I Say Me For A Parable

by Marice Lipscomb

Mance Lipscomb (1895-1976), the son of a former slave, lived almost his whole life in Navasota, Texas, supporting himself and his family by tenant farming cotton, plowing, and picking "from caint ta caint" (can't see to can't see) for a meager return. But he was also a superb "gittah" player, singer, and songwriter who played the blues at countless "Satiddy Night Suppas," where rural blacks celebrated the end of the hard workweek and blew off steam. Theirs was a life beset with racism and brutality, but redeemed by an indomitable spirit and a resilient sense of humor, of which Mance's was a sterling example. In 1960 Mance Lipscomb was "discovered" by Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, who taped his songs in his own home and issued a record. This led to a debut appearance before 41,000 people at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1961 - and instant musical celebrity. Mance traveled all over the country playing his music and influencing such musicians as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Ry Cooder, and Taj Mahal. But he always remained rooted in the life of Navasota. "I say me for a parable" means, roughly, "I use myself as an example." In this book Mance tells his own story in his own authentic language, as a representative of a hard yet rich way of rural African-American life and as a creator and purveyor of a music that has conquered the globe. Of special note are the "go-alongs" (or chapters) that relate Mance's adventures with the legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, who rid Navasota of its virulent violence against blacks before he went on to capture Bonnie and Clyde, and that tell of his times in "this music bizness," including a command performance for Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow on their yacht.

Genres: Music, Biography

508 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Slagle Rock]

I am generally not a fan of books that attempt to record vernacular speech and dialect. It’s often done in fiction to entertain and (supposedly) enhance the dimension of characters but often serves to “other” them and shine a light on the author’s own cultural perspectives. This book about bluesman Mance Lipscomb is non-fiction however, so I was wiling to give the dialectic speech a chance—and I’m glad I did.
The majority of the text is derived from spoken word interviews with the artist recorded in the early 1970s, after Lipscomb found fame through his music. He lived most of his life undiscovered as a poor farmer in rural Texas during the Jim Crow era.
Author Glen Alyn, who conducted the interviews and compiled the book, notes in the introduction that he sought a balance between traditional and non-traditional use of grammar and punctuation to capture Lipscomb’s speaking patterns. I believe the dialect is used to good effect for the author gives insight into expressions and sometimes contradictory meaning of terms used by Lipscomb in this oral history. As Alyn notes, “Mance’s dialect was as distinct and American as the blues.”
The text really is a ticket to the past. Lipscomb was born in 1895, the son of a freed slave, and he lived most of his life as a farmer and laborer. Music was something he did in the evening and mostly on the weekend after his dawn to dusk subsistence wages were earned. Of course, we are reading about the artist because he was discovered, around 1960 when he was in his 60s, but for me, the most fascinating parts of the book are concerned with his pre-fame life. Music is a part of those early years but so are aspects of his upbringing, family life, work experience and travels.
The book also contains interviews with the artist’s wife Elnora Lipscomb and helpful connective prose at the beginning of each chapter from Alyn to enhance the reader’s understanding of the terms and descriptions of events to follow. There are also historic b&w images scattered throughout the text taken in the region of Navasota, Tex., where Lipscomb spent most of his life.

[Nick]

Mance Lipscomb was an East Texas black man who thought of himself as a farmer (he was surprised, on being discovered by the white blues enthusiasts in the sixties, to be informed he was a "sharecropper") and musician. He was singular among bluesmen--he stayed at home in East Texas (except when he decided to work--not play, but work--in Houston), and he remained faithful to his wife. He was content to play what he called "Saturday night suppers", despite dodging the occasional bullet. And he had a remarkable story to tell, growing up during Jim Crow, witnessing lynchings (in what is a riveting, difficult-to-read part of the book), and for a time acquiring the improbable protection of Frank Hamer, a white lawman who made Navasota a relatively safe place for black people. (Hamer later became famous for his successful hunt of Bonnie and Clyde). In addition, Lipscomb had vivid stories of the long and devoted marriage to his wife Elnora, conflicts with the white bosses, and his work in a lumber mill in Houston, where he was injured and forced to embark on a tortuous quest for worker's compensation. The apparent choice of the editor to transcribe everything as it was said into the microphone is a problem. Writing "farmer" as "fawmer", however close to the original pronunciation, does the reader a disservice (one that is repeated with a number of other words, making for a difficult read), and one could do well without such details as Lipscomb engaging in what we would now call sexual harassment of the stewardesses once he was discovered and started playing the folk and blues circuit. And Lipscomb's success does the narrative no favors; one longs for Stephen Calt's account of how disorienting it was for Skip James to find himself a blues saint after a lifetime of unbearably hardscrabble Mississippi. Of course, Calt's book is called "I'd Rather be the Devil", a suitable name for the music that inspired rock and roll, not "I Say Me for a Parable."