Tomlinson Hill by Chris Tomlinson

Author:Chris Tomlinson [Tomlinson, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466850507
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

You must allow some type of sedative, a safety valve, you know, to avoid an explosion.

—Frank Wyman

Urbanization and economic progress defined African-American life at the turn of the twentieth century. Black preachers and politicians taught parishioners that they could succeed, but they needed to be ten times better than any white man. The poorest parents worked hard to ensure their children went to school and saved as much money as they could manage. But they also celebrated life, and for many, that meant going out on Saturday night.

Black cotton pickers mostly spent Saturday night on their corner of the large plantations with picnics, music, dancing, and some drinking. These celebrations, along with Sunday church services, produced skilled black musicians in the late 1890s who sang gospel music on Sundays and gave birth to the blues on Saturday nights.1 Performers used their voices as an instrument, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. They started with a spoken story and wove a narrative about the troubles of a black person’s life, gathering rhythm until it grew into a full-throated song. Gospel music praised the spiritual, while the blues centered on the flesh.2

Many African-Americans moved to segregated cities at the turn of the century. Black entrepreneurs established restaurants, hotels, and red-light districts, where the beer and liquor flowed, a gambler could pick up a game, and a lonely man could hire a companion for the night.3 The red-light district in Marlin emerged on Wood Street, one block south of Marlin’s main thoroughfare and safely out of white society’s sight. The stretch of mostly single-story redbrick buildings—only 650 feet long from the railroad tracks to Island Street—became an entertainment destination for African-Americans within a hundred-mile radius. Whites described it as “the street where blacks find inexpensive entertainment in the beer joints, pool halls, liquor stores and cafes,” and because Wood Street saw so many fights and “cuttings,” Marlinites nicknamed it the “Bloody Butcher.”4

In an age before jukeboxes and cheap amplification, live musicians and dancing attracted people to the cafés and bars on Wood Street, and famous black musicians made it a stop on their southern circuit. Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas, an itinerant Texas blues and gospel singer, traveled the state by hopping freight trains that delivered him to Wood Street among other stops. He recorded twenty-three songs for Vocalion Records between 1923 and 1929, and at age fifty, he was one of the oldest blues musicians recorded, providing the earliest examples of Texas blues.5 More than forty years later, the Loving Spoonful, Taj Mahal, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and the Grateful Dead recorded his songs.

Thomas made a more immediate impact in Wood Street bars, where aspiring musicians listened to him. He usually invited onto the stage anyone who thought they could keep up. One of the more promising musicians, fourteen years younger than Thomas, was Huddie Ledbetter, later known as “Lead Belly.” Lead Belly was born on the Jeter Plantation, near Mooringsport, Louisiana, but his family moved to Texas when he was five years old.

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