‘Last Kind Words Blues’: History’s most harrowing blues song
Rock ‘n’ roll encapsulates the upbeat and celebratory sound of youthfulness and living life without a care. Following that, it’s something of an anomaly that one of its immediate, and arguably most defining progenitors is the blues. Today, the two are basically inseparable. Both are traditionalist genres kept alive in niche circles, and dominated by old men with electric guitars, pulling faces that suggest severe discomfort somewhere very private.
However, the real blues, the kind that was honed from the 1920s through to the 1940s, couldn’t be further from rock ‘n’ roll’s euphoric abandon. The former, as it was originally performed, was music highlighting stark, sometimes horrifying pain. It was the music borne out of living through the great depression and then finding out that life’s not really going to get any better because of the colour of your skin.
The soundtrack to your job hunt taking you from state to state in the vain hope that they haven’t outlawed you from holding certain positions there. It truly was the music of abject loneliness and sorrow. While it’s true that a lot of the blues is about taking those feelings and turning them into something constructive and cathartic, there are still more than a few songs as harrowing as any Cormac McCarthy book, at a fraction of the length.
On the surface, practically all of them fit the bill; there’s something unnerving even in the way these songs were recorded. Lonely, pleading voices, all long dead, backed by a solo guitar and shrouded by tape hiss—every stumble on the guitar, every cracked voice heightens the feeling that these are ghosts visiting you personally. There are a cavalcade of songs out there, and if you haven’t had the haunting pleasure of hearing them, I insist you give them a listen.
What are some of the most haunting blues songs ever recorded?
Robert Johnson’s entire recorded output is a good starting point. Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground’ is recorded proof that sometimes words just get in the way of conveying how you feel. The keening voice and guitar wizardry of Skip James on ‘Hard Times Killing Floor Blues’ touches something deep within me. However, when I heard ‘Last Kind Words Blues’ by Geeshie Wiley, I knew I’d found the song I wanted to talk about; the story behind it just confirmed it.
In 1930, Wiley and another woman named Elvie Thomas recorded a handful of songs for Paramount Records, one of them being a track Wiley sang solo, ‘Last Kind Words Blues’. Then they vanished without a trace, and nothing was heard of them afterwards. All that was left was Wiley’s harrowing treatise on being close to death at all times, and the acceptance that comes from that realisation. “If I get killed, please don’t bury my soul,” Wiley sings, “I prefer just leave me out, let the buzzards eat me whole.”
It’s a truly unforgettable listen. The wounded toughness of her voice as she sings of “the last kind words [she] heard [her] daddy say” before he left for “the German War” speaks of lessons hard learned and a hard life lived. It makes a lot of sense that, despite seemingly disappearing after the release of this record, as a direct result of hearing this song, many writers, musicians and filmmakers were inspired to investigate the life of Geeshie Wiley.
The varying tributes by John Jeremiah Sullivan, Rhiannon Giddens, Amanda Petrusich and Terry Zweig are as admirable as they are deep. I’d recommend beginning with Giddens’ cover of the song before reading Sullivan’s riveting New York Times article about her life, which can be found here. However, before all that, take in the song that started it all. It may be the most harrowing blues song ever, but thank God it saw the light of day.
