Plow Jones (song)

A Bonus Track from the reissue of Draconian Messures

Players:

Elvin Anderson: Guitar, Vocals

BACKGROUND

The savage and heartless Story of The Stools really starts in the early 1950's, before there was even a band. American Folklorist and ethnomusicologist, a musical grave robber of sorts mewling for his daddy’s approval, Alan Lomax was collecting field recordings in the deep south, unaware Congress had cut off funding for the Library of Congress' folk song collection some ten years earlier.

Lomax as a prep school snob with a passing interest in music. He was also the proud product of The university of Texas at Austin, home of Matthew McConaughey, Rex Tillerson and Farrah Fawcett. It was in the storied halls of U of T that Laura Bush and Janis Joplin first learned to shotgun beers and on their Fields of Honor that a doughy Roger Clemens started injecting monkey hormones into his ass.

Alan Lomax was, of course, instrumental in cataloguing much of the music we now know as early Americana from the deep South. Remember, it was 1952. Gas was 20 cents a gallon. Mr. Potato Head was being touted as the new educational toy and the first issue of MAD Magazine had just hit the stands.

It is said that the lily whey-faced Lomax was afraid to venture into the "urban" parts of town, and he had to make due with the white folk and blues artists he could persuade to come to his hotel and sing and play into his newfangled Cordette Magnecord tape recorder.

One such artist was a young Elvin Anderson, who was lured into Lomax's make-shift studio with a promise of a ham sandwich and five dollars for every song he could play on his guitar.

That a young boy would go meet a grown man in his hotel room is unthinkable today, but this was the 1950's; a much simpler and innocent time. Anderson made 15 recordings that day. The most famous of which was his take on the traditional spiritual Plow Jones.

You can hear in Plow Jones that the legend Anderson’s upbringing must be true. The song literally drips with the zeitgeist of the sharecropper's son in the deep south. Stirring.

PLOW JONES

Plow Jones Plow Jones, he’s a jerk

He plowed your wife when you went to work

Plow Jones Plow Jones

Plow Jones Plow Jones, he’s douche

He’ll only plow you if you vote for LaRouche

Plow Jones Plow Jones

Plow Jones Plow Jones, he’s a scumbag

He plowed your blind brother while dressed in drag

Plow Jones Plow Jones

Plow Jones Plow Jones, he’s a choad

He plowed your neighbor but missed the road

Plow Jones Plow Jones

Plow Jones Plow Jones, he’s a tool

He plowed your cat and then your mule

Plow Jones Plow Jones

Plow Jones Plow Jones, he’s a dick

He plowed Eleanor Roosevelt as she bent over the salt lick

Plow Jones Plow Jones

Plow Jones Plow Jones, he’s a shit-heel

He plowed the snow up over my automobile

Plow Jones Plow Jones

The story goes that the 1952 field recording of Plow Jones was finished just moments before the hotel detectives threw a young Elvin Anderson out into the street and held Alan Lomax for suspicion of violating the Mann Act.

Elvin Anderson was a waif, of sorts. It was as if he grew up in a Dickens' novel, only he was kicking around the American South, not London. Having left the cotton fields for the city and surviving by his wits and his guitar. His parents had left the fields even before Elvin and didn’t bother telling him where they were going.

Sharecropping, or wage slavery as it is better known, has a long and noble connection with popular music. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Waylon Jennings, and Jim Carey all did their time in the fields.

Of course, Elvin Anderson’s mother and father weren’t always sharecroppers. In fact, they did rather well for themselves until Little Elvin’s arrival. His father, Julian Anderson, was a strapping six-foot-tall transvestite blues singer on the vaudeville stage. He made his debut in Jerome Kern’s Mr. Wix of Wickham as Tottie Travers, a role originated on Broadway by Cecile Mayer. Julian would also pick up money on the side as a boxer, created his own Beauty Tip Magazine for Women and his own line of beauty creams, which failed because of their high Paraben, Formaldehyde and Tap Water content.

The popular Julian created the Mamie Smith Model for blues singers: big floppy hats, elaborate dresses and flashy jewelry along with the AAB song form. A litany of singers named Smith followed suit, Trixie, Alberta, Clara and, of course, Bessie among others.

Julian Anderson seemed to have scored his big break, a recording session with Perry Bradford, the noted producer and author of the songs Crazy Blues and That Thing Called Love, but Mamie Smith caught wind of the session and sharply kicked Julian’s ass for him in the ally behind his Japanese dress-makers shop, hijacking the session for herself. This led to Smith getting a deal with Okeh Records, and Anderson being consigned to the abatis of history.

When Julian’s roommate/mother, Bess, passed, he married Crinoline Eltinge, a society gal with bobbed hair and even bobbeder hemlines. She gave birth to Elvin in short order, they having, Ate Their Supper Before They Said Grace, as the song goes.

Elvin Anderson has offered no explanation on why the well to do family ended up in the cotton fields, and it is suspected that the family’s troubles might have been mythmaking on the part of Anderson.

There are so many myths and urban legends surrounding The Stools, and rock in general. I hope we can go a long way towards clearing some of those up. For instance, the one about Led Zeppelin, the mud shark and the groupie. I think everyone has heard that one. First off, it wasn't Led Zeppelin, it was Vanilla Fudge, who were the opening act on that tour. It wasn't a groupie, it was a housekeeper from the hotel and, of course, it wasn't a mud shark, it was Antonio Moretti from The Stools...

But back to the story at hand:

Three weeks later, when the irate Lomax got out of jail, he tracked down the young Elvin Anderson at the Caddies Lounge in the local country club, and got him to record one last song, one I really love, the traditional classic, Pheasant Plucking Blues…

Unfortunately, the lawyers at Dutchco say that I can’t share audio of Plow Jones or Pheasant Plucking Blues yet, because the records haven’t ‘dropped’, as the kids say, but trust me; they are great. Be sure to check them out when the Remastered Draconian Messures album comes out next week.