Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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and four women. One fed him and the other bought his clothes and shoes. These is the
men that wear ten-dollar Stetson hats and twenty-dollar gold pieces at their watch and
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Sharp-dressed men who lived off women were also just called sweetbacks, as in Frankie
Well I went down to Michigan, came up Grant
Saw the sweetbacks and the strutters all raising sand
a man might find himself working not only to support his wife or girlfriend, but the
sweetback papa she was secretly helping out on the side:
You never have nothing, long as you live in Sugarland
Because you working for a woman and a sweetback man
The term sweetback survived to become the name of the protagonist in the first
. The X-rated film starred
Melven Van Peebles as the sexually irresistible Sweetback (Peebles reportedly contracted
Bill Cosby.
Songs:
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T E RR APL A N E
T
Robert Johnson was only twenty-seven when he died in 1938, but he left behind twentynine
amazing songs, including many that became not only blues standards, but
the Johnson classics that are regularly covered by major recording artists, as well as
hammered out by amateurs at blues jams around the world.
Texas
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