This is the first installment in an open-ended series of song analyses entitled “The Most Engrossing and Satisfying Songs Paul Fehler Has Ever Come Across in a Lifetime of Listening to Music”. More volumes will follow at irregular intervals. This installment will be discussing the song Clarksdale Mill Blues by John Dudley.

BACKGROUND:

John Dudley, Right of Center, wearing belt (1959)

Folklorist Alan Lomax made hundreds of trips to all corners of the U.S. throughout the 1950s and 60s with a huge, clunky reel-to-reel tape recorder in the trunk of his car.

On one of these trips in the fall of 1959, he traveled to and recorded the inmates at Mississippi’s Parchman Farm, a huge, sprawling, plantation-style working farm manned by thousands of inmates working in camps scattered across the Farm’s 18,000 acres.

Parchman Farm, although having a history of housing White and Black prisoners (in segregated barracks), weighs heavy on the consciousness of Black blues musicians in the Deep South. While most of the White prisoners were incorrigible felons or violent criminals, a wide variety of offenses could lead to a stay in Parchman for Mississippi’s black citizens (including nebulous charges like “disrespectful behavior”—or laws of selective enforcement such as “Sunday Drinking” that might require that a White offender sober up in the county jail, or a Black offender to spend a year in Parchman).

That the number of “offenders” that were sentenced to hard labor in Parchman varied considerably and in-line with the rising-and-falling price of cotton was a very poorly-guarded secret.  When cotton prices went up and the sale of Parchman’s crop became more profitable to the state, entire communities of blacks were pressed into service.  Anyone suspected of having spotty periods of employment, anyone indebted because of court fines—generally anyone disliked by some segment of the White community was subject to these sporadic penal press-gangs.  The arbitrary nature of whether a Black man could expect to be sent to Parchman at some time in his life is reflected well in the song O Rosie– a work-song designed to be sung in huge groups—that featured the following chorus:

Ain’t but the one thing I done wrong
Stayed in Miss’ippi jus’ one day too long

That Black musicians of the time were not seen by the White establishment to be engaged in “productive employment” is evident by their representation in the farm’s population.  The strong blues and work-song tradition that was incubated by the gathering of people on the farm was exactly what Lomax was seeking when he set out to record there.  At one time or another, countless blues musicians—including luminaries such as Bukka White, Fred McDowell, Skip James—joined the completely unknown John Dudley on Parchman farm.  That Dudley did not record in the free-world is not at all an uncommon phenomenon—many blues musician recorded by Lomax were never considered by any record label—that Dudley evinced the virtuosity with a guitar and strident, powerful vocal ability that he did while escaping the notice of record company scouts is uncommon.  But then again, knowing nothing of Dudley outside of the scant biographical information mentioned in the introduction… we can’t be sure that he spent even a single day of what would have been his recording years as a free man.

There is very little that is known about the inmate at Parchman Farm’s “milk camp” who went by the name John Dudley.  The only facts that present themselves are that in 1959, on October 7th, 8th, or 9th, Alan Lomax recorded him playing guitar and singing on four songs, conducted one interview, and took two pictures of him.  Literally all that remains in the public record of the existence of John Dudley are these two photographic negatives and the sounds Lomax recorded on a single reel-to-reel tape which he labeled “T919.o.”

Some sources I consulted mentioned a city-wide fire that struck Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1899 destroying much of the town including the mill.  It is not surprising that the destruction of the Mill—having as it did a much greater importance to the economic livelihoods of area farmers than any personal property that was destroyed—was pushed to the forefront and made the focus of the song.

The dearth of biographical information about John Dudley is important to my understanding and interpretation of the song, and it intertwines with and informs what I see to be the primary motif from which the song draws its gravity and substance—that motif being, roughly, a human’s struggle with his impermanence, and the lengths to which that realization will take him in instilling a desire to create a legacy.  This is a song about small men and their doomed endeavor to be remembered—as well as the feelings this evokes in them along the way.

CLARKSDALE MILL BLUES         (1959)

NOTE:  [Spoken words are italicized and in brackets]

BEGINNING:

SUNG:

Tell me where was you boys when that old Clarksdale Mill burnt down?/[4]

[You know where I was]

Tell me where was you when that old, Clarksdale Mill burnt down/

I was standin’ cross the street with my face all full of frown/

Woah! Lord have mercy [Who you telling this?] on my wicked/

On my wicked soul/

[Baby you know I don't mistreat ya']

Woah! Lord have mercy now, on my wicked Soul/

Wouldn’t mistreat my baby now, for my weight in gold/

Well now when I marry I’m gonna get me an Indian/

Get me an Indian squaw/

Well now when I marry I’m gonna get me an Indian squaw/

So that old Chief Squaw can be my Father-in-law/

Well now I ain’t goin’ down this here dark road by my/

Dark road by myself/

[Who you gonna carry, boy?]

