This offering from Michael Taft is actually a revised edition of his 1983 text Blues Lyric Poetry: An Anthology. [1] In the preface to the new edition Taft explains that the analysis and compilation of the over 2000 lyrics included in the book were actually experiments “in the application of computer technology to the analysis of… blues texts” (ix). Whatever the original intent of this work, it is absolutely essential (despite a few flaws that I will discuss later) for anyone, layperson or scholar, interested in pre-war African-American blues. A collection such as this needs to be put into the classic and perhaps even masterwork category.
Over the years, of course, there have been many collections of African-American song lyrics, dating back at least to Odum’s and Johnson’s The Negro and His Songs. [2] In the decades since that early publication we have been presented with the analysis of lyrics and their music (e.g., “part IV: The Negro South” of Alan Lomax’s The Folk Songs of North America [3], Henry Edward Krehbiel’s Afro-American Folk Songs [4], the extremely notable Early Downhome Blues by Jeff Todd Titon [5], and many other similar works); texts that cover the lyrics and accompanying musical transcriptions sans analysis (e.g., Country Blues Songbook by Stefan and Hal Grossman and Stephen Calt [6], as well as many texts specializing in specific artists, periods, or regions); and then there are those, like Taft’s work, that focus almost exclusively on the text (e.g., The Blues Line: Lyrics From Leadbelly to Muddy Waters by Eric Sackheim [7], and another noteworthy offering from Titon in his Downhome Blues Lyrics [8]). Clearly it was not the intention of any of these, or of other authors, to produce such a monumental work as Talkin’ to Myself, and that places it in a category unto itself.
In his new preface Taft quickly addresses the task of compiling the texts in this opus and the fact that (also mentioned in the original preface) he “streamlined these blues lyrics so that they could be more easily analyzed by a computer concordance program” (ix). The result, as he points out, is that his “transcriptions could not represent the repetitions and spoken asides characteristic of the blues” (ix). In layperson’s language this means that the AAB structure of the traditional blues is turned into an AB structure in his texts: if the first two lines of a verse repeat themselves, only one of the lines will be used in Taft’s work instead of both. Also, when a chorus is repeated, he transcribes it once and it is left to the reader to interpret where it should next appear. The alterations of this lyric form, he claims, still “highlight the poetry of the form—the literary quality of these lyrics…” (ix). Interestingly, in his original preface, he quotes ex-blues singer Rube Lacey as saying “the blues is… sung for the words mostly” (xi). Taft then spends the next five pages discussing the nature of the blues stanza (he readily admits that repetition is an important element), as well as the history of blues lyric analysis. Finally he addresses (as he does in the new preface) the need for this “stripping-down” for the sake of the computer analysis. Without question the repeated line—the AAB format—is, while not universal in all blues, an important element in the creation of blues as poetry. Langston Hughes recognized this when he wrote his poem “Po’ Boy Blues” (a sample stanza follows):
[A] When I was home de Sunshine seemed like gold. [A] When I was home de Sunshine seemed like gold. [B] Since I come up North de Whole damn world’s turned cold. [9]
Clearly, it is the double emphasis of how good home was that gives the conclusion its punch: its way of saying more in those few words than most people could say in a paragraph.
Similarly, when he addresses the lyrics of Robert Johnson (no argument will be made here as to whether he was, or was not, as influential as some may claim, only that he did pen some unique lyrics) in his song “Hellhound on My Trail,” the need to omit the repeated line removes the poignancy of one of the blues’ most poetically eloquent verses when
[A] I can tell the wind is rising: the leaves trembling on the trees [A] I can tell the wind is rising: the leaves trembling on the trees [B] All I need my little sweet woman: and to keep me company [10]
becomes
[A] I can tell the wind is rising: the leaves trembling on the trees [B] All I need my little sweet woman: and to keep me company (326)
Perhaps I am being too severe, too much of a purist, but there seems to be something, some intangible spirit, that is missing from the second example. I admit I know very little about computers and accept without question Taft’s assertion that “streamlining” the lyrics was necessary for the creation of this concordance, but for those of us familiar with these songs, something is unquestionably missing, and for those who are encountering these songs for the first time, the true poetry may end up lost. To his great credit, and as a testimony to his own acknowledgement of this problem, Taft strongly recommends that the reader also listen to the original recordings. This recommendation becomes particularly important when one considers that Taft was also required to leave out all the spoken asides that were so often an essential part of the blues. Using Johnson as an example again, Taft’s transcription of “Come On In My Kitchen” (a song reported to have made grown men weep) reads as:
Oh oh she’s gone: I know she won’t come back I had taken her last nickel: out of her nation sack When a woman gets in trouble: everybody throws her down Looking for her good friends: none can be found. (321)
Johnson’s original lyrics are as follows:
Oh oh she’s gone: I know she won’t come back I had taken her last nickel: out of her nation sack You better come on: in my kitchen It’s goin’ to be rainin’ out doors. [Spoken:] Oh can’t you hear the wind howl n’ all? [guitar trembles on high notes] [Spoken:] Oh can’t you hear that wind would howl? [guitar trembles on high notes] When a woman gets in trouble: everybody throws her down Looking for her good friends: none can be found. You better come on: in my kitchen It’s goin’ to be rainin’ out doors. When a woman gets in trouble: everybody throws her down Looking for her good friends: none can be found. [11]
The poetics of Johnson’s own lyrics and those streamlined by Taft are enormously different, with Johnson’s taking on an eerie, foreboding tone, while Taft’s version is fairly tame by comparison.
There is no doubt that Taft could have produced a more traditional lyric format, for he makes the argument several times that the streamlining was a necessity of the computer. For this reason, we can easily forgive him for having to truncate the actual songs. After all, if every chorus, repeated A line, and spoken aside was included this volume would be well over a thousand pages, not “just” the 718 in its current form.
There are, I imagine for the sake of expediency, some curious omissions from the text. Sylvester Weaver, for instance, was probably one of the first Black bluesman actually to record. His Okeh recordings with Sara Martin in 1923 are some of the earliest blues guitar recordings, yet Talkin’ to Myself includes only one song from his repertoire, and that one dates from 1927. Blind Willie Johnson, while not a bluesman in the traditional sense, was a singing evangelist who had few equals on slide guitar, and his style had much more in common with blues artists than did that of the other singing evangelists. Although he is included in virtually every work dealing with the history of the blues today, he is conspicuously absent from Talkin’ to Myself.
This review may have seemed critical at times, but it should end exactly as it started. Despite the changes in format and some questionable omissions, Michael Taft’s Talkin’ to Myself stands alone as the best of blues lyrics compendiums. It seems impossible that individuals interested in the blues would not add this work to their libraries.
[1] 1983. New York: Garland Publishing.
[2] 1925. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
[3] 1960. Garden City, New York: Dolphin Books (Doubleday & Company).
[4] 1962. New York: Frederic Ungar Publishing Co.
[5] 1977. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
[6] 1973. New York: Oak Publications.
[7] 1969. New York: Mushina Book (Grossman Publishers).
[8] 1981. Boston: Twayne Publishers (G.K. Hall and Co.).
[9] Langston Hughes. 1994. Po’ Boy Blues from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
[10] Robert Johnson. 1999. The New Transcriptions, pp 141–42. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation.
[11] Johnson, pp 41–43
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[Review length: 1491 words • Review posted on April 28, 2006]