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Aint's Times Hard: Political and Social Comment In the Blues
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About Aint's Times Hard: Political And Social Comment In
After 1927's Mississippi floods, the Red Cross raised $17 million in aid money. Food was free for whites but their black neighbors had to pay - in 'Red Cross' stores. Farmers worried that their workforces wouldn't return, so some workers were detained or used for forced labor. Things hardly improved for the rest of the 1930s. The era's hardships were the inspiration of many Blues songs. In 1933, Walter Roland recorded two versions of Red Cross Blues, in which the singer tells his woman he's reluctant to visit the store. Lucille Bogan gave the woman's view in her Red Cross Man and guitarist Sonny Scott recorded two versions of Red Cross Store along with Coal Mountain Blues. But let Walter Davis speak for the many. He sings: 'Uncle Sam's flag is painted, painted red, white and blue. So if the Red Cross won't help us, what in the world is we going to do, My little children was screaming, crying, Papa, we ain't got no home. The Red Cross has cut us off, man, and left us all alone.' The New Deal was meant to banish these problems, but it merely compounded them. The schemes' names produced acronyms like PWA, WPA, CWA, RFC and CCC that were all grist to the blues mill. Opinion was split - some welcomed them, others didn't. Walter Roland approved: 'You know that CWA, they'll pay you nine-sixty a week. You don't have to worry about that Welfare, something to eat.' On the other hand, if any suffering was to be done, whites wouldn't be doing it, as Casey Bill Weldon's WPA Blues showed. His landlord comes to his door one day: 'He said, You have to move if you can't pay. And then he turned and he slowly walked away ... The Depression had more or less dissipated as the 1930s came to an end. With WW2, the US economy burgeoned. There was work for all. But when the war ended in 1945, industry returned to normal and jobs disappeared. The blues recorded it all. As well as being stunning musically, this collection will inform anybody interested in US history.