Well now I ain’t goin’ down this here dark road by myself/

[I'm gonna take me along somebody.]

If I don’t carry you I’m gonna take me someone else.

Anybody ask you people now “who composed this”/

“Who composed this song?”/
[What you gonna tell 'em?]

Anybody ask y’all now, “Who composed this song?”/

“Oh Old John Dudley, now.  He’s been here and gone.”/

PAUL’S EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS

We’ve already discussed what we know for sure about the life of John Dudley, such as it is.  We can be sure that he was a prisoner on Parchman Farm, working in the milk camp.  We can be sure that he recorded four tracks with Alan Lomax in October of 1959.  Past that, we are forced to make conjectures.  By way of advancing our analysis, let’s start this process of conjecture by allowing ourselves two conservative and understated presuppositions that seem to me to have two feet solidly inside the line circumscribing “safe bet.”

Our second supposition relies on a third, larger and global assumption that we must make: that John Dudley was to some degree a rational, sane, and non-self-deluding individual who possessed at least a baseline degree of perspicuity when regarding his relationship with his world.  While we have no conclusive reason to assume this, I would think we have even fewer reasons not to–and I’m inclined to grant John Dudley this attribute if for no other reason than his participation in one of the greatest musical recordings of all time.

ASSUMPTION  #1:

As a Black man in agrarian, pre-Civil Rights Mississippi, John Dudley was—by almost any historical or cultural standard you would care to use, and by almost anyone’s estimation—astoundingly limited in the choices he could make that could meaningfully change his situation in an economic or geographic sense.

From the moment of his birth–and exacerbated by his incarceration–he had severely limited (approaching having nothing remotely resembling) economic and social mobility.  He had absolutely no chance of gaining meaningful levels of esteem or recognition from the region’s dominant culture, no route for any significant capital accumulation, and was of a class of people who had a long history of being deprived of almost all avenues for creating any institutions more permanent than an oral tradition.

ASSUMPTION #2:

In the course of growing up in Mississippi, John Dudley was witness to repeated demonstrations of his economic inferiority and he was surely aware of the fact that his inferior condition was ordained, supported and reinforced by the dominant culture.  Whatever other assumptions he made about this type of social ordering, he was absolutely convinced of the unambiguously entrenched nature of his station in this system.  He harbored absolutely no illusions that he would be able to subvert this dominant social order any way.

Even if his personal preoccupation with such matters were minimal, his observation of and familiarity with the many legacy-generating behaviors of the wealthy carried with it a reminder of his utter inability to participate in same.  Under these conditions, any aspiration he may have ever had, however fleeting, about creating a legacy not confined to an oral-history (which was, in itself, actively and deliberately suppressed by the dominant culture as sort of an extra “fuck you”) must have created for him entirely new and unimaginable frontiers of hopelessness and dejection. Name a single counterexample, right?  And yeah, I’ll give you that some sort of metaphorical immortality might’ve been the last thing on the mind of your average, illiterate sharecropper.  But for Ol’ John Dudley this is not the case, as evinced in the song itself.  Remember, we’re not trying to create a universal truth—just trying to figure out why John Dudley might have felt that way. Regardless of whatever aspirations he may or may not have regarding creation of a legacy, John Dudley must (in moments of lucidity) resign himself to being forgotten. This is a troubling thought.

OK.  Armed with these two assumptions, lets tear into the song:

VERSE ONE:

Tell me where was you boys when that old Clarksdale Mill burnt down?/

[You know where I was]

Tell me where was you when that old, Clarksdale Mill burnt down/

I was standin’ cross the street with my face all full of frown/

“Where were you when… ?”  The innocuous and inoffensive feel-good question that indicates that the asker is giving license for you to indulge your penchant for reminiscence (usually accompanied by the presumptive expectation that you extend him the same courtesy in turn).

In the same way that every Baby Boomer on earth loves to give you the down-low on their exact location and mindset when they heard that JFK was popped—as though they were affording you some precious peek into their (well-rehearsed by now, we would hope) “inner (presumably deep) thoughts” during a generation-defining tragedy—our narrator, John Dudley, is sticking his finger into the wind, gauging the zeitgeist of his sharecropping contemporaries on the subject of mill-burnings.

Like all good “Where were you whens…?” the real object of this entire exercise is for John to tell you exactly where he was, and what the event meant to him.  Well, what did it mean to him?

I was standin’ cross the street with my face all full of frown/

When the mill burnt down, John Dudley had a front-row seat, suggesting some (understandable) interest, and he had a “face all full of frown”, indicating… well, just what could that indicate?

