OCR Text |
Show I The Last Bluesman 4s A ' vWsUi- .' ' ' . Jli any man I ever seen. But I kept looking at the man, and he came over and told momahe knew I wanted that guitar. He say he would sell it for a dollar fifty. Moma said We L he came home to dinner with us and he said he would sell for a dollar since he got a dinner, so moma bought it That old gambter didn't want nuthin' but some money in his pocket to gamble with anyway. Mance kept his pine box guitar for two years, and took those 24 months to learn one song: Sugar Babe. He learned by ear. To this day he can neither read nor write music, bar music is the best way," he says, "sometimes I qet up in the morning and I hear some ea music and I go and play it till it come out n9He bought his second guitar for $5.00 when he was 11 years old. He was share-cropping share-cropping full time then, helping to support a family of 11 children. Because he worked Mance only got to school about 3 months out of the year; he learned his letters, like music, from his neighbors. He couldn't write his name till he was 18. And that was the year he wrote it on a marriage certificate. Most of the children were gone then, so Mance moved his mother and siblings into a house with his wife. She stayed with him 16 years before she died. Mance learned about two songs a year, because that was all the new songs that came to Navasota. One of them was "Jack 0 Diamonds," in which he used a tablespoon for a bottleneck. "The gamblers hears I could play "Jack 0 Diamonds" and asked me to play at Saturday night dances. They was what you call nightclubs now. The first time I played I lost the spoon, so I used my pocketknife as a slide." Mance still uses the pocketknife, and baffles crowds across the country. He plays eight songs with it, and says the higher the finger action is off the frets the better the knife sounds. Store bought bottlenecks are too stiff; you get better, more tremulous sounds with a pocket knife held loosely in the left hand, Mance says. "After that I played at lots of Saturday night dances, and school closings. I would ' get paid a dollar fifty for a whole night's singing. That was pretty good. A nickle was worth a dollar in them days." "You got to take a lot of things," says 77-year-old Mance Lipscomb, "but if you got pride and principle they make you stronger." by Bill Marling When Mance Lipscomb steps slowly onto the stage at the University of Utah, an applause ap-plause blossoms and is sustained for several minutes. Mance sits down and looks past the spotlight into the darkened faces of the audience. They are all young, mostly hairy and bearded, all clothed in hip couture. They came to this unlikliest of locations for a blues concert to experience a Real Thing. They seek proximity to an unattainable experience; the sweaty, gritty, often savage and depressing black life which provides the stuff of songs for Mance. They hear the last contemporary of Son House, Blind Lemon, and Leadbelly wail his deep-throated blues of lust, death, blood and bogeys. They try to decipher the quick sliding fingerwork and the trilling full notes spilling out of the big sunburst Gibson guitar. They listen, but they will never wholly understand. For 50 years Mance Lipscomb chopped cotton and hoed corn with dozens of other black sharecroppers around Navasota, Texas. He began when he was 11 years old and quit at 61 because he was "disheartened about not getting anywhere." For 50 years the debilitating Southern caste system took its toll: "I was raised in a community where white folks disregard the colored folks. We just didn't exist. Mixing up with white people, well I never did that till about 1961. ..when this integration stuff came up. But I like that part, cause I always want to be free." "We try to stay out of trouble, most ways, cause we wouldn't get treated fair. A man could get beat pretty bad in them days. A nickle of fines I never paid though. They was only two things I ever stole, and that was watermelons and some brown sugar from my moma's sugar jar." His mother whipped Mance with a switch, but she also bought him his first guitar. It cost $1.00 and a free dinner. "I was out chopping cotton behind my moma," Mance recalls, "and I see this old gambler come along. Moma told me to keep my head down and chop, she chopped cotton faster than The best bluesman around then was Hang Walker. "He was the first real singer I ever heard, and he was as good a guitar player as I have ever heard. He would travel around singing and come to Navasota, his home, for a few months a year. He was as good a songster as I ever heard." The period between Mance Lipscomb's youth and his "discovery" by Berkley music promoters, was filled with a type of manual labor that cobwebs a man's mind. Year after year of chopping cotton and hoeing corn, and never making an extra pennys profit. Mance and his sharecropping friends ma up and sang songs to pass the working days "Somebody would say 'OH, I wantagoto Colorado Springs' and we would all makeus verses to go in." He was invited to play at the funeral o! Blind Lemon Jefferson. "I was scared f dead folks," he remembers, and after o song he retreated to the church housed play other songs. In 1956 the disheartened Mance went to Houston with his wife to look for work. He .'