Bessie by Chris Albertson

Author:Chris Albertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press (Ignition)
Published: 2013-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

Back Water Blues done caused me to pack my things and go,

Back Water Blues done caused me to pack my things and go;

’Cause my house fell down, and I can’t live there no mo’.

Mmmmmmmm Mmmmmmmm,

I can’t move no more,

Mmmmmmmm Mmmmmmmm,

I can’t move no more;

There ain’t no place for a poor old girl to go.

The session, which also produced another of Bessie’s compositions, “Preachin’ the Blues,” marked her first collaboration with James P. Johnson. Of eleven pianists who accompanied her on records, Johnson was unquestionably the best. None of the others could begin to approximate his invention and sophisticated musicianship. The acknowledged master (some say, creator) of the complicated, highly rhythmic Harlem “stride” piano style, Johnson was the inspiration for such future stride pianists as Fats Waller and, in turn, Count Basie. His richly embroidered, two-fisted style embellished and complemented Bessie’s voice in much the same manner as Louis Armstrong had done two years earlier.

Because she was still not quite ready to face Jack after the incident in Detroit and his outburst in Columbus, Bessie chose not to stay at the Gee home on this New York trip. Instead she used the apartment near the Lafayette Theater that she had rented in Ruby’s name, ostensibly to carry on her affair with Fred Longshaw, a couple of years earlier. She felt safe in that apartment because Jack did not know about it, but she knew that hiding was only a temporary solution— sooner or later she would have to face him. That started her thinking about a solution to one of their principal problems: the rather large sums of money that went to support her transplanted relatives. This was a source of ongoing friction between her and Jack, so, to remedy the situation, Bessie decided to make her sister Viola self-supporting.

To realize that plan, she purchased a small restaurant for Viola and her daughter, Laura, at 1244 South Street in Philadelphia. Viola had always been a good cook and Bessie figured that Laura could wait tables, but Maud recalled that Laura ended up doing most of the cooking. “It was a pit barbecue,” Ruby recalled. “They built a pit in the ground and Bessie went to the slaughter house and told the man in charge to keep her sister supplied with those little suckling pigs. One time when I was there, I ate some. I never before or since ate such a good barbecue meal. Believe it or not, they went to the lumberyard and got lumber and made tables and long benches and they had the best potato salad and slaw. Bessie ordered 100 pounds of potatoes in a bag, 25 or 30 cabbages at a time. She saw they got everything that they needed and they did good business. Soon they didn’t need Bessie’s money.”

Bessie knew that it would take more than Viola’s independence to solve her marital problems. There was also the fact that the restaurant would not be self-sufficient for some time. She was still spending enough money

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