How Beyoncé’s crossover country and a Black harmonica player of the 1930s got me back to making music

My taste in music is nothing if not eclectic. It runs toward Anglo-Celtic fiddle tunes, southern Appalachian ballads, trad Irish, Swedish and Norwegian gammaldans, English folk melodies, roots reggae, blues, African American spirituals, Southern gospel and early American shape-note hymns — practically anything, in other words, that isn’t slick and commercial.

So I wasn’t prepared to be inspired by Beyoncé.

And I never, ever imagined her music would lead me to some kind of spiritual awakening.

But the spirit moves where the spirit will. I wasn’t inspired so much by her songs, although I’m realizing now what a spectacular vocalist she is, as the publicity she’s given to other Black country artists.

And that, in turn, inspired me to get out an old harmonica.

Here’s how it all came down. Beyoncé’s first crossover country hit, “Texas Hold ‘Em” didn’t do much for me. I learned a long time ago, the hard way, I have no particular aptitude for poker — and Texas line dancing is similarly beyond my capabilities. So I watched a couple of the amateur YouTube videos that proliferated when the song came out, and quickly went on to other Black crossover artists whose names came up in her publicity. Ray Charles. Charlie Pride. And so on.

And that’s when I discovered, or rediscovered, DeFord Bailey (whose first name is pronounced DEE-ford); the legendary blues harp player who literally opened for the Grand Ole Opry in 1927. That, in turn, inspired me to pick up the harmonica again.

Bailey was best known for train songs that imitated the chuffing of a steam locomotive, like his “Pan American Blues” (named for an L&N passenger train that ran from Cincinati to New Orleans). His moment of fame came Dec. 10, 1927, when he opened a local country music show with the tune on Nashville’s WSM radio.

“For the past hour,” said the announcer, “we have been listening to music largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present The Grand Ole Opry.”

Drawing on a standard account by David C. Morton and Charles K. Wolfe, writer-in-residence Frye Gaillard of the University of South Alabama picks up the story:

Bailey followed with his harmonica solo, “swooping in one phrase,” wrote Morton and Wolfe, “from a loud, braying trainlike phrase to a gentle, fluttering arpeggio.” Opry audiences were dazzled by his talent, and he quickly became one of the biggest stars in country music — “the Harmonica Wizard,” as [station manager George] Hay often put it.

While his greatest fame derived from novelty songs, Bailey was an accomplished musician in a variety of genres. But he was dogged by the casual racism of his time and place, and his radio career ended in 1941. Gaillard continues:

For more than 15 years, Bailey was a legend. But then in 1941, he was abruptly fired from the Grand Ole Opry, caught in the curious crossfire of a corporate battle to license new songs. He was a stylist more than a composer, taking old tunes he learned as a boy, or those he liked by other artists, and creating renditions distinctively his own. He didn’t understand the sudden demand that he write new songs, which could then be licensed by BMI, a new enterprise supported by the Opry.

George Hay, adding an ugly dimension to the story, described the firing this way: “Like some members of his race and others, DeFord was lazy. He knew about a dozen numbers, which he put on the air and recorded for a major company, but he refused to learn any more, even though the reward was great. He was our mascot and is still loved by the entire company.”

That account was disputed, not least by Bailey himself. But the firing stuck and the now-former “harmonica wizard” opened a shoeshine parlor in downtown Nashville. Other than a few special performances in the 1970s, when blues artists were rediscovered, his musical career was over.

Bailey died in 1982, and Roy Acuff spoke at his funeral. Says Gaillard:

In his graveside tribute, Acuff, who joined the Opry cast in 1938 and soon became known as “the King of Country Music,” remembered how in the early days he liked to perform with Bailey because he “could draw a crowd when nobody knew Roy Acuff.” He called for Bailey’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

“If his name is ever on the ballot,” Acuff said, “he’ll have one vote from Roy Acuff.”

Eventually Bailey was inducted into the Hall of Fame, but that didn’t come until 2006.

Fast forward to 2024.

For reasons too complicated to go into here, blues harp requires skills I haven’t mastered. But as I listened to Bailey’s tracks available on YouTube, I called up “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” (you can hear it above). His tempo and phrasing were definitely bluesy, but the old spiritual has a simple melody I could match note for note with my limited skills.

