In this column: medicine shows, Leo Kahdot, Chief Thundercloud, Arthur “Peg Leg Sam” Jackson, Pink Anderson, Jim Jackson, Gus Cannon, Washaw Indian Medicine Show, Marshal Wyatt (Good for what ails you), Pete Lowry, My Money Never Runs Out, He’s In The Jailhouse Now, Delia’s Song, Nassau String Band, Johnny Cash
Amongst the early outlets for the performance of the blues were the minstrel shows and medicine shows. These shows were traveling shows staged from horse-drawn wagons or tents.
Medicine shows, from roughly the end of the Civil War (1865) through the 1940s, provided a frequent and vital form of rural entertainment throughout North Carolina and the South. The purpose was to sell "medicines", ‘guaranteed’ to be efficacious and usually accomplishing this, at least in the short term, by containing a considerable amount of alcohol, cocaine, heroin or opium, which dulled the symptoms of an illness.
Entertainment
To attract customers, the shows hired performers including musicians and singers, and very often incorporating both black and white performers, with either or both in blackface, a somewhat modulated continuation of minstrelsy.
Medicine shows also served as the training ground for hundreds of blues and "hillbilly" musicians and comedians, who lacked few alternate venues until the development of radio after World War I.
Performers
Touring medicine shows provided the first outlet for professional performers other than local dances. Best-known names Nationally were: Roy Acuff, Jimmie Rodgers and Sonny Terry. Other artists with North Carolina connections who worked the medicine shows included Homer "Pappy" Sherrill, Dewitt "Snuffy" Jenkins, "Greasy" Medlin, Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson, Clarence "Tom" Ashley, Pink Anderson, Curley Sechler, and Doc Tommy Scott.
Many noted bluesmen spent time on these shows including artists like Frank Stokes, Jim Jackson, Gus Cannon, Howard Armstrong, Pink Anderson and The Rev. Gary Davis.
Interview 1972: Pete Lowry interviews Peg Leg Sam
Chief Thundercloud, Pink Anderson and Peg Leg Sam
Sometimes medicine shows were led by an American Indian entertainer. A famous example is Leo Kahdot, a Potawatomie Indian from Oklahoma. As "Chief Thundercloud," Kahdot had begun his career as a vaudeville piano and trumpet player and became a fixture, along with other musicians, on the medicine show circuit. In his heyday he traveled will a full cast of comediennes, dancers, singers and musicians, numbering as many as sixteen.
This show was one of the last true medicine shows who was still hawking “Prairie King Liniment” from the tailgate of his station wagon at fairs and carnivals in the Southeast in the early 70’s. In later years his lone partner was Arthur “Peg Leg Sam” Jackson, a medicine show veteran who learned the ropes back in the 30’s from Pink Anderson.
A medicine show (Marshall Wyatt)
A performance commenced at sundown, on a wooden platform framed with striped canvas and lit with kerosene torches, or possibly a string of electric lights powered by a portable generator.
The banjoist might render a medley of familiar tunes. Next came a rapid-fire exchange of jokes and patter between Jake and a straight man, then more music and dancing, followed by the Professor’s first pitch of the evening, often for an inexpensive product like soap or candy to soften customers for things to come.
The entertainment continued with specialty acts, such as mind-reading or magic, alternating with comic songs, contests, and slapstick.
The doc would probably deliver three lectures at crucial intervals during the course of a two-hour show, each promoting a different remedy.
Showmen knew that a buying fervor was best cultivated in an atmosphere of sustained excitement. Typically, as the pitchman completed his harangue, entertainers dashed into the crowd, brandishing bottles of the doctor’s elixir, while a contingent of musicians remained on the platform to strike up a raucous tune.
If the doctor’s pitch had ”turned the tip” then such calculated chaos would cement the deal. Performers, rapidly exchanged their bottles for dollar bills, and created a sense urgency with cries of “S·o-o-ld Out, Doc!” as they rushed back to the stage to replenish their supply.
The evening’s performance closed with an afterpiece, often a stock comedy routine or perhaps a promised special attraction, such as snake handling or sharp shooting, saved for last in order to discourage early departures.
On the final day in town, a ”blow off” was not uncommon, that is, high-pressure selling used to liquidate remaining stock before moving on.
Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-1937, Marshall Wyatt.
Pink and Peg Leg doing sketches (audio)
Music that became known through medicine shows
“My Money Never Runs Out” has roots from the turn of the century and was composed by Irving Jones and published in 1900. In 1930 Gus Cannon recorded the song with his band Cannon’s Jug Stompers.
Cannon launched his medicine show career in 1914 when he joined Doc Stokey of Clarksdale, Mississippi.
He later