I Labor So Far from Home- Blind Lemon Jefferson (TX) 1927
[From: Lyric and melody transcriptions from Okeh recording session March 14 & 15, 1927 in Atlanta, Georgia by Chicago Music Publishing Company (transcription are located at LOC); made by Polk Brockman for OKeh. Only one 78 was released, probably because Jefferson was a Paramount recording artist. The recording has been lost. This is evidence that Jefferson knew the ballad before changing it to a blues (Cat Man Blues).
The following excerpts on “I Labor So Far from Home” are taken from Monge and Evans: New Songs of Blind Lemon Jefferson.
R. Matteson 2013]
In one of the earliest and most in-depth studies of Jefferson’s artistry, Samuel Charters was the first to publish the music and lyrics of “Elder Green’s in Town” and the music of the instrumental “English Stop Time.” Since then, record collectors have searched unsuccessfully for possible test pressings of these titles. Because none has been found so far, we assume that recordings of these songs are lost forever. In this article we are now presenting the same material as Charters with some further comments, plus the new songs from all the other available copyright deposits.
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The melodies printed on the lead sheets discussed here are unreliable indicators of what Jefferson actually sang. On the blues titles at least, the scribe virtually used generic blues melodies. At best, the melodic lines of Jefferson’s real melody and that of the lead sheet might share the same general contour. We are especially inclined to this opinion on the basis of the three blues tunes that we have seen that are versions of known issued recordings. On the other hand, the lead sheets of “Laboring Man Blues,” “Elder Green’s in Town,” “I Labor So Far from Home,” and “English Stop Time” are likely to be the most valuable for providing insight into Jefferson’s actual melodies. “Light House Blues” might also be accurate to some degree, but the others are probably far from the mark.
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There is extensive literature on the background of Jefferson’s “I Labor So Far from Home,” because the origins of this song go back to an old European ballad. In fact, this is a version of Child no. 274, “Our Goodman,” which was analyzed over a century ago by Francis James Child in his extensive compilation of English and Scottish ballads.[24] Therefore, what was already noted by scholars John Minton and Paul Oliver for another African-American version, Coley Jones’s “Drunkard’s Special” (December 6, 1929, Columbia 14489-D), is also true for Jefferson’s version, which was recorded nearly two years earlier.[25]
Oliver summarizes the ballad’s history as follows: “A troubadour song which was popular in Europe, translated into German and published in Germany as a broadside in the late eighteenth century, it was known as ‘Le Jaloux’ in France and as ‘Our Goodman’ (Gudeman) or ‘The Merry Cuckold’ and ‘The Kind Wife’ in Britain.”[26] In addition to Child’s early commentary, British and North American versions of this international ballad type have been extensively studied by Coffin and Renwick, and Bronson.[27] It appears actually to be much better known in North America than in Great Britain. Jefferson’s version seems to fall into textual Type A in which the deceptions take place on the same night, although Jefferson’s phrase “the other night” is ambiguous and could refer to successive nights (Type C).[28] Jefferson’s telling of the story in the third person is typical of many older versions of this ballad. His tune is quite unique and does not match any of the eight tune groups identified by Bronson, although it shares with Group F the characteristic of the second line ending on the supertonic.
The last section of the song—the man’s response to his wife’s deception—contains some metrical irregularities in the melody, and the section immediately before it seems to have two alternative endings. (It is presented here as in the copyright submission.) Jefferson frequently performed such irregular measures in his blues, but they seem odd in a traditional song such as this, stemming from the Anglo-American ballad tradition. Quite possibly, the scribe had some difficulty understanding Jefferson’s rhythm, as the final section of the tune, as written, does not sing very well. Another awkward spot is the series of eighth notes for “nothing but a coffee pot my,” which would sound better as two measures of quarter notes. The text accompanying the melody in the lead sheet has the next to last line as “Ten thousand miles I traveled, ten thousand miles I go.”
From the textual point of view, the entire piece evidently turns on “seeing” and “travel.” As for the former theme, the fact that it is found in a traditional folk ballad makes it even more interesting, because the blind performer actually chose this piece from the tradition and adapted it to his sensitivity. Of course, he may have performed it to please Polk Brockman. Since this Okeh agent’s main interest was hillbilly music and, consequently, he liked the “old time” aspect of black music the best, it is likely that he tried to steer some of his artists in that direction. Besides being consistent with our already discussed speculation about Brockman’s possible attempt not to pay mechanical royalties, this would further explain why Jefferson swung to the traditional side of his repertoire for the Okeh session. Whatever the case, especially considering all the possible implications in the song’s thematic development, it is not surprising that it appealed to Jefferson, and we can only regret that it is not available on record. As far as the theme of “travel” is concerned, it is certainly not new in Jefferson’s lyrics.
