>> Phil Wiggins:
Welcome everyone.
First let me say how honored I
am to be invited by the Library
of Congress American
Folklife Center to be part
of their concert series
Homegrown At Home.
These concerts will be
presented every Wednesday
at noon time Eastern Standard
Time, so be sure to tune in.
And speaking of homegrown
at home,
we are actually in
my home right now.
Rather than being in Washington,
DC, we are just up the road
in Takoma Park, Maryland.
So, welcome to my home and
I hope you enjoy my concert.
I think I will start With a
an instrumental that I made
up slash stole that I
call Anacostia Two-Step.
It's a song that I wrote years
ago that used to have lyrics
and then I got tired of
singing the negative lyrics
and I decided to turn it into
just a celebratory dance song.
So, if the spirit hits you,
feel free to get up and dance.
[ Music ]
Anacostia Two-Step.
[ Music ]
All right.
A little bit of Anacostia
Two-Step for you.
And so, thinking about
this concert, I thought,
because it is being hosted
by the Library of Congress,
I thought I would do a
couple of songs that are
from the Lomax collection,
that that is housed there
at the Library of Congress.
And I thought I would
do I can't really see.
[ Music ]
I thought I would do a couple
of songs that I've found there
at the Library of Congress.
There are field houses, I
guess you could call them,
they were recorded at
different penitentiaries
in the Deep South.
I think one may have
been recorded
at Parchment Farm
in Mississippi.
I know that one of them, No
Cane on the Brazos, was recorded
at a Texas penitentiary.
So, when I when I think about
these songs, I always think
of the history behind them
being that after emancipation,
there was -- in the Deep South
there was enacted these black
codes, also known
as Jim Crow laws.
And if you were of African
descent and you broke one
of these codes, you would be
arrested and thrown in jail
and someone from a
plantation or a copper mine
or a rock quarry would come and
quote unquote, pay your fine
and take you and put you
to work on their plantation
or their whatever
they had going.
What I understand is that these
were really brutal conditions
that people worked under because
the investment in the labor was
so small that the
employer, quote, unquote,
had not much motivation to
take care of the workers
and workers were
often worked to death
and then replaced
by other prisoners.
So, that's what I think of
when I'm doing these songs.
I think I'll do first one,
I happen to know the singer
of this song is a man
named Charles Butler
who the Lomax's has recorded,
excuse me, recorded twice
and I think the recordings
are about seven years apart
in two different penitentiaries
where they found him and --
but the song is called
Diamond Joe.
Excuse me.
[ Music ]
Diamond Joe.
Now, I'm going to do another one
collected from a penitentiary
and also, collected by the
Lomax's and this one is No Cane
on the Brazos, which
was recorded
in a Texas penitentiary,
No Cane on the Brazos.
[ Music ]
No more cane on the Brazos.
I thought I'd finish
out by doing a song--
The song was written by a man
who called himself Scrap Iron
and it's a song about
a preacher, you know
and there's a lot of
preachers, you know,
that preach and live their life.
They're all about grace and
redemption and compassion.
And then on the other side,
there are a lot of preachers
that were about themself.
Now I didn't make this song,
the song was written like I said
by my a name by Scrap Iron,
but it reminds me of a story
that my mother told me once used
ago, about an experience she had
at her church into his
Titusville, Alabama,
when she was a young girl.
When she was a young
teenager, the WPA came
through to the Titusville,
and they were teaching the
young girls office skills
and my mother took part in that.
And she excelled at
typing and shorthand
and all those other office
skills, and she really did well.
And so, my grandmother was
very proud of her and one day
when the preacher
was at their house,
my grandmother was bragging on
my mother how well she was doing
with her lessons, her
office skill lessons.
And the preacher
said, "Well, you know,
she should not neglect
her church duties
and she should come and put in
some time in the church office."
You know, put into use all
these skills she learned and so,
my grandmother sent my mother
to the church, to
the church office.
And my mother told me that
when the preacher got her alone
in the office, according to her,
she quote said that he said,
"He wanted to be her boyfriend."
And my mother bolted away from
the church office and ran home
and she told my grandmother,
what had happened.
And my grandmother
said, "Well doll",
she called my mother doll.
She said, "Doll ,I'm going
to tell you two things.
Number one, you must never
ever be alone in a room
with the preacher," "And
second, and most important,
you must never tell, Bro
Wilson, your brother Wilson,
that's my Uncle Wilson, you
must never tell him what the
preacher said.
That was my Uncle Wilson who
appears in some of my songs
and he had a reputation for
getting things straight.
So, it would not have
been good for him
to hear what the preacher
had said to my mother So,
anyway that's what I think
about when I do this song.
Jimmy Bell, Jimmy Bell is town.
[ Music ]
Let me make sure I have
the right Amaya here.
[ Music ]
All right, Jimmy
Bell is a bad man.
So, anyway thank you
so much for tuning in.
I hope you enjoyed
something in my presentation.
And thanks again to the
Library of Congress,
American Folklife Center for
inviting me to be part of this
and be sure to tune in to their
website www.loc.gov/folklife.
So, be sure to tune in -- check
out their website and tune
in for the rest of this
concert series, which as I say,
is every Wednesday at 12
noon Eastern Standard Time
and thank you so much for
tuning into my session
and for being in my home.
Thank you very much and goodbye.