"Good Morning Blues" (1978) - Deconstructing the Dockery Myth

"B. B. King hosts blues special," Clarksdale Press Register, February 19. 1978.

A 60-minute Mississippi ETV film program about Mississippi blues music from its earliest origins at the turn of the century until World War II debuted on MS Educational Television at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, February 21, 1978. Narrated by well-known Mississippi-born musician B.B. King, the program featured the music of 18 Mississippi blues musicians. 

The filmmakers shot King's narration near Cleveland on the plantation of Will Dockery, because it was the alleged "home of many of the singers in the film." New research into the history of the blues and blues tourism in Mississippi reveals, however, that the identification of Dockery farm as "the birthplace of the blues" was a socially-constructed concept devised by early blues scholars and more contemporary brokers of blues tourism. For more information about the myth of southern redemption through a love of Black music, see Deconstructing the Dockery Myth by ethnomusicologist David Evans.

Good Morning Blues, nevertheless, is one of the most comprehensive collections of Mississippi blues singers ever to appear in one film, according to producer Rob Cooper. Some of the musicians featured in the film were Son House of Lyon, Bukka White of Houston, Nathan Beauregard of Ashland, Houston Stackhouse of Crystal Springs, Big Joe Williams of Crawford, Gus Cannon of Red Banks, Furry Lewis of Greenwood, Johnny Shines, Honey Boy Edwards, Walter Horton, Sam Chatmon of Hollandale, Zula Van Hunt of Memphis, Memphis Ma Rainey of Memphis, Hayes B. McMullen of Tutwiler, and Hacksaw Harney of Jackson. Also featured were the recordings of Willie Brown of Robinsonville, Charley Patton of Bolton, and Robert Johnson of Hazlehurst. The film explores the roots of country blues music, which provided the basis for rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul and much of modern music today. 

Producer Rob Cooper hoped the film would demonstrate the connection between the lived experience of African Americans and the art form of the blues. "The blues is as starkly beautiful as the land its singers lived in," declared Cooper. "It is the purest kind of musical and lyrical expression, the perfect vehicle for communicating the pain and deprivation of the harsh and desolate existence of [African Americans] in the early 1900s. It is purely American art, and the majority of the artists came from right here in Mississippi and went on to influence popular music all over the world." 

An art form born out of a need for expression of the problems unique to African Americans, the poor, and the subjugated, blues compositions were put together with traditional verses handed down through the generations, with personal experiences added, perhaps even the singer's own name in the lyrics. Inspiration for blues music came from love, longing, and pain. The language is poetic, strong and vivid, but, at the same time, simple and unpretentious. 

According to the film's writer Edward Cohen, "Blues music is not an art in the classical, conventional, or sophisticated sense of the word, but is art in its simplest and purest state...The blues is not only a musical form, it is a feeling, a feeling that arose out of the years of slavery, of sharecropping, of the life Black men and women led in the early decades of this century. Blues songs are extremely personal; their subjects are hard times, lost love, the desire to move on to a better place." 

According to executive producer and director Walt Lowe, "I think one of the most significant things that can be said about the blues is what B.B. King states in the script: 'There will always be blues as long as people have problems.'"

Obituary: Brewer Phillips

Obituary: Brewer Phillips - Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1999.

Brewer Phillips, 65, a blues guitarist who was a steady force in Chicago blues from his arrival in 1954 to an appearance at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1990, died Sept. 3 1999 after a heart attack in his South Side apartment. Mr. Phillips is perhaps best remembered for his work as a sideman to slide guitarist Hound Dog Taylor, in whose band the Houserockers he played for nearly two decades.

''His sound had so much edge and so much attack and a controlled distortion that it made a kind of snarl that people for years have tried to get from effects pedals and fancy amplifiers," said Bruce Iglauer, founder of Chicago-based Alligator Records. "He got it all from his hands." Mr. Phillips was born in Mississippi and taught himself to play guitar at an early age, even though he never learned to read music. His first gigs were staged in juke joints, where relatives and friends would gather to drink moonshine. "We would just play guitars, and dance, and party," said his older brother, Vance Phillips. Mr. Phillips left Mississippi in the late 1940s for Memphis, where he played behind Roosevelt Sykes, Joe Hill Louis and Memphis Slim, Iglauer said.

In 1954, Mr. Phillips packed up again, this time fallowing Vance to Chicago. He arrived in Chicago at a time when the city's most legendary blues artists were defining the art, said Chicago-based Delmark Records founder and owner Bob Koester. It was a time when Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Junior Wells could be heard regularly at clubs on the South and West Sides.

In 1957, Mr. Phillips joined Hound Dog Taylor, an alliance that would last through several albums until Taylor died in 1975. Two of those albums were nominated for Grammy Award. Phillips cut his only solo album, "Home Brew," on Delmark. Survivors include two brothers, Robert and Eddie, and two sisters, Lauren Harrington and Lorina Durens. A funeral service was held Saturday at Trinity Memorial Chapel, 7605 S. Halsted St.

The Robert Johnson I Knew - Johnny Shines (1970)

Johnny Shines, "The Robert Johnson I Knew" The American Folk Music Occasional 2 (1970): 30-32.

In this remarkable and interesting reminiscence of the legendary Robert Johnson, a singer and guitarist who knew him well in the mid-1930s, traveled with him on and off for two years, and absorbed a great deal from him named Johnny Shines (born April 26, 1915, in Frazier, Tennessee, then a suburb of Memphis but now absorbed into the city) details his experiences traveling with Robert Johnson. Despite growing up in a musical family, Shines learned to play the guitar over the course of 1932, and he learned to play by listening to the recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Chas. Patton, Lonnie Johnson, and Scrapper Blackwell. Over the next several years, he worked regularly in and around Memphis with a number of bluesmen. He met Johnson in 1935, and he traveled and performed with him until 1937.