So began an improbable series of coincidences that led me to — well, maybe not quite a spiritual awakening but something that’s deeply satisfying, whatever you call it.

Rummaging around in the unlicensed flea market I call my home office, and found a couple of harmonicas I’d started to play years ago (If you’re so inclined, you can read the back story HERE). One my mother-in-law bought for me on the spur of the moment in a Cracker Barrel, and the other was a D harp I’d been trying to learn for a dulcimer-friendly slow jam before the COVID-19 pandemic came along and everything changed.

Flash forward from 2020 to the spring of 2023. I’d been playing the mountain dulcimer at home, fully intending to get back to the jam sessions, throughout the pandemic and, after I was diagnosed with cancer, through several months of chemotherapy. But last April I had a radical cystectomy, and, for various reasons, it was just too damn much trouble after the surgery to play a mountain dulcimer on my lap. I kept intending to start making music again, but never got around to it.

Finally, after some other complications from the surgery that landed me back in the hospital and several CT scans that were “concerning” in the guarded language preferred by doctors, I got back a CT scan last month that was deemed “unremarkable.” More guarded language, but good news this time! It doesn’t mean I’m cured. The type of cancer I’ve got doesn’t go away. But it does mean it seems to be under control for now. No one knows what tomorrow will bring — we never do anyway — but that’s good enough for me.

One more coincidence: About the time the CT scan came back, I was reading the biblical scholar Elaine Pagels. Author of several books on biblical history, the figure of Satan in the Hebrew Bible and the extracanonical Gnostic gospels, Pagels lost her husband in 1988. In an autobiographical book titled Why Religion? she recalls the time, two years after his death, when she was able to go back to her scholarly writing:

[…] For those who find suffering inevitable — in other words, for any of us who can’t dodge and pretend it’s not there — acknowledging what actually happens is necessary, even if it takes decades, as it has for me. How, then, to go on living, without giving in to despair? I recalled lines from Wallace Stevens: “After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends. / No was the night. Yes is this present sun.” Only when I began to awaken in the morning and see the sunlight, grateful for its warmth, could I dive into the secret gospels again.

The poem by Wallace Stevens is “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard” (the italics in the quoted passage are Pagels’). How to go on living without despair? Or — with stage 4 cancer. After the final no there comes a yes. I can’t make heads or tales¹ out of the rest of the poem, but for obvious reasons, the quote stayed with me.

Yes is this present sun. Yes. Let’s make the best use of whatever time I’ve got left. And, then, when I heard DeFord Bailey playing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” all of these coincidences came together. Yes, I thought. He’s playing (most of the time) in first position. I could do that.

And that’s as close to a full-blown spiritual awakening as I’m likely ever to have.

By their fruits — and toots — shall ye know them, I guess. Next thing I knew, I was rummaging around in my home office looking for those old harmonicas.

Notes

¹ I meant to write “heads or tails.” But sometimes my typos are so much fun, I can’t bear to correct them! Considering the importance I place on narrative, I suspect a Freudian slip. Anyway, I can’t get a story line, or tale, out of Stevens either. So the typo stands as written.

Links and Citations

Frye Galliard, “A Parable of Integrity and Survival,” Chapter 16 [Humanities Tennessee], Aug. 9, 2023 https://chapter16.org/a-parable-of-integrity-and-survival/.

Anne E. Johnson, “DeFord Bailey: The Harmonica Wizard,” Copper, March 6, 2023 https://www.psaudio.com/blogs/copper/deford-bailey-the-harmonica-wizard.

Elaine Pagels, Why Religion?: A Personal Story (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2018): 175.

Wallace Stevens, “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard,” rpt. Writer’s Almanac, with Garrison Keillor, Minnesota Public Radio, Dec. 1, 2002 https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2002%252F12%252F01.html

Charles Wolfe, “Bailey, DeFord,” Tennessee Encyclopedia https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/deford-bailey/.

Wikipedia  DeFord Bailey, Frye Gaillard, Elaine Pagels, Pan-American (train),

[Uplinked April 9, 2024]