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12 JAZZ
gave birth to the Work Songs. Some of it was breeding (in a life so harsh there was neither time nor allowance for love) and this prompted the songs dealing with what we genteel folks call the "facts of life". Much of it was misery, sorrow and punishment —and this produced the Blues.
The Work Song has been made familiar to sophisticated Western audiences through Oscar Hammerstein's prettified version in the famous Show Boat lyric:
Tote dat barge, lift dat bale,
Get a little drunk and you land in jail . . .
But the authentic Work Songs are of a starker nature, like the Chain Gang ballads:
Raised my hand, wiped de sweat off my
head— Cap'n got mad, an' shot my buddy dead . . .
The tender emotion of love is a plant grown in leisure and not available to the negro until later times. You will find nothing of the popular schmaltzy Tin Pan Alley love ballad in such chants as:
You can take me, baby, put me in your
brass bed, Eagle rock me, baby, till my face turns
cherry red . . . |
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