In the award winning 1994 documentary film 'Crumb', director Terry Zwigoff delves into the life and experiences of celebrated artist, Robert Crumb (usually just known as R. Crumb). As both subject and director are self confessed addicts and collectors of old blues music, it is fitting that the soundtrack to the film should be devoted to this genre.
Just over nine minutes into the film, we see Crumb in a room in which hundreds of 78 RPM records are lined up on wooden shelves. He selects one particular record and very carefully places it on the spinning turntable. Briefly, the viewer is able to see that the disc displays the name and logo of Black Patti. This just happens to be one of the rarest and most sought after record labels in the history of recorded music, but therein lies another story.
Through the crackles familiar to anyone who has ever played these old shellac discs, emerges a song that provides a backdrop to a montage of some of Crumb's illustrations. The sequence lasts for just over three minutes and is totally mesmerising, though curiously, the song that plays was released on Paramount and not Black Patti. The song is 'Last Kind Words Blues' by Geeshie Wiley.
It is a blues ballad but quite unlike any other I have heard. For example, Wiley does not use the standard 12 bar blues structure. It is in fact 11 measures and at the start of each verse, she teases out different notes so that each verse sounds different to the one preceding. Her voice is eerily beautiful and the guitar phrases add to the unsettling feeling, or is it the other way round? I really don't know. What I do know is that the whole thing works wonderfully and to me it is an astonishing performance. As Greil Marcus has said, if this was her only contribution to blues, "she would never be forgotten".
But who on earth was Geeshie Wiley?
The story of the blues is full of mysterious characters and sometimes it is impossible to decipher the legend from the true story. Take for example, Robert Johnson who, it is claimed, attained his talent on the guitar through selling his soul to the devil at a midnight meeting at the crossroads. Also there is confusion as to how he died in August 1938. Was he really poisoned by a jealous husband? Such tales abound in the Mississippi Delta where the blues were born, yet no character appears to be quite as enigmatic as Geeshie Wiley, of whom we know next to nothing.
What we do know is that she recorded for Paramount in 1930 and possibly again the following year. In all, six tracks across 3 discs were released from these recordings; 'Last Kind Words Blues' / 'Skinny Leg Blues', 'Motherless Child Blues' / 'Over To My House' and 'Pick Poor Robin Clean' / 'Eagles On A Half'. Then after that, there was nothing.
On the last four songs, Wiley is co-credited along with Elvie Thomas who wrote 'Motherless Child Blues'. To avoid confusion, I should add that there were two blues songs with that title, one by Elvie Thomas and the other by Robert 'Barbecue Bob' Hicks, the latter being the one adapted by Eric Clapton for his album 'From The Cradle'. Delving more deeply into the background of Elvie Thomas, we find that she is almost as enigmatic as Wiley.
Searches for a Geeshie Wiley prior to the recordings prove fruitless though Geeshie (or more likely Geechie) is almost certainly a nickname. Geechie is actually a Gullah word (derived from Angola) so she may have been descended from West African slaves. We will never know. Sadly no photographs exist of Geeshie to offer us any clues.
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Musicologist and folklorist Robert 'Mack' McCormick is now in his eighties and has spent the best part of his life gathering data on a host of people involved with jazz and blues music. The 1991 UK documentary film 'The Search For Robert Johnson' was loosely based upon his endeavours yet, despite the volume of data he has acquired, he has regrettably never produced a book of his findings. In the early 1960's he interviewed a musician in the Acres Homes neighbourhood of Houston, Texas. Mention was made of a woman who lived and attended church there, who sang and played guitar in the 1930's. Her name was revealed as L.V. Thomas. Could it be possible that L.V. Thomas was none other than Elvie Thomas?
McCormack must have sensed something as he went on to conduct a couple of interviews with Thomas in June and November 1961. By then she was about 70 years old as she revealed that she had been born in Houston in August 1891. Her name at birth was simply L.V. Grant. She began playing guitar when she was 11 years old and blues became part of her repertoire until she joined the church in 1937 and thereafter she gave up the blues and confined her singing to within the church congregation.
But what happened in between? Was L.V. Thomas the very same Elvie Thomas who wrote 'Motherless Child Blues' and performed on recordings with Geeshie Wiley?.
According to writer John Jeremiah Sullivan who met with McCormick and somehow (by fair means or foul) came upon the transcripts of the 1961 interviews, L.V and Elvie were indeed one and the same person. In an excellent piece for the New York Times Magazine, Sullivan revealed his findings which include revelations not only about Elvie Thomas, but also Geeshie Wiley. And they make for fascinating reading.
