“The Blues Tell a Code”: Willie King’s Story and Stories
Willie King (1943-2009) was born in Mississippi but moved to Aliceville, Alabama at age 7. Raised by his grandparents, he came under the influence of a much older musician, Albert ‘Brook Duck,’ who used to play jooks with his brothers. After a brief sojourn to Chicago, King returned to the Mississippi-Alabama border area and worked a local jook with his band, the Liberators, an outspoken social activist whose grandfather brought him up in the Muslim faith. He preaches a message of social justice and love as taught to him by his grandfather. King supported himself as a bootlegger for years and recorded for Jim O’Neal’s Rooster label, which sparked tours at home and abroad. This interview took place in Richmond, Virginia, October 14, 2006.
“My first music was blues, but I always listened to gospel as well. But back in the day, they didn’t have no guitar playing behind the gospel singing, just people, just singing the gospel. But blues was my favorite music that I heard, old blues on acoustic guitar was the first music I heard.
I have got a first cousin he tried to play and my dad he tried to play a little blues, and I feel they would have been great if they had just stuck with it like I did.
I struggled with it, stayed with it. But when I was about 8 years old, I made my first guitar. My grandaddy did, out of baling wire, the wire you wrap around hay. That’s the way he made my first guitar. I didn’t have money to buy one, and then sometimes he’d get some wire from my grandmother’s old sweep broom. But she didn’t like that too good, you know, because she always liked to keep it until it just wear up to the nub, you couldn’t sweep no more with it. She didn’t want you to mess with that wire. But that’s the way I got my first guitar. I was almost between 7 and 8 years old. He made it for me and showed me how to do the first one. He put it together for me, made it upside the porch, out on the porch. Put the wire on there and he dipped the snuff and he’d save them snuff bottles and one put a bridge down there and tune it up and one up there and tighten it up and he got a sound. And he told me to go to work on it and to make it say what I say, to find out how to make it say what I say.
And he told me ‘[There’s] one thing about you got music, son. I’m gonna tell you about it there, a woman she’ll talk back at you, but your music will talk to you. So make it talk to you.’ So that’s when I started out.
Then a white gentleman, he bought my first guitar for me when I was 12 years old, 13 years old. He bought the plantation. I want to mention that he bought the plantation that we lived on. He was a pharmacist – he worked out in Los Angeles, California, but his home was back down in there where I lived. So when he retired, the plantation we lived on was up for sale and he bought it. And that’s where I got my first break. Because he let me start driving his truck, take me to get my driver’s license, helped me get my driver’s license, bought my first guitar for me that I ever owned. And he let me drive his truck to go see my girlfriend. He put a little money in my pocket. And I took care of him when he got old. He asked me would I take care of him because he didn’t want to go to the nursing home. And I took care of him until the good Lord called him home. And the last day I took him to the hospital he thanked me and shook my hand. He told me I thank you, him, I said, well I said I thank you for your love and I appreciate you – say you thank me for my love. Yes, sir.
Not only me, he helped a lot of people, but for some reason he’d taken a liking to me for some reason, man, he really stuck by me. And I really appreciate it.
Brook Duck, he used to play for my grandmother before I was born. And she was the only person that my granddaddy told me, they was the only persons living on the plantation that the boss man would let have the blues, what you call the jook at their house. Because sometimes he would come down and join in and other white people would come and they would sponsor the Duck Brothers to play at their home. And then I was talking with Mr. Duck once. I would visit him before he passed. I used to go up there pretty often to visit him. But he was telling me one day or one evening he was playing and my mother said she was about 14 years old, was standing upside the wall and she came over and whispered in his ear and told him ‘You know that y’all can play the blues. So one day I sure hope I have a son or daughter that can play the blues like y’all.’ He was telling me. I say, ‘Well, I believe her prayer was answered, because here I am.’ It wasn’t a daughter, but it was a son. So her prayer was still answered.
I would often visit with him. He would tell me that he used to play for the white people that lived around there, how they would hire him to play at my grandmother’s house, and they would love to come to my grandmother’s house and have their little ‘jook,’ their little party there, and just have a good time.
People go there, they just dance and like ever what you’re feeling may be that when the music hit you some of them might want to get out on the floor and just crawl and some of them might want to get down there and just wallow because their dancing, ‘jooking’ what we call it, and just have a good time – drink a little moonshine whiskey and really let the feeling go. Just let it out, whatever they feel because they just let it out. That’s what it is just something like that.