Reconciling the Blues King: Rubin Lacy and the Importance of Inclusive Memorialization Processes

Rubin Lacy circa 1930

Rubin Lacy was one of the most talented and influential artists in Mississippi blues during his short career as a secular performer. The grandson of a minister, Lacy was born in Pelahatchie on January 2, 1901. He was a well-known blues performer in the Jackson area and the Delta until 1932, when he put his guitar down and became a preacher. In the 1950s he moved to California, where he died on November 14, 1969. 

Although the Mississippi Blues Trail marker installed in 2009 to purportedly further "racial reconciliation" and rehabilitate the state's image as an intransigent racist backwater claims that he was buried in Pelahatchie, Mississippi (based on the information written on his death certificate), his remains actually never made it back to the Magnolia State--a fact that Mexican American blues artist, custodian, and Mt. Zion Memorial Fund affiliate Gabriel Soria discovered in the early 1990s, when he raised the funds to mark his actual gravesite. Eschewing the Manifest Destiny-like memorialization process of the Blues Commission, Soria tracked down the descendants of the "Blues King," learned the actual location of his remains, and worked with them to design and install his headstone in Union Cemetery in Bakersfield, California. 

Letter from Ruby Thomas, the daughter
of Rubin Lacy, to Gabriel Soria

For the amateur blues researcher, it was important to consult with the family members of the artist during the process of memorialization. Indeed, the letters he sent to them showed respect by requesting information and seeking their blessing, and the letters he received in response demonstrated the importance of shared authority and collaboration (between admirer/scholar and family members) in the memorialization process. It is of the utmost importance to reach a consensus about the past in any serious effort at reconciliation, but the exclusive research process and premature installation of the MBT marker in downtown Pellahatchie, Mississippi suggests that the cultural legacy of Rubin Lacy was merely appropriated for its potential economic boon, which left a lot on the table in terms of the state's image and racial reconciliation. A more inclusive research and memorialization process, or shared authority with the descendants of Rubin Lacy (or even an enamored Latinx musician and respectful custodian in Cali), would have not only prevented the metal forging of a falsehood onto the marker, but also increased the power of the MBT to rehabilitate the state's image, bridging the societal and racial divide through the memorialization process.

The MBT did not consult with the family before it installed the marker in February 2009 at 716 Second St. in downtown Pelahatchie, Mississippi--in front of the city's museum and not far from the library. "We put it in the middle of town," Pelahatchie Mayor Knox Ross admitted. "It just adds one more thing for people to come see." - (Jackson, MS) Clarion Ledger, Feb 24, 2009.

Although Rubin “Rube” Lacy recorded only a handful of blues songs, he played an important role in the formative years of Mississippi blues. Lacy learned to play the guitar and mandolin by emulating George “Crow Jane” Hendrix, a multi-instrumentalist who led a string band in Pelahatchie. As a young man Lacy traveled widely, and among his experiences were meeting country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers while both were railway workers, and working in Chicago with an uncle from Germany who taught Lacy to speak German fluently. After moving back to the Jackson area, where he became known as the “blues king,” Lacy played in an elite circle that included Son Spand, Ishmon Bracey, Tommy Johnson, Charlie McCoy, and Walter Vinson. He later moved to Itta Bena, where he met Italian immigrant and talent scout Ralph Lembo and toured the Delta performing with such artists as Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Ralph Lembo at his store in Itta Bena circa 1929

Lacy made four recordings for Columbia Records at a session in Memphis in December 1927, but none were released. The following March he traveled to Chicago, where he recorded two songs for the Paramount label, “Mississippi Jail House Groan” and “Ham Hound Crave,” both of which he learned from Hendrix. Accompanying Lacy on the trip was music talent agent Ralph Lembo of Itta Bena, who contributed a spoken part to “Ham Hound Crave.” The two Paramount tracks, the only blues recordings by Lacy that were ever released, are considered such prime examples of Mississippi blues that both songs have appeared on numerous reissue CDs and LPs around the world.

Rev. Rubin Lacy and his wife in the 1960s

Following a train-related injury in 1932 Lacy decided to join the ministry, a path followed at times by fellow Mississippi bluesmen of his generation, including House, Skip James, Ishmon Bracey, Skip James, and Robert Wilkins. Lacy preached in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri before relocating to California. In1966 ethnomusicologist David Evans, John Fahey, and Alan Wilson located Lacy in Ridgecrest, California, and recorded him preaching and performing gospel songs together with members of his congregation. Although Lacy would no longer perform blues, he remained proud of his early recordings and suggested to Evans that the religiously devout feel the blues “quicker than a sinner do, ‘cause the average sinner ain’t got nothing to worry about.”

Lacy was one of a number of blues performers born in Rankin County. Others included Luther and Percy Huff, Shirley Griffith, John Henry “Bubba” Brown, Tommy Lee Thompson, Othar Turner, Elmore James, Jessie “Little Howlin’ Wolf” Sanders, and Pelahatchie native Lefty “Leroy” Bates. Griffith, Bates, and some of Lacy’s children later moved to Indianapolis, Indiana.*

The trivia section of the Clarion Ledger on Oct 16, 1990 asked readers to guess the name of the mysterious blues singer from Pelahatchie who died in 1972. 
The answer was Rubin Lacy, but he died in 1969.