I Wouldn\u2019t Mind Dyin\u2019: The Case for Blues as The First Goth Genre
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\u2022Photo: Thora Birch in Ghost World, listening to Skip James\u2019 \u201cDevil Got My Woman\u201d (2001)
After the positive response to my Screamin Jay article, I decided to explore the Goth tendencies of the Blues. This happened by accident and quite naturally, after I compiled a Spotify playlist of songs from the late 20s-30s for a party, and couldn\u2019t stop listening to it.
\u2022Wouldn\u2019t mind dying / got to go by myself / Well, I wouldn\u2019t mind dying if dying was all
Circa 1926
The Blues. It\u2019s one of the first real genres of popular music, and the roots for all of today\u2019s greatest musicians and singers. Nicki Minaj would not be, if Ma Rainey hadn\u2019t warned us to \u201cTrust No Man\u201d. Beyonc\u00e9 would not be, if Bessie Smith hadn\u2019t begged for \u201ca little sugar in (her) bowl\u201d. Leadbelly was the original gangsta. with a murder and a couple attempted homicides on his record, he embodied just about everything the modern Hip Hop star stereotypes would have. The connections are there. But what about in our subgenres? Have EDM, Punk, or Goth music been influenced by the Blues bug? Well the case can be made for one of those.
It\u2019s 1939, and Leadbelly is back in prison for a stabbing. with his long standing relationship with musicologists John and Alan Lomax, his legal expenses were covered, and Leadbelly found himself with a record deal. With no instrumentation, save for some hand clapping, Leadbelly recorded \u201cBlack Betty\u201d. It was part of a medley of songs, all recorded together, including \u201cLooky Looky Yonder\u201d and \u201cYellow Woman\u2019s Doorbells\u201d. But 40+ years later, this medley would be covered by Post-Punk/Goth giants, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, with the lyrics to \u201cLooky Looky Yonder\u201d appearing in the single \u201cTupelo\u201d (First Born is Dead, 1985), and their cover of the \u201cBlack Betty\u201d medley (Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986).
Nick Cave already had a reputation by the mid-80s as this God-obsessed, murder-obsessed, drugged out genius. Reviews of his earlier band, The Birthday Party, are baffling to say the least, with one writer under the moniker \u201cMr. B\u201d, declaring, \u201c\u2026the band creates a disturbing sexual voodoo music for urban society.\u201d Even Cave himself weighed in on The Birthday Party\u2019s press legacy.
\u2022\u201c\u2026(H)e was shocked at how Australians were depicted in the press. \u2018I remember a review of the Birthday Party which suggested, in a veiled slur, that we had obviously listened to a lot of Aboriginal music.\u2019\u201d
But this sort of \u201cothering\u201d of the influences from which bands like Cave\u2019s drew from, dates back to the so-called \u201cBlues Revival\u201d of the 1960s. Jack Hamilton, who\u2019s book Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016) touches the surface of this othering, explains, \u201cWith the Stones, that is a real disruption they represent. Not just that headline\u201d (\u201cWould you let your sister [or daughter] date a Rolling Stone?\u201d), \u201cbut throughout the early-to-mid-\u201960s, the amount of weird racial whistles being used in description of the Stones in both the mainstream British press and the mainstream American press is pretty stunning. They really are being othered in this way that conflates their physical appearance with social danger. Their proximity to black music is really harped on by the fear-mongering pieces about the Stones.\u201d
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\u2022Photo: Lead Belly for LIFE Magazine (1937)
And that\u2019s just in mainstream Rock alone. But the early post-Punk and Goth bands\u2013some of who may have been influenced by the Stones, The Doors, or The Kinks\u2013get away unscathed from the connection of them to the more \u201cprimitive\u201d Blues. It\u2019s that same othering, and creating distance, but take much further. Goth has made great strides in reminding us of its supposed whiteness, and aims to keep its proximity to it very close. Goth is thought of as Victorian, it\u2019s also Bauhaus; it\u2019s art school music. But can it be Blues? Like the Stones before them, The Cramps wore their influences on their sleeves, but took it further into a kind of parody. \u201cI Was Teenage Werewolf\u201d is like a page ripped right out of the \u201cHow to do White Blues\u201d book. The chapter? Link Wray. And when a young Nick Cave saw The Cramps live for the first time in 1980, he tore off a sample of that chapter for himself.
Goth and Blues share a common, dismal energy. But while The Blues was created by African Americans, many the children or grandchildren of slavery time, and some of whom faced extreme hardship during The Depression, coupled with lynchings and segregation, those who grew up post-Vietnam in the U.K. and Europe as Gen-Xers, were generally more privileged. Why so moody? Well for one, mental illness sees no privilege. The great strength of Joy Division was Ian Curtis\u2019s honest written portrayals of depression and anxiety, while dealing with epilepsy. They are some of the same sentiments driven home in A.C. & Mamie Forehand\u2019s 1927 recording of \u201cWouldn\u2019t Mind Dying If Dying Was All\u201d. Initially a religious song under the title \u201cBye and Bye I\u2019m Goin\u2019 to See the King\u201d, this early cover version encapsulates the fear in dying, and not making it to heaven. PJ Harvey\u2019s popular portrayal of a woman in the throes of postpartum committing filicide, is an echo of Victoria Spivey, whose haunting and almost grotesque \u201cBlood Thirsty Blues\u201d, about killings her no good man, is some of the most unique work of the 1920s.
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\u2022Photo: Victoria Spivey, circa 1920s
But the Blues often tackled issues like domestic violence, racism, colorism, death, and despair. The ruthless murder-for-murder\u2019s-sake vibe of a song like \u201cStagger Lee\u201d hardly holds a candle to the unflinching visuals in the lyrics to \u201cStrange Fruit\u201d, or the solemn pleas in Josh White\u2019s rendition of \u201cHouse of The Rising Sun\u201d. Black trauma has always been rooted in the music made by Black People, and Black trauma is what informs the aesthetic of Southern Gothic, from Blues to plantation ghost tours.
\u2022I\u2019m goth as fuck / Even when I\u2019m not in black / Gothic is the pain you feel / and not the clothes that\u2019s on your back
Princess Nokia, \u201cGoth Kid\u201d (2017)
In the era of Trump, and the newer, watering down and almost superficial take on \u201cGoth\u201d music today, it is important to look back on our country\u2019s long trend of revisionist history, and take back the missing aspects of our culture. Most of history is in fact, Black.
I leave you with a list of selected songs to inspire, listed in order by year released.
1927\u00a0\u2013 Blind Mamie Forehand, \u201cWouldn\u2019t Mind Dying If Dying Was All\u201d
1927 - Victoria Spivey, \u201cBlood Thirsty Blues\u201d
1928 - Blind Lemon Jefferson, \u201cSee That My Grave Is Kept Clean\u201d
1931 - Skip James, \u201cDevil Got My Woman\u201d
1931 - Cab Calloway, \u201cMinnie The Moocher\u201d
1938 - Billie Holiday, \u201cMy Man\u201d
\u20221939 - \u201cStrange Fruit\u201d
\u20221941 - \u201cGloomy Sunday\u201d
1944 - Lead Belly, \u201cWhere Did You Sleep Last Night?\u201d
1947 - Josh White, \u201cHouse of The Rising Sun\u201d
1956 - Screamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins, \u201cI Put A Spell On You\u201d
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