'Lectric

As I finish a new painting, it's hard not to notice the irony in what I've been listening to lately for my painting-music. The painting itself is typically frilly-





















-but the music has been about as low-down as I get: Bessie Smith and several of her colleagues, the great women blues singers of the 20s and 30s. Mamie Smith, Margaret Johnson, Trixie Smith, Rosetta Howard, etc. Hard core blues only leavened, in the CD shuffle, by some Boswell Sisters and early Louis Armstrong.

One Bessie Smith recording in particular clings to me. There's something about the exquisite droning of the vocal line and the audacious text that keeps it replaying in my mind:



Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair

by George Brooks

Judge your honor hear my plea, before you open up your court
But I don't want no sympathy, 'cause I done cut my good man's throat

I caught him with a trifling Jane, I warned him 'bout before
I had my knife and went insane, and the rest you ought to know

Judge, judge, please mister judge, send me to the 'lectric chair
Judge, judge, good mister judge, let me go away from here

I wanna take a journey, to the devil down below
I done killed my man, I wanna reap just what I sow

Oh judge, judge, lordy lordy judge, send me to the 'lectric chair

Judge, judge, hear me judge, send me to the 'lectric chair
Judge, judge, send me there judge, I love him so dear,

I cut him with my barlow, I kicked him in the side
I stood here laughing ov'r him, while he wallowed ‘round and died

Oh judge, judge, lordy judge, send me to the 'lectric chair

Judge, judge, sweet mister judge, send me to the 'lectric chair
Judge, judge, good kind judge, burn me 'cause I don't care

I don't want no bondsmen man [?], to go my bail
I don't want to spend no, ninety-ninety years in jail

So judge, judge, good kind judge, send me to the 'lectric chair.