Sugaree

Welcome to this dancing, sparkling, late-night  Sugaree  Saturday blog. Sweet liberties will be taken herein, not (I hasten to assure you) to browbeat anyone about the iniquities of sugar, though our over-consumption of it is becoming problematic, but rather to explore the origins and true meaning of a curious and intriguing phrase found in certain popular American songs. 

I've long loved the music of Fred Neil and Jerry Garcia/Grateful Dead and they both sing songs (audio links appended further on) which contain such lines as "Shake it sugaree " and "Didn't we shake sugaree ". What's that all about? I've often wondered. Very well, this Thanksgiving week I determined to play lyric detectorist and get to the bottom of the mystery. Read on, Macduff.

cutting sugarcane

I assumed, not unreasonably I think, given the geography and the phraseology - sugar and dancing?-  that this might have something to do with the deep south cane industry: plantations, slavery, hard graft, harvest time, a bit of celebration and light relief for poor, exploited black folks. Sadly, the anecdotal evidence is scarce. 

The Jordanaires released a pop song in 1957 titled "Sugaree " but that appeared to be the name or nickname of a sweetheart, so I'm dismissing it as a red herring. The first significant mention in song is Elizabeth Cotten's "Shake Sugaree ". Cotten (1893-1987) was a self-taught African-American folk and blues singer/songwriter who began playing guitar and writing songs in her teens. She is most well-known for "Freight Train ", used recently as the title music for Wes Anderson's 'Asteroid City ' movie. It's not clear when she wrote "Shake Sugaree " as she was performing for decades before recording her material in the 1960s as part of the great American folk revival. Of the lyric, Cotten merely stated: "To tell the truth, I don´t know what got it started, but it must have been something said or something done."

"Shake Sugaree " was released in 1965 and once available in record stores and on the radio was soon covered by a roster of folk and blues musicians, becoming a staple of folk sets across the country, giving rise to the afore-mentioned versions, by Fred Neil in 1966 on his eponymous second LP, and ultimately the referenced lyric by Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead lyricist) on Jerry Garcia's eponymous debut solo LP of 1972.

The Cotten song is all about being poor, pawning everything worth pawning, and then shaking sugaree, which I took to mean having a good time regardless of tomorrow and the consequences. I assumed it was metaphorical... but then I dug up a couple of references that suggest plausible explanations. 

The first is that sugaree actually derives from the French "charivari " (or chivaree/shivaree), referring to a folk ritual of making rowdy, discordant music outside the house of newlyweds, a custom that French colonists would certainly have brought to the New World in the 19th century.

The second references a curious practice of sprinkling sugar on the floor and then dancing on it to make a percussive sound. "At house parties they used to shake sugar on the floor so it would crunch when stepped on, hence 'to shake sugaree' meant to have a good time dancing. Even today, there’s a dance step called the 'sugar step' which is an action like grinding sugar on the floor."

shaking sugaree

I'll settle for that second explanation, though I hold to my original instinct that shaking sugaree could not have been possible without cane plantations in the first place and the irrepressible spirits of poor, exploited black folks determined just to have a good time in the small off-duty hours.

Here's the Fred Neil version of the sugaree song. I always marvel at his voice: I've Got A Secret

And here is Garcia's more upbeat rendition as featured at many a Grateful Dead gig and more apt for the kind of hippy shaking those ladies above are rapt in: Sugaree

To finish, a strange new poem fresh from the imaginarium (and with the usual caveat that it is subject to revision). Kāmadeva is a Hindu god of desire, eroticism and pleasure. He carries a bow made of sugarcane and fires arrows of flowers. His is the sweet intoxicating dance of love.

Arcane Sugar

First the temple, ramshackle and rundown,

green with its glow of vegetation and open

to the winds of chance.  Then the template

intricate and sacred spread on freshly swept

old boards. Next the precious sugar, graded

from powdery white at this mandala's heart

through yellowed grains to coarsest browns

around the boundaries of the holy art where

ants fear to encroach. All waits in readiness.

With sundown, at the bidding of Kāmadeva,
revellers arrive, sweetened already with rum

to take positions on the floor, motionless in

graceful repose until the drums begin giving

permission for bodies to sway, feet to stamp

to the sweetest beat, eyes shine, hearts pump

inhibitions fade away, everyone dancing into

reverie, shaking sugaree, until there is no me

or you no yesterday tomorrow only evermore

this timeless whirling moment of affirmation

of liberation from the chains that bind as love

floods in waves upon the magic crystal shore. 

Thanks for reading. Shake it, S ;-)

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A Blues Blog...

