’Cause he wus a nigger right through and through.
There were still other companions to these in Slippery Jim, Slewfoot Pete, and Ann-Eliza Stone, “mean wid her habbits on” and breaking up the “jamboree.”[30] A common phrase, indeed, threatened always to “break up dis jamboree” in exchange for slighting one’s “repertation.”
[27] Cited by Dr. E. C. L. Adams of Columbia, S. C.
[28] The Negro and His Songs, page 164 seq.
[29] A study of Negro crime directed by J. F. Steiner, for the Institute for Research in Social Science, at the University of North Carolina.
[30] See Swan and Abbot, in Eight Negro Songs, New York, 1923.
Many are the bad men, and vivid the descriptions. Said one, “Lawd, cap’n, take me till tomorrow night to tell ’bout dat boy. Eve’ybody skeered uv him. John Wilson jes nachelly bully, double j’inted, awful big man, didn’t fear ’roun’ nobody. Would break up ev’y do he ’tended. Go to picnic, take all money off’n table. Couldn’t do nothin’ wid him. Seen feller shoot at him nine times once an’ didn’t do nothin’ to him, an’ he run an’ caught up wid feller an’ bit chunk meat out o’ his back, ... but one man got him wid britch loader an’ stop ’im from suckin’ eggs.”
We have found no black bad-man ballads superior to the old ones, Railroad Bill, Stagolee, That Bully of this Town, Desperado Bill, Eddy Jones, Joe Turner, Brady,[31] and the others. And yet, the current stories sung on the road are more accurate portrayals of actual characters and experiences, and perhaps less finished songs, less formal rhyme. Take Lazarus, for instance, a hard luck story, portraying something of Negro sympathy, burial custom, general reaction. Here is a character more to be pitied than censured, according to his companions. Listen to three pick-and-shovel men, tracing “po’ Lazarus” from the work camp where he, poor foolish fellow, robbed the commissary camp and then took to his heels. Thence between the mountains where the high sheriff shot him down, back to the camp and burying ground, with mother, wife, brothers, sisters, comrades weeping, attending the funeral, where they “put po’ Lazarus away at half pas’ nine.”
[31] The Negro and His Songs, pages 196-212.
Bad Man Lazarus