It is enough to refer to classics such as “Long Lonesome Blues” (ca. March 1926, Paramount 12354, two takes; ca. May 1926, Paramount 12354, one take), “Dry Southern Blues” (ca. March 1926, Paramount 12347), “Match Box Blues” (March 14, 1927, Okeh 8455; ca. April 1927, Paramount 12474, two takes), and “Sunshine Special” (ca. October 1927, Paramount 12593). The widespread use of the theme of travel in Jefferson’s blues “signals its importance as an expression of feelings shared by much of the population of the black belt,” and for Jefferson “physical mobility is equated with individual freedom.”[29] Because traveling is one of those “activities requiring eye-body coordination,”[30] its function acquires a broader sense and does not merely confine itself to being “a mordant and individualistic response to the social malaise,”[31] but is also revelatory of a personal pathological distress.
Juxtaposing this text to the rest of Jefferson’s lyrical production, we immediately notice that it is so deeply imbued with visual references that it stands out even in his very visually-oriented repertoire. In fact, the texture of the lyric, the density of words and implications connected to sight and their interaction prompt us to say that, in this song, for the first and only time in Jefferson’s repertoire we can speak of an explicit blindness subtext. Its development runs parallel to the main subject of the song, that of cuckoldry. Yet, blinding and castration (the psychological effect of cuckolding) are often associated in a Freudian sense. It is true, of course, that such a mutual—and from time to time almost symbiotic—relationship is already inherent in the traditional ballad and therefore does not directly reflect Jefferson’s instinctive way of dealing with blindness when composing a song.
In general, in his other lyrics, Jefferson unconsciously tends to disguise and/or scatter visual references, so that “[R]eiterated hints at vision within the same piece seem to have a moderate impact on the main subject of the song, and no overall cumulative effect allowing one to speak of a real thematicism is ever reached, even in the most image-studded depictions.”[32] But in this song fuzzy images are focused, and sparse references are brought together to form a consistent unity. Although not a blues, it is still a secular song. We are far from “the rather inflexible—though sometimes very powerful—explicit thematic unity of some gospel songs” where visually impaired evangelists face their “sightlessness matter-of-factly, addressing God directly and lamenting” their “irretrievable condition” through straightforward mentions of blindness.[33] Jefferson’s bold selection of this song for inclusion in his repertoire is mitigated, however, by his choice of narration in the third person. This gives him the option of consciously distancing himself from the “old man” protagonist of the ballad.
The appeal of this song to blues singers, who often deal with themes of sexual cheating and deception, is easy to understand. But what is relevant here is the special irony it has for a blind singer, demonstrating that even sighted people can be “blind.” Virtually all versions of this ballad state that the cuckolded man is “blind” or “cannot see” in a metaphorical sense. As best we can determine, Jefferson is the only blind singer of this ballad in the English language, although many singers who contributed versions to folklorists remain unidentified and normally the singer’s ability or inability to see is not mentioned.
Apart from Coley Jones’s “Drunkard’s Special,” other American black versions of this ballad that we have been able to examine are a North Carolina text from 1917 recited by Maude Stockton,[34] Lottie Kimbrough’s [Beaman] “Cabbage Head Blues” (ca. mid-1926, Meritt 2201), Percy Ridge’s “The Western Cowboy” (April 10, 1934, AFS 200 B-1; Rounder 11661-1821-2; a composite folksong containing verses from Child no. 274), Harry Jackson’s “The Western Cowboy” (probably April 1939; another similar composite folksong), Mitchell Helton’s [alias Egg Mouth] “Blind Fool” (probably April 1939), Will Starks’s “Our Good Man” (August 9, 1942, AFS 6652-A-1), Tom Archia’s “Cabbage Head- Part 1” and “Cabbage Head - Part 2” (July 1948, Aristocrat 803, vocalist “Doc” Jo Jo Adams), Sonny Boy Williamson’s [Aleck Miller] “Wake Up Baby” (March 27, 1958, Checker 894), Johnny Q. Nuts’s [John Knutz] untitled text (1960, collected by Mack McCormick), Professor Longhair’s [Roy Byrd] “Cabbagehead” (September 1971, Rounder CD 2057), Lazy Bill Lucas’s “Cabbage Head” (May 13, 1973, Philo 1007; apparently based mostly on Sonny Boy Williamson’s version with further influence from Jo Jo Adams) and Buddy Scott’s “Wake Up Baby” (1992, Gitanes 517 515-2; a modernized version of the same title recorded by Sonny Boy Williamson).[35]
Jefferson himself used the theme of this ballad in a more personalized form in his “Cat Man Blues” (September 24, 1929, Paramount 12921):
When I come home last night I heard a noise; asked my wife, “What was that?”