...has to be primarily about music, doesn't it? You know, songs steeped in the pain of the human condition, wrenched from guitars and the suffering of the singer's soul - borne out of Africa on slave ships, honed by centuries of hardship on the plantations of the Americas, given back to the world in the 20th century from the crucible of the Mississippi Delta and the slums of Chicago courtesy of the Recording Angel. It's a complex subject and I must apologise upfront to any blues purists for the somewhat reductionist approach as I try and keep the appeal as broad as possible.

Of course the first impact of  'the blues' on us music-hungry teenagers in the UK in the mid-'60s came via the filter of white musicians (John Mayall, Rolling Stones, Fred Neil, Chicken Shack, Fleetwood Mac, Savoy Brown, Steve Miller Band...not an exhaustive list by any means), players who championed and were influenced by the sounds of black America's bluesmen. From there, some of us reached back to the originals - Albert King, BB King, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Gary Davis, Robert Johnson, Son House and Muddy Waters.

I don't think many of us realised, or at least not for many years, that the blues music we were grooving to - whether it was played by white or black musicians, American or British - not only had its roots in West Africa but continues to be made there by a stellar bunch of Malians, Mauretanians, Moroccans, Senegalese, Sierra Leoneans: check out (if you're so inclined) the works of Baaba Maal, Boubacar Traore, Majid Bekkar, Mansour Seck, Tinariwen or the master of them all, Ali Farka Toure - king of the desert blues.

Ali Farka Toure - king of the desert blues

Yes, it all began in West Africa and strangely enough, the first musical instrument I ever possessed, aged four or five, was made for me by a kindly and ingenious Yoruba tribesman in the Nigerian village where I grew up as a boy. That instrument was fashioned out of a large sardine tin of which the partly-peeled lid had been cut into strips of varying lengths, so each strip could be twanged to produce different notes, the body of the tin serving as the sound chamber. I was delighted with it. My mother broke out her accordion and our 'house boy' would thump away on a goatskin drum while I played lead sardine tin - my first blues band!

Further down the line I learned to play piano (under duress - I was Grade II listed); and then I gravitated like so many others to guitar, first six-string and then bass - the latter in a band that also enjoyed playing the blues...

Woke up this morning...

I've just finished reading a biography of Fred Neil, one of my musical heroes (and coincidentally the man who wrote 'Everybody's Talkin'  which became a big hit for Harry Nilsson when it featured in the movie Midnight Cowboy ). Fred Neil was an accomplished 12-string guitar player with an ear for the blues and a wonderful baritone voice. He was a stalwart of the emerging post-war coffeehouse folk/blues scene in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, a hand-to-mouth existence that spawned the likes of Karen Dalton, Tim Hardin, John Sebastian (later of Lovin' Spoonful fame) and one Robert Zimmerman, who didn't do too badly for himself.

While I've been reading the book, I also listened to lots of those early albums by Karen Dalton, Tim Hardin and the mighty Fred Neil himself; and so as a musical bonus this week I've linked in a version of Karen Dalton playing and singing Fred Neil's 'Little Bit Of Rain'.  Dig it.

Before that though, a new poem-in-progress. Usually I only decide what to call a piece once I've written it - but in this case the title came first and the poetry has to evoke and live up to the billing. It's partly a reflection on that folk/blues music scene I've been reading about and partly an expression of concern at the current state of play down at Bloomfield Road where the Seasiders have recorded three draws, five defeats and no wins in their last eight games as they struggle to find their mojo - searching for that metaphorical sunshine state. I hope it works on both levels.

Green Tangerine Blues
With the long war won,
we reclaimed our own,
albeit run into the ground;
sang anthems in exuberance
at being home and in the zone.
At least the healing had begun.

Rejuvenation though,
that will take some time,
months one would imagine.
So much to put to rights.
Greedy though we are
to taste success
after those barren years,
it doesn't happen overnight,
not in the real world.

Frustrating as it is,
this halting progress
towards our dreams,
when schemes occasionally
go awry, it's vital
that we find the right way
to play together, build
a whole community afresh,
create momentum,
fashion a formidable group,
recoup the scene as was
before it all went horribly wrong.

Too much is new still, green,
unproven, far from ready;
a slightly sour
but not unpalatable truth.

What's required is patience,
some degree of latitude,
and our unwavering belief
this fruit will ripen
and find favour with us all;
another season in the sun
after pouring rain,
a harvest to savour,
new sonorous refrains.
It will come to pass...
just play on.

To listen to Karen Dalton singing Fred Neil's song just click here >>> Little Bit Of Rain

After listening to that, put on your red shoes and dance the blues, S ;-)

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