To me it was the way that the blues can mend. I’ve always been a civil rights leader, even before the civil rights time, because it always brought peoples together from different walks of life, people always would come together under blues, mix and mingle talking, just have a good time.
Well, the blues always tell a code like I said a lot of times back then when you stayed on the plantation, you know, your boss man was real mean, real mean, low down and mean, and you just couldn’t come out like today and, say, where your boss man is real mean and there ain’t no need of you try to move over on his place because he don’t treat us right. He do this and he do that. So but they couldn’t come out and say that in the day.
So they had to talk it through a code. Most of the time they would talk about their woman but they would be talking about the boss man.
‘She’s a mean mistreater and she mistreats me all the time,’ but a lot of time it was a code that they was sending out. ‘My boss man, he’s a mean mistreater and he mistreat us all the time.’
So a lot of people they’ll pick up on it and know exactly what they be singing about. So this was a code they would send it through the blues. A code.
And also blues, it’s a lot of people they listen to the music of the blues but now the blues have a way of life that goes along with the music. Music is just a part of it, but your work, your struggle, your survival, what you’re going through just to survive – this is really the blues. And people get together to celebrate their week, their victory about making it through without any money or anything with the music. This would be the celebration. Like for instance, I go to my neighbor’s field, help them to get through. We go on over to the next field and help them to get through until all of us come out the field together. Then we will have a little celebration, jumping and hopping off the blues. Jumping, hopping, drink a little moonshine, celebrating, thanking the good Lord that we done made it through another season. See, but it represents a way of life, a culture, a way of life that people go through a struggle. And it also – it was help sent down to us to help to lift your mind up out of the conditions that your body’s in. In hell. You know you’re in hell – no money, hardly no food to eat, no clothes, and a lot of people would have committed suicide if they didn’t have something to help lift their minds up out of the conditions they are in. The blues come along as a spiritual medicine for the mind to help lift you up, your mind up out of that condition that you are in. And you could visualize yourself doing good, not in hell but somewhere else you know, you going on, you working hard, but you thinking that you’re doing good somewhere else and one day you do it long enough and keep that on. I can’t explain what happens, but you will wake up one day, your body even come out of the conditions that it was in. It’s something just happens through in the – a spirit, it just happens. But you got to sing about it as you work, and think about it, you got to keep singing, singing. It’s just like me, man, I been in, woe Lord have mercy, and many times I would have given up but I held on to the blues and never gave up on ‘em. And one day I got a call – a guy I met was Jim O’Neal – I had met 13 years before and he finally called me and he wanted to record me on Rooster label. It’s what kind of got me my name out and he told me, ‘Well, now your life’s gonna change once your music get out there and people can listen to it.’
And I thought he was joking, telling a joke – something to make me feel good. But, man, it’s changed. I ain’t joking. I can’t – sometimes I lay down I can’t believe it because of the conditions of what I came through up to where I’m at now. My peoples, you know, that helped me, from that one string of baling wire all over in France, Europe, and different places. I’m thankful to be here now in Virginia, Richmond. You see, just from that one strand of baling wire. Just staying with that, one step at a time.
My grandfather was my guide in my life coming up, he taught me about life the best he knew how. And I’m still on those principles today. He mostly taught me about love, that you must love one another, it makes no difference what color you are, make no difference how peoples treat you. It don’t ever change – still continue to love people. And he taught me to love and I love and that’s what I’m on today, my mission is about love, how to wake that love up in people where someone’s had let it died out. Let it die and waking up. And then I love when, you know, this is what he taught me about love, loving people, helping people if I could.
That’s why even today I got to love everybody. I got to love by myself and I got to love everybody because somebody loves me. That’s not only black – a lot of whites they love me and I got to show that same love and respect back to the good Lord. Now that’s what my grandfather told me. You got to show that love.
I don’t like to carry no hate around in my heart against nobody everyday. All of us got thoughts you know, but none of us is perfect that walk on the face of the planet Earth. And all of us have made mistakes. We have made a mistake but we don’t have to continue to go on making the same mistakes. And the good Lord forgive us, so why can’t we forgive one another the mistakes we made and come together and keep on getting up and keeping America strong and working together and enjoying life together like we used to do at my grandmother’s house.”
Dr. Barry Lee Pearson, Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland stands as the most steadfast supporter of the local acoustic blues scene in the greater Washington, D.C., area and beyond. As a musician, author, college lecturer, folklorist, and personal friend to the musicians, he has been the voice of this regional blues scene.