(continued on page 6) Pane Six The Last Bluesman Whose Wine Is This? whose wine is this? I drink then reiterate my intent to return.. I drink again, the bottom flat against a brown Italian head she is pretty. Whose wine is this? no one understands less no one cares. Eight hours to Venezia. The shifting dusk falters without beckoning, the crowd of faces do not bend, the laughter beats like a chorus, like waves against piled driftwood. Their pupils grow bigger, like mirrors in the darkness. The small gutted light pushes as hard as it can. They are zebras, squashed by light, free in a jungle molded in a cave. Whose guitar string is caught on my coat? Eight hours to Venezia. The mosaic of mouthing lips I see, builds no faces-groups of eyes and ears some hair. Where is my wife? Conductor: First class for frowns and seats (all in English). The thermos of cafe, to bum down the wine for me? cups? Third round of "Para Esta Mora." How does he play with my coat in the strings. Fourth round out of tune I noticed. Eight hours to Venezia. I squeeze out of the train, alone., they turn from the lighted sign Eight hours to Rome. Gaylan Nielson (continued from page 4) did not understand city hustle and life, and found only temporary employment as a laborer. An accident while unloading a freight car sent him back to Navasota with $1700 in damages. He was a rich man by Navasota standards, but the home town beckoned. "You can take a man out of the country, but you can't take the country out of a man." He bought 1 12 acres of ground and paid back taxes on another 1 12 acres. In two years he owned three acres. In 1961 he went to Berkeley to play and made enough to build his house. "I made $500 at the concert and $300 playing at a nightclub. I had $800 and I told my manager I wanted to go home. That money was burning a hole irwny pc ket. He said wait and I could play some more. Then I had $1700 total and I knowed I was going home." Lipscomb built his house and a kennel tor his four greyhounds. At 66 years of age, he had just arrived at a position of security. He had a wife, a house and land. He was in demand to sing. When you arrive at the good things at 66 years of age, you bring a lot of appreciation along. "Young people today can't get used to the old methods. Thats what makes disagreements between ages of people. Its hurting old people. They got to get used to each other," he says. Mance contemplates the problem while puffing a cigarette hanging on the very edge of his lip. Beneath the tan Stetson he wears inside and out, his black eyes are clear and focused. He wears a red-white-blac : stnpeu sNrtand shiny satin vest for the ralfs are wrapped in elastic bandages to make walking easier, and the r bumpy where his socks tuck into Sears work ds don't understand old folks ""less the old folks can explain kids lives. I been to 76 universities now...l don't keep track of night clubs...and they make tapes of me everywhere I go. Pride and principle I say you got to have. Nobody wants to take Ihings9 Don't call me this p that hey y. They don't have time to think about it. You Jotta take a lotta things. We did. And we got pride. Now everybody wants to kill ya rf you say something they don't like. I say you go to have pride in yourself, and when you treat other people like they was yourself, you got PnMance sits back into the chair again and draws on the cigarette. He thinks of he crowds that came to listen ike the University of Utah crowd full of hiply attired girls who sit at his feet backstage and the silent bearded young men who stand by. He leans forward again. The skin draws taut against his high cheeks and his ears stand out. A red tongue moistens his lips. You know...l'm having a good life." After the concert Mance will fly back to Navasota. In the morning he will take his greyhounds out on the fields to chase rabbits and he will trade the rabbits for dog food in town.This is part of the reward in a life lived well. It is part of the reward for "taking a lot of things." |