Thomas claimed to have hung around with a girl named Lillie Mae Wiley who she affectionately started calling Geetchie. Arthur Laibly a salesman with the Wisconsin Chair Company that had almost as an afterthought evolved into Paramount Records, visited the pair in 1930 and invited them to Grafton, Wisconsin where as L.V recalled they recorded "dozens of songs" over four afternoons. Somehow whether deliberately or by accident, her name L.V. was transcribed as Elvie. So Geeshie and Elvie were born.
Previous stories have indicated that the first session took place in 1930 and was followed by another the following year. Thomas disputed that and claimed that after 1930 there were no more recordings. By 1933 the pair had separated and never saw each other again.
So, the trail for the real Geeshie Wiley at that point goes cold. Apart that is for an unsubstantiated story that Wiley may have murdered her husband Thornton Wiley in 1931. It was said that he died from a knife wound between his collarbone and his neck, a wound inflicted by Lillie Mae Scott. If this was Geeshie Wiley, it would make the final words of her 'Skinny Leg Blues' rather prophetic:
"I'm gonna cut your throat baby
Gonna look down in your face.
I'm gonna let some lonesome graveyard
Be your resting place".
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Of L.V. Thomas, a little more has been revealed thanks to the efforts of Sullivan. Knowing that she was a member of her local church, he was able to track down church members who recalled 'Sister L.V. Thomas' or 'Mama Thomas'. She had died in Houston on 20 May 1979 and a simple stone marks the site of her grave but some church members had memories of her bringing a young boy to attend services. This turned out to be her nephew Robin Wartell AKA 'Jukebox'. He was able to provide Sullivan with a photograph of L.V. Thomas shortly before she passed away.
One of the older members of the family, John D. Wilkerson who went by the name of Don, knew L.V. better than any other living person. When asked about L.V. he responded, "You want to talk about Slack?" To anyone unfamiliar with the songs of Geeshie and Elvie, this would have meant nothing. However the song 'Pick Poor Robin Clean' begins with a spoken dialogue between Wiley and Thomas. It goes like this:
Thomas: "Hello there Geetchie"
Wiley: "Hello there Slack".
Thomas: "What are you doin' down here?"
Wiley: "Oh I'm just down here tryin' to play you boys a little hot robin"
Thomas: "Well let me hear it then."
Wilkerson himself also recorded a song called 'Low Down Dirty Shame' which begins with the line "It's a low, it's a low low, it's a low down dirty shame", delivered in exactly the same way as the first line in Geeshie & Elvie's 'Eagles On A Half'.
There may still be many frustrating gaps in the story of Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, but thankfully we do have their six remaining songs available to us. We must remember that the original 78 RPM records are extremely scarce (just one or two surviving copies of each), so the very fact that there are any playable copies is in itself something of a miracle. Thanks to a handful of passionate collectors the songs have been transcribed onto CD and are available on the following collections:-
American Primitive Vol 2 Disc 1 features 'Skinny Leg Blues' and 'Pick Poor Robin Clean'
American Primitive Vol 2 Disc 2 features 'Last Kind Words Blues', 'Over To My House' and 'Eagles On A Half'
Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Classics 1927-35 features 'Last Kind Words Blues', 'Pick Poor Robin Clean' and 'Motherless Child Blues'
The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of Disc 2 features 'Skinny Leg Blues'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 1 features 'Last Kind Words Blues'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 2 features 'Motherless Child Blues'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 3 features 'Over To My House'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 4 features 'Skinny Leg Blues'
Before The Blues Vol 2 features 'Last Kind Words Blues'
There may well be other versions available that I am not aware of but I assume all six songs will feature in Volume 2 of 'The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records' which should be released by Jack White's Third Man Records later this year.
I will end with the Elvie Thomas song, 'Motherless Child Blues' a tender and poignant blues song which begins with a single plucked note that is left to hang, immediately drawing the listener into the performance. Thereafter this tale of a broken-hearted woman who wishes she had heeded the advice of her dying mother, is delicately sung by Thomas with sensitive guitar accompaniment from either her or Geeshie Wiley. To my ear, it is absolutely wonderful!
If anyone can fill in any gaps in the story's of Geeshie Wiley or Elvie Thomas, then I would dearly love to hear from you.