When I come home last night I heard a noise; asked my wife, “What was that?”
She said, “Don’t be so suspicious, that wasn’t a thing but a cat.”
I been all through the world, I’ve taken all kinds of chance,
I been all over the world, taken all kinds of chance,
I’ve never seen a cat come home in a pair of pants.
“Cat Man Blues” was recorded later in variant form by Blind Boy Fuller (April 29, 1936, ARC unissued [take 1]; ARC 7-01-56 or Vocalion 03134 [take 2]).
If one compares Jefferson’s “I Labor So Far from Home” with each of the other African-American texts deriving from the European ballad, one can notice great differences in both structure and choice of words, as well as the tunes and arrangements. In the case of Coley Jones, these dissimilarities are surprising, considering that he was from and worked in Dallas, where Jefferson was very active starting from 1912.[36] Textually, it is particularly interestingto compare the three interconnected key words or phrases delineating the deception in each stanza, that is, a) the person, animal, part of the body or object perceived by the husband as extraneous; b) his wife’s counter-identification; c) the term or expression revealing the incongruity in her objection (See Fig. 2).
Stockton’s, Jefferson’s, Ridge’s, Jackson’s and Williamson’s are the only black versions analyzed in this study that do not use the “cabbage” image in any of the stanzas. Professor Longhair’s, Percy Ridge’s, and Harry Jackson’s first stanzas present the same string of words (“horse”-”milk cow”-”saddle”) as Jefferson’s second stanza, while Jones, Williamson, Lucas and Scott prefer “mule” to “horse,” and Maude Stockton simply refers to the animal as “dat tied out dar.” The first identification in Jefferson’s third stanza (“coat”) is also found in Jones’s second and Williamson’s and Lucas’s third stanza respectively. With the exception of the lexeme “beard,” which does occur in some versions by white singers,[37] a large portion of the semantic field of hairiness is covered, from Stockton’s, Beaman’s, Helton’s, and Lucas’s “moustache” through Jones’s, Archia’s, and Scott’s “hair” to Jefferson’s “whiskers.”
What strikes one immediately in comparing this text with the ones compiled by Child is Jefferson’s ability to manipulate a centuries-old composition without marring the content. The refrain on the cuckold’s blindness and his travel experience and all the interacting key expressions in Jefferson’s “I Labor So Far from Home” can also be detected in the other available versions. Yet, the string of three images in each of Jefferson’s four stanzas is very seldom exactly the same as in any of the fifty-eight versions transcribed by Bronson.[38] Only in two cases (transcriptions no. 32 and 58) is the series of objects denoting the husband’s metaphorical blindness (“boots”-”coffee pot”-”boot heels”) identical to the one in Jefferson’s first stanza. In “Six Nights Drunk” the singers Emmet Bankston and Red Henderson used a string of references similar to Jefferson’s but recorded their song for Okeh (45292) in 1928, that is, about one year after Jefferson recorded his own version for the same label.[39] The triad “horse”-”milk cow”-”saddle” in Jefferson’s second stanza is the most recurrent in Anglo-American and African-American versions. The two key words “coat” and “blanket” in Jefferson’s third stanza are also somewhat common, but the same string can be found only in Bronson’s transcriptions 8 and 39. The sequence “old man”-”baby”-”whiskers” in Jefferson’s last stanza is reprised in Bronson’s transcription no. 5, and, with slight variations, in transcriptions no. 16 and 50.
Footnotes:
24. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (New York: Dover, 1965), 88-95, 303-304. Originally published in ten volumes, 1882-98.
