I love Detroit, but it's a rough frontier kind of city. Things are really dicey all down the line. Desperation -- if not revolution -- is in the air. A downturn in the status quo from bad to worse. Hard times and scraping by. But it's always been a little on the raw side.
I recently came across this song by Blind Arthur Blake -- released four score and naught years ago. Not exactly the Gettysburg Address, more like the Detroit Address of 1928:
I'm goin' to Detroit, get myself a good job.
I'm goin' to Detroit, get myself a good job.
Tried to stay around here with the starvation mob.
I'm goin' to get a job, up there in Mr. Ford's place.
I'm goin' to get a job, up there in Mr. Ford's place.
Stop these eatless days from starin' me in the face.
When I start to makin' money,
she don't need to come around
When I start to makin' money,
she don't need to come around
'Cause I don't want her now, Lord,
I'm Detroit bound.
Because they got wild women in Detroit,
That's all I want to see.
Because they got wild women in Detroit,
That's all I want to see.
Wild women and bad whiskey
Would make a fool out of me . . .
Another version adds these lines:
I’m goin’ to Detroit, get me a barrelhouse flat.
I’m goin’ to Detroit, get me a barrelhouse flat.
I would take my baby but I don’t know where she’s at.
Yesterday's Rune: Disruption. Today's: Wholeness.
4 comments:
Cool cover of the Metro Times. I wonder if they have some laying around in the lobby at Specs!
I do not know music and also I do not know its city, but it is good for thinking that we love where we are; the life is well more pleasant! Beijus
Wild women and bad whiskey. Sounds like a lethal combination.
You need to throw in some shots of Jacob Lawrence's Migration series.
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