" and "John" were used for the terms "Jim Crow" and "John Crow" is that "Jimmy" was used for centuries in Britain & its territories for the "crowbar" tool. "Jim" is a nickname for "James" and not "John" but some people may have considered that the two names are related. Click http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090505044409AAEFfdV response by d_r_siva

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From http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090517/arts/arts1.html Extracts from the 'Jamaica Journal' - Plants, Spirits and the meaning of 'John' in Jamaica ; Published: Sunday | May 17, 2009
John Rashford, Contributor

“The word 'John' appears 33 times in the Dictionary of Jamaican English as a generic term in the compound common names of people, birds, plants and other objects. This paper will show that objects named 'John' are often associated in Jamaica with the world of spirits.

I will focus on the vine Abrus precatorious, which Jamaicans call John Crow Bead, and it links - by virtue of John as a generic term - to the Christmas dancing in Jamaica called John Canoe ( also spelled Jonkonnu) and to the vulture called John Crow (Cathartes aura). This paper suggests that the dance, the bird and the plant all have the name John because of their relationship to the world of spirits and spirit possession.

Practice of obeah

It shows that John Canoe, who is the chief dancer of a troupe of dancers, is the spirit person or obeahman (variously described as a witch doctor, magician, jumbie-man or sorcerer) and both the John Crow and the John Crow Bead are associated with death and with materials used in the practice of obeah...

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT & THANKS
Thanks to all those whose comments I quoted.

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Viewer comments are welcome.

Read More

Jimmy Cliff - "John Crow" (Lyrics, Video, & Comments)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part III of a three part series on the Jamaican character/symbol "John Crow". This post provides a video & lyrics of Jimmy Cliff's 1990's song "John Crow".

Part I of this series provides information about the cultural meaning of "John Crow". Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/09/john-crow-part-i-what-john-crow-means.html for that post.

Part II provides excerpts from two Jamaican folk songs which refer to John Crow. Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/09/two-jamaican-mento-songs-that-mention.html for that post.

The content of this post is provided for folkloric, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

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LYRIC: JOHN CROW
(Jimmy Cliff)

The eagle find him place in darkness
Fisherman find him place by the sea
Light up the dark in Kingston town
Mi bredren know you a come home without me

Ev'ry road have a bend, ev'ry wicked have an end
What your hands commit I know your body mus' feel
In this wicked, wicked war your time has come
You don't live right you will have no more fun

Jancro a go nyam your supper soon, boy*
Jancro a go lead the children astray
Jancro a go meet the retribution
Justice has finally find it's way

Screwface, you know that your time has come
You don't do right you gonna dead tonight
So now a go take you down the road to doom
The jancro a go nyam all your supper soon

Jancro a go nyam your supper soon, boy
Jancro a go lead the children astray
Jancro a go meet the retribution
Justice has finally find a way

Are you worried, says the wolf in sheep's clothing
Try to lead the children astray
But don't we know (?) a who fe frighten
take my hands I will show you the way

Jancro......Jancro

Source: http://www.smartlyrics.com/Song602053-Jimmy-Cliff-John-Crow-lyrics.aspx

*Jancro="John Crow"
-snip-
Click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Cliff for information about Jimmy Cliff.

Click http://cocojams.com/content/caribbean-folk-songs for two examples of Jamaican folk songs that mention "John Crow" ("Long Time Gal" and "One Solja Man").

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FEATURED VIDEO

Jimmy Cliff & Steven Seagal--John Crow*



Uploaded by jahppel on Oct 11, 2010

-snip-
This video provides snippets of scenes from the action movie which featured the song "John Crow", the Marked For Death starring Steven Seagal.

*The title of this video was erroneously given as "John Crown".
Here's a comment from this video's viewer comment thread which corrects that title and also provides information about the character of "John Crow" & the axiom that is repeated in that song:

"The term is "John Crow" not "John Crown." The axiom in the song that goes "John Crow ah guh nyam yuh supper soon boy", simply means that every persons time always comes. BTW translated, the saying is: "John Crow is going to eat your supper soon." A John Crow is the Jamaican jargon for a Vulture."
-smokeyhat, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=_Ksx9ishAOs

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RELATED LINKS

Click http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090517/arts/arts1.html "Extracts from the 'Jamaica Journal' - Plants, Spirits and the meaning of 'John' in Jamaica" by John Rashford for more information about the Caribbean cultural meanings of "John Crow".


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT & THANKS
Thanks to Jimmy Cliff for composing and singing this song. Thanks to the uploader of this video.

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Viewer comments are welcome.

Read More