CD Review
Cannon’s Jug Stompers: The Complete Works, The Cannon Jug Stompers, Yazoo Records, 1989
The blues is, praise be… He had just barely gotten done with his work for the day, his sun up to sun down work helping Brother Barnes shoe the horses, on Mister’s cotton boll massive ten thousand acre delta plantation, than his father took him aside and asked, really ordered, him to wash up and get ready to go over to Lancer Lane. The words Lancer Lane made him jump for joy inside, for this Saturday night he would finally, finally, get to play his new guitar, well no really new for that instrument had been passed down to his father from who knows when, maybe back to pharaoh times when those old pyramid slaves needed something to take their minds off their back-breaking work on their relax minute, in front of a real crowd at the Lancer Lane juke joint and not just before his father, his siblings, and a few stray cats at Mister’s company store.
No, he was stepping up in the world, the world that mattered, the world of those rough-hewed, hard drinking daddies (and their clinking women, praise be) that populated the juke house on Saturday night (and paid penance, serious penance at nearby Lancer Lane Lord’s Work Baptist on Sunday morning, many times sliding directly from one site to the other, smoothly if stinking a little of sweat and hard, hard Sonny Boy’s golden liquor), who would decide whether he had the stuff his father thought he had. And decide it in the only way such things were decided, by throwing dollars, real dollars, at him if he was good and broken whisky bottles (or, if tight for dough and so bought their whisky by the jar, jars) if he panned. He had asked his father repeatedly since he had turned sixteen to let him accompany him on his journeys to Lancer Lane (as performer and as, ah, imbiber), but his father maybe knowing the wisdom of sheltering the boy from those whisky bottles and jars if things didn’t work out just like his father, bless him, before him had held off until he was sure, or fairly sure of the night’s outcome. What sonny boy did not know was that father had relented as much because he was in need of an extra pair of hands in case Big Nig Fingers showed up that night as that he was ready. The nature of the dispute between Big Nig Fingers and his father was simply enough explained, a woman, rather Sonny Boy’s woman, Lucille, and her roving eyes, roving eyes that landed, allegedly landed, on his father.
A few hours later, washed up, dressed up in a clean work shirt and pants he
and his father having walked the two dusty miles from Mister’s plantation arrived at the juke house, really nothing but a cabin, a log cabin, belonging to Sonny Boy Jackson who used the place as a front for his golden liquor sales as well. (Yes, that Sonny Boy before he went to Clarksville and began the road to some local fame as the best harmonica in 1920s delta Mississippi, even getting a record contract from Bee Records when he was “discovered” by one of the agents that they had sent out scouring the country for talent for their race record division.) Now, like most cabins, there was no electricity, hell, nobody practically except Mister (and the Captain, that deduction crazy Captain) had electricity, or a reason to use it just a few chairs, tables, a counter to belly up to for whiskey jar orders (bottles were sold out back away from prying eyes), and for the occasion Sonny Boy had a small stage jerry-rigged so the entertainment would not get pushed around too much when things got rowdy, as they always did, later in the evening.
That night he had a surprise coming, or rather two. His father, taking no chances, had arranged to have a few members of the Andersonville Sheiks from up the road, who would later in the decade, some of them anyway, go on to form the Huntsville Sheiks and also get that coveted record contract from Bee Records, to back his son up. So he was going to have a real ensemble, a jug player, a harp player (harmonica, okay) and a washboard man, his father to play banjo (if he was sober enough, and while that was in question most of the night he held up, held up well enough to slide over to Lord’s Work Baptist for the eight o’clock service even if stinking of sweat and liquor). Papa had done right by him, Big Nig Fingers and his Lucille (to his father ‘s dismay) had decided to take a night off so he would need no cut knife help, and he blasted the place with his strange riffs, riffs going back to some homeland Africa time. Proof: twenty seven dollars as his share of the house.
Oh, the second surprise. Miss Lucy, Miss Lucy Barnes, Miss Lucy Barnes, a sweet sixteen going on thirty, a dark skinned beauty, all cuddles and curves, the daughter his boss, the plantation blacksmith, had taken notice of him and kept sending small jars of Sonny Boy’s golden liquor his way which just made him play more madly, hell, let’s call it by its right name, he played the devil’s work like he was the devil himself. They too were seen sneaking into that eight o’clock service at Lord’s Work’s Baptist a little sweaty and stinking of liquor, just in case you wanted to know.
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