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Blues: this is indeed a blues. It has the content, with “worried” replacing the more usual “troubled.” Also, the form of blues, a series of short, disjunctive couplets, rather than the longer stanzaic form of many Carter songs. The Carter family and A.P. Carter knew blues musicians. A.P. met blues musicians in Kingsport in his musical researches in the black area of that town. The Carters befriended Lesley Riddle, inviting him to their home to stay for a week. Riddle joined him to collect songs and they were close friends for three or four years. The Carters adapted “The Cannonball” from his playing, with Maybelle learning licks, and A.P. Carter singing his first ever lead vocal on this song. Anyone can have (and sing) the blues. It takes a worried man to sing a worried song. I'm worried now but won't be worried long. The refrain of this song contains a hint of deceptive optimism. Worrier needed? He's the man for the job. Just the man it takes. Even stranger he assures us, this worrying man, that he won't be worried long, but he provides no reasons for this statement and the verses seemed to pretty much contradict it, as we shall soon see, so is this empty tossed off American optimism or more frightening still are we to imagine his worries ending in death? I went down to the river and I lay down to sleep when I woke up I had shackles on my feet. perhaps the most powerful verse of the whole song. in 1930 the river might be a place for a hobo encampment. on the level of archetypes the river is the place of freedom and escape for huckleberry Finn and Jim it's where in gasp in spiritual in in African American spirituals you lay down your sword and shield. But it can also be a frightening place for murder and drowning and a source of flood. on a historical level this verse conveys the experience of the first year of the Great Depression when Americans and others felt the sense of shock laying down to sleep and waking up with shackles. according to the liner notes of The Carter Family complete recordings owned by my friends Jeremy and Jill this was a very popular record and helped Americans process the Great Depression and its effect on their lives. sounding their pockets with anxious grapnels, they found the money to purchase the 78 in massive numbers. 29 links of chain around my leg and on each link are the initials of my name why 29 who knows this song has three seemingly random numbers. 29 links of chain, 16 coaches, 21 years forced labor. these numbers give specificity and weight and also convey a sense of fatality and randomness. why initials of of my name. on the minus side this person has been the worried man is in chained he is a chattel slave he used branded his owner doesn't even bother pronouncing his full name. on the plus side perhaps he is spared some humiliation… I asked the judge what might be my time 21 years on the RC mountain line. suddenly we are in front of a judge. we are not told what crime has been committed if any maybe he has just landed in debtors prison or been set up. the RC Mountain line, changed by later interpreters to Rocky Mountain line, is a piece of stubborn Carter family arcanna. no one knows whether they mean Richmond to clinch mountain or to some other place beginning with C. perhaps the obscurity is deliberate and underscores the worried Mens isolation from the world. the train I ride is on that is 16 coaches long the girl I love is on that train and gone what happened here I thought the worried man is on the train and then suddenly we learn that the girl is on the train things sure change fast for a worried man. if anyone asks you who composed this song tell him it was I and I'll sing it all day long. this final verse sets up the expectation that we will learn the name of the singer as in the case of Jesse James and other famous old songs. but no name is given. in a way this makes it more universal. times are hard and he doesn't want anyone to know his name. according to atiba Wilson, who recently performed at peoples voice café, the Blues in Africa expressed the sorrow of losing your name.
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Dan Sofaer
Musician, scholar, educator ArchivesCategories |