He’s singing the song in the first person, we’re going to assume he’s singing it in his own voice, as a Black agricultural worker of his own era.  We can assume that the main tragedy of the mill burning down was economic loss–no casualties of any kind are mentioned.  John Dudley is kind of torn up about this despite the fact that he, as an agricultural worker with no land of his own, relies solely on turning over a portion of his crops (cotton, assuredly) to the landowner on settlement day for his only source of income.  He more than likely grows absolutely no grain of any type on his plot of land—once you move past “consumption of its product,” he really has no other stake in this mill whatsoever.

So John doesn’t really have a dog in this fight with the mill-burning business, past his natural human interest in community harmony and his aversion to fire burning shit down.  But he is moved in some very meaningful way by this whole scene he’s witnessed.

So… he’s frowning.  He’s sad, right?  Maybe.  Something’s eating at John Dudley, what could it be?  How does this event affect him most directly?  Well, he’s not going to take a direct economic hit on this mill-burning—having no stake in its operation.   Is he worried about the price of flour being raised?  Possibly.  Is he worried that pissed-off Whites are going to use this as an excuse to chew on every black ass in the county?  Could be.  None of these things would indicate to me though, the depth of the emotion that’s brought out by the brilliant and evocative idiom of having your “face all full of frown”.  Your face being “full of frown” is not an expression of malaise or of inconvenience—you’re affected by this whole thing, man.  Your face is full of fucking frown!

Now, not trying overreach in my interpretation of this, and the argument won’t stand or fall on this one thing I’m going to posit here.  But your “face being full of frown” doesn’t even indicate to me any kind of sadness, in any conventional “grieving” way.  An involuntary frown, by itself, is one of the more powerful expressions you can have (much more powerful with a face “full of” it).  He’s not crying; he would have mentioned that before he’d mention frowning.  He’s perplexed?  Dismayed? Forlorn?  Now we’re getting closer.

He’s filled with the desolation and despondency that comes from watching the destruction of something that he once thought permanent.

This mill had sat right there by the river in Clarksdale since he was a boy.  The various types of activities in this mill delineated for him the changing seasons.  It was a central part of the economic and social rhythm of the community.  The mill had always been there and it was what it was.  Presumably it was always going to be exactly what it was.  Now the fucker is on fire and John Dudley is seized with a crisis of how to resolve in his mind how suddenly it was that this permanent thing came to be destroyed.

VERSE TWO:

Woah! Lord have mercy [Who you telling this?] on my wicked/

On my wicked soul/

[Baby you know I don't mistreat ya']

Woah! Lord have mercy now, on my wicked Soul/

Wouldn’t mistreat my baby now, for my weight in gold/

John was really shook up by that mill burning down, and he’s not at all sure about how he should start addressing all of the issues that it has stirred up in him. He sets out to get his house in order, to whatever degree he can.  He starts by making a relatively straightforward appeal for some sort of divine deliverance from this obsession over mortality.  He implores the Lord to give him mercy while at the same time prostrating himself and declaring his unworthiness.

He’s shaken up to the point of being all over the map on this one, though…  In his frazzled state, he’s trying to put as many irons in as many fires as he can, and now all of a sudden he’s equivocating and pleading with his old lady—begging for her recognition that his treatment of her is suitable.  Perhaps doubting that the God of Abraham is listening to him, he’s appealing to some unnamed retributive entity that concerns itself only with “goodness” in hopes that it will reward him for his upstanding treatment of his girlfriend.  (if only he can convince her that she’s treated well—C’mon, baby, you know…)

Then as quickly as he got off of it, all of a sudden… it’s back to Jesus… repent, repent, repent!   C’mon, Jesus!  (pause) Nothing?   Y’know what? How ’bout we try…

Wouldn’t mistreat my baby now, for my weight in gold/

Who are you talking to, John?  Why is it important to you that I think you’re any kind of a good guy?  And, to be completely frank, I heard that argument you were having with your old-lady two lines ago, and I’m going to have to insist on getting her side of this whole thing before I just believe your platitudes, you know.

And John, even if you did convince me you were a great guy, loved your girl dearly and selflessly, were always effusively modest and kind and polite and supportive, all that… you know that I can only tell so many people about it, right?  I mean, yeah, what if you were regarded as the nicest guy in the whole county?  You know you’re still going to die, right?  You remember the mill burning down, right?  I can’t really be charged with crafting your legacy or anything… I have my own concerns.

