You Must be Crazy

You Must be “Crazy!” by L’Tanya Y. Gordon

It was a typical Friday night and as I hurried to sit out on the front porch, I always enjoyed seeing all of the familiar people, like yellow, brown and black puzzle pieces, starting to fit into their pre-assigned places on the jigsaw of another start of the weekend evening in Kansas City Missouri.

First as always was Ida Mae Perkins fresh off the bus, walking fast. Always places to go, things to do! Coming from work to play the Blues. Mr. Mercantile and Mrs. Adella Johnson speeding around the corner in their 1959 Ford Galaxie convertible laughing and kissing while holding their liquor bottle. Racing home to play the Blues. Litzy Mayhan restless for her man, languishing while leaning on her porch railing, with her gaggle of kids scampering all over the place. Always listening to another sad song of about lost love. Always, always the blues. I could smell the familiar fragrances of fine down-home soul food frying and simmering in all the kitchens. Friday’s meal would last till Sunday when the food festivities would climax into a full- blown feast. The aromas permeating the sultry, humid air as the sun started to go down. But most of all, I could hear my favorite, (and until adulthood, I didn’t know why) music, forcefully and yearningly seeping out of every window.

I knew it was called the Blues. And Man, oh Man, I learned everyone got the blues. Even White people got the Blues! Every memory I have since birth, falls somewhere into the outstretched arms of the Blues. To know it is and to really feel it is to go back to its roots. But like Blues has a beginning, for me the beginning was records. Those mystical coal-black, round as the moon, circular discs that whirled under the diamond needle of our record player. Right on schedule, grandma came out with two big brown paper bags overflowing with collard greens to pick. We called picking them when you would tear the leaves off the stems to wash and then boil them with pork or smoked turkey, into a swirling mash of delicious history. But the two main ingredients for me on Friday nights were storytelling and records playing the Blues.

My grandmother, while humming a blues song, as she sachet over to her cabinet that we weren’t allowed to open. It was locked other wise I would have opened it earlier! It was full of jewelry, papers, mementoes and old 78 records. She pulled out a record by Mamie Smith. She also showed me programs from some of Mamie’s venues. Some she had attended as a teen and some were from dates with my grandfather. I caressed, with my fingertips, those old programs and tried to force the face and voice of this beautiful, full-figured woman to flow into me her bravery and her talent. She told me how she had to fight against segregation and racism to have her career. About all the people she opened the doors for. How she accomplished what must have seen to have been crazy at that time! I wanted to be her but I could not sing. Although my family would have me and my siblings sing and dance and shake our hips. I was always pretending to be Mamie. My aunt was named Mamie I remembered. I looked at my grandmother and wondered if after a date with my grandfather, did they decide their first girl would be named after Mamie Smith. Little did I know at the time how the blues evoked passion for love and hate but not babies names!

She told me the first person who put the Blues on a record was Mamie Smith. Before any man. White or Colored! I was always impressed and amazed by someone who accomplished something first. The first is always the best because everyone else is following in your footsteps. You can’t beat that! I somehow knew in my heart that a woman had done it first. Mama said she was beautiful and successful. And everybody colored knew about her. Word of mouth and how her songs made you feel, kept her memory alive over the years. At the moment I first heard her, I realized I would do everything I could to find out about her out all about this wonderful creature, this mother and Queen of the Blues.

Getting back to my neighbors and family because they were my only resources of Mamie until the recent help of the wonderful internet. My grandmother’s favorite song by her was her first,” Crazy Blues” because how every time she heard it, she was young and beautiful again. She was still beautiful but now with long silver with hair.

I asked Ida Mae what was her favorite Mamie song and she said, “That thing called love,” because when she heard it always fell in love again. The loves didn’t last long but I know she just loved “loving!” The Johnsons told me their favorite of her’s was” My Sportin man.” Well, you know with the Cadillac and all the flash of Mercantile’s personality, that would be his favorite. As for Litzy she was stuck on a man that treated her bad and kept getting her pregnant then leaving. Her favorite song was, “You can’t keep a good man down.”

Mamie was born Mamie Robinson on May 26,1891, in Cincinnati, Ohio. By the age of ten, she was working as a vaudeville entertainer and touring with the Four Dancing Mitchells. She continued to tour with different groups until 1913. When she turned twenty, while working in Harlem, she married William “Smithy” Smith. In 1918 she was starring in Made in Harlem (which some texts referred to it as Maid of Harlem) which was a musical revue produced by Perry Bradford. He later composed her first and legendary recording of “Crazy Blues.”

The fact that she did this seemed crazy at the time because she was the first in an era where colored people weren’t allowed to do anything on that level. They became known as race records. Before the radio was in everyone’s home and definitely before television and the internet, this record soared by word of mouth. By the first week, she sold 10,000 copies. By the month, 75,000 copies and over 1,000,000 by that first year!

Mamie found herself suddenly wealthy. She was famous for driving her Lincoln up and down Harlem streets. She spent her money on Servants, clothing jewelry and even real estate while continuing to tour. She also appeared in many low- budget African American Films during the 40’s. Many copies of her were to follow. Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, (no relation) and the lists goes on. I guess it isn’t fair to call them copies because I have sang the blues many times as I’m sure you have.

I thought of Mamie many times throughout my life. When I was afraid to try something new or afraid to go for my dreams. When I wanted, then got, then lost that man, I thought of her. When I strove to first at something I always thought of her. And in my life I needed her cause there were a lot of blues.

I deliberately chose not to research how her life ended because in my heart it never will. And I don’t want to know. So, to me she will always be singing glamourous and beautiful. Giving everyone a way to express their blues!

She died, September 6, 1946.

“Human laws pattern divine laws, but Devine laws use only originals.” Mamie Smith