I finally watched Cadillac Records this weekend, and while I did like it (I’m a sucker sell for a movie like this), the part that effected me most was one frame of text at the end of the film in the run-down of what happened to the major players in the film. It was about Little Walter, who was Muddy Waters’ harmonica man (who also had some solo success), and it said simply that he was buried in a grave with no headstone, and that a headstone was purchased by fans years later.
This hit me so hard that I just sat there with the credits paused and tears welling up in my eyes. I know by now that reciprocity, people getting “what they deserve”, is not, and has never been, an operational law in this world, but it makes me so angry that someone who was as talented and influential didn’t even have the money for a proper funereal and burial while people who didn’t have a fraction of Little Walter’s talent have had hugely elaborate, hell, downright gaudy funerals with all kinds of hoopla and pouring out of sympathy from hundreds, thousands of strangers.
What makes me angrier is that Little Walter’s case is not an isolated incident. So many of the stories of the finest blues musicians end with “he died in poverty”. And some of them would also have died in obscurity if it weren’t for people like John Fahey (who, himself, was an influential musician who died in poverty and near-obscurity) who tracked down men like Bukka White and Skip James and brought them to that amazing Newport Folk Festival of 1964 that kick-started the “blues revival” of the ’60s. Sure, part of the reason these men died penniless was that they squandered much of their gains (but compare this to modern musicians who do the same thing – Pete Doherty, for an obvious example – who indulge in the same habits and aren’t hurting) , but these musicians were also taken advantage of in a time when black people were still viewed as somehow being subhuman (though plenty human enough for recording labels to make a buck off of – “race records” were a hot commodity in the time of segregation). The majority of the legendary blues musicians came up poor in the Mississippi Delta (even those considered “Chicago blues”, like Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson), and when these golden egg record contracts were handed to them – or what seemed like a golden egg to these impoverished people who were often being bilked by the same hand that was handing them the golden egg – many of them didn’t realize these fortunes would not last forever. They didn’t know rock ‘n’ roll was right around the corner, the child of the blues that would, essentially, shoot the blues in the back.
I’m grateful for the funds that have been established to help the old bluesmen who are still around (though there aren’t many left – keep holding on, T-Model Ford!) and other musicians, but it doesn’t help me feel any less angry about all the musicians who died before those funds existed. And it doesn’t make my heart ache any less for musicians today who work their asses off for fear of losing it all the next day.