VERSE THREE:

Well now when I marry I’m gonna get me an Indian/

Get me an Indian squaw/

Well now when I marry I’m gonna get me an Indian squaw/

So that old Chief Squaw can be my Father-in-law/

So John Dudley is looking for a magic bullet; he wants a quick-fix for his problems of impermanence.  At this point in the song, he lets his deepest, most utterly fantastic and impractical urges loose.  He allows himself this one last flirtation with magical thinking and lays out a set of aspirational behaviors that any psychologist would have a field-day with.  He comes up with a couple of convenient routes for a quick, do-it-yourself legacy:

1.        PROGENY – (pop out some kids, man.  They’ll keep your name and memory alive! [oldest trick in the book]) NOT TO MENTION that you and your kids’ little setup is made that much sweeter by your recent assumption of a brand new…

2.       HEREDITARY TITLE – The whites really have you by the balls.  We need to get away from those crazy bastards.  They have no interest in giving you a fair shake.  How about the Indians, man? You could go out there and meet yourself a new girl.  Maybe even the Chief’s Daughter? Yeah!  Then you’d be in line for Chief!  (Way to ditch your GF from Verse Two, by the way.  Yeah, John, I caught that… we all did).

What was his reason for marrying the Indian Squaw?  The one and only justification he offers just happens to mention an in-law with a title.  This isn’t about marrying-up in any economic sense, it’s about that title.  If you are Chief, then your sons are chiefs, and then—just like that—you’re big shit.  You’re remembered by everyone.

VERSE FOUR:

Well now I ain’t goin’ down this here dark road by my/

Dark road by myself/

[Who you gonna carry, boy?]

Well now I ain’t goin’ down this here dark road by myself/

[I'm gonna take me along somebody.]

If I don’t carry you I’m gonna take me someone else.

This is easily one of my absolute favorite blues verses of all-time.  I have no idea if John Dudley cribbed this off of anyone, and it’s simple enough where you’re kind of forced to think that this might be the case.

Acceptance is creeping in, now, plain and simple:  John is confronting the fact that this is what life is.  You’re going down this dark road.  It’s only getting darker.  Better to have a companion than to have no companion, right?  In light of the absurdity and futility of life (He knows, now that he was born to die–as surely as if he were a framing timber in the Clarksdale Mill) people become interchangeable to him.  Indian Squaw?  Sure, whatever.  Who cares?  Company is now about “presence of” and not about seeking out any particular quality.

One thing’s for sure–he’s not going down that dark road by himself.  Why should he have to?  Who’s he going to take?  Well, it’s looking like “you” at the moment, isn’t it?  (It’s damn sure going to be somebody).  But what if it’s not you?  Is that what you’re asking me?  Well in that case I’m guessing it’ll be “someone else”, won’t it?  Jesus, get over yourself already.  We’re all going to die anyway, what difference could it possibly make to John Dudley who he carries with him?  Hey, how about this? Once you’ve solved the task of building a mill that can’t ever be burned down, then you can approach John Dudley with your banal objective of getting him to set in stone who it is he will take with him.

VERSE FIVE:

Anybody ask you people now “who composed this”/

“Who composed this song?”/
[What you gonna tell 'em?]

Anybody ask y’all now, “Who composed this song?”/

“Oh Old John Dudley, now.  He’s been here and gone.”/

One of the sweetest, most gravid ironies in the history of recorded music is contained in this verse.  You’ll have to wait for it, though.  I’ll tell you about it at the end.

John is feeling a bit better after he comes down from the nihilist feedback-loop of introspection that was Verse Four.  He now knows that the only tiny sip of immortality that he can possibly hope for is that he be enshrined some sort of oral history.  He knows he’s a good guitar player and figures he’ll write a song that can’t be forgotten—or maybe he had never even touched a guitar before, but practiced night and day for months for this exact purpose.  Maybe this was the first song he ever wrote or played, designed from scratch with this singular goal in mind?

Well, good song or no… it can’t hurt to remind people to remember your song in a verse in your song.  So John goes ahead and does just that.

He sets up a scenario for you.  Say someone besides John Dudley is playing this song.  Say someone asks you who composed it?  John would love for you to remind that person that John Dudley wrote it.  But just listen to the tone in his voice when he asks you the secondary question: “What you gonna tell ‘em?”  It’s got almost an edge of menace.  If he can scare you into compliance, he’ll do it—it’s that important to him.

When you’re asked who it was that composed this song, you should mention that it was John Dudley—but what’s more, you should mention that he was here, and now he’s gone.  Is he off to another town?  Possibly, but one day he’ll be gone as in dead.  And when that comes to pass, by mentioning that John Dudley wrote this song… was here, but is now gone… you’ll be giving a nod to the fact that in some small, imperfect way he achieved his goal of building the mill that would never burn down…

But if and when anyone ever asks me who composed this song I’m going to have to tell them the truth, and not without a certain tinge of sadness for Mr. Dudley.  If you asked me, who composed this song, I’m going to say “Charley Patton composed this song and recorded it in 1930… 29 years before John Dudley made his version.”

…and THIS is the supreme irony that makes this song transcendent.  Clarksdale Mill Blues, John Dudley’s magnum opus, a frighteningly intimate soul-laid-bare portrait of one man’s attempt to cement his legacy, a song that ends by begging you to lie about its provenance… is a cover song.