25. John Minton, “‘Our Goodman’ in Blackface and ‘The Maid’ at the Sookey Jump: Two Afro-American Variants of Child Ballads on Commercial Disc,” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 17 (Spring/Summer 1982): 31-35, 38-40; and Paul Oliver, Songsters and Saints, 229-230.
26. Oliver, Songsters and Saints, 230.
27. Tristram Potter Coffin and Roger de V. Renwick, The British Traditional Ballad in North America, edition revised by Tristram
Potter Coffin, with a supplement by Roger de V. Renwick (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), 143-145, 272-273; Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, 4 Volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 95-129.
28. Coffin and Renwick, The British Traditional Ballad in North America, 144.
29. William Barlow, Looking Up at Down: The Emergence of Blues Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 69.
30. Monge, “The Language of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” 60-62.
31. Barlow, Looking Up at Down, 69.
32. Monge, “The Language of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” 50.
33. For an analysis of two illuminating examples in gospel songs, see Luigi Monge, “Visual References in the Lyrics of Blind Pre-War Blues and Gospel Musicians,” in The Lyrics in African American Popular Music, edited by Robert Springer (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2001), 100-103.
34. See “The Adulteress,” collected from Maude Stockton and included in Elsie Clews Parsons, “Tales from Guilford County, North Carolina,” Journal of American Folklore 30 (1917), 199.
35. We have not been able to examine the following versions: Jim Henry’s “Where My Coat Used to Be” (March 8, 1937, AFS 885-B-2) and Will Starks’s “Our Good Man” (August 9, 1942, AFS 6652- A-1). Colon Keel’s “The Three Nights Experience” (June 1939, AFS 2709-B-1) is listed in Dixon, Godrich and Rye’s Blues and Gospel Records 1890-1943. A note by the collector John A. Lomax, however, indicates that Keel was white. There is another version of “The Western Cowboy” by Don Mooney (February 27, 1936, AFS 604-A-1) that we have not examined, and thus we cannot state whether it contains verses from Child no. 274. Huddie Ledbetter [Leadbelly] recorded “The Western Cowboy” several times, but his versions do not contain any verses from this ballad. John A. Lomax, in a headnote to a transcription of Harry Jackson’s version, stated that he had written down five variants of “The Western Cowboy” from the singing of Negro prisoners in Texas penitentiaries. The ballad also exists in black tradition in the Bahamas and the island of Nevis.
36. Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 44.
37. See nos. 1, 3, 48 and 49 in Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, 98, 99, 124 and 125.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 114-115.
“I Labor So Far from Home”- Blind Lemon Jefferson, ca. May 1927
Old man went the other day his loving wife to see,
What did he see but someone’s boots where his boots ought to be.
Wife, oh wife, dear loving wife, come quickly and tell to me,
Who’s (sic) boots are these lying under my bed where my boots ought to be.
You old fool, blind fool, old man, can’t you see?
That’s nothing but a coffee pot my mother sent to me.
Ten thousand miles I’ve traveled, ten thousand more [miles] I go,
I never saw a coffee pot with boot heels on before.
Old man went the other night his loving wife to see,
What should he see but someone’s horse where his horse ought to be.
Oh, wife, oh wife, dear loving wife, come quickly and tell to me,
Whose horse is this hitched in my rack where my horse ought to be.
You old fool, blind fool, old man, can’t you see?
That’s nothing but a milk cow that my mother sent to me.
Ten thousand miles I’ve traveled, ten thousand more I go,
I never saw a milk cow with a saddle on before.
Old man went the other night his loving wife to see,
What should he see but someone’s coat where his coat ought to be.
Wife, oh wife, dear loving wife, come quickly and tell to me,
Whose coat is this hanging on my rack where my coat ought to be.
Old fool, blind fool, old man, can’t you see?
That’s nothing but a blanket my mother sent to me.
Ten thousand miles I’ve traveled, ten thousand more I go,
I never saw a blanket with coat sleeves on before.
Old man went the other night his loving wife to see,
What should he see but some old man lying where he ought to be.
Oh wife, oh wife, dear loving wife, come quickly and tell to me,
What man is this lying in my bed where I ought to be.
You old fool, blind fool, old man can’t you see?
That’s nothing by (sic) a baby my mother sent to me.
Ten thousand miles I’ve traveled, ten thousand more I go,
I never saw a baby with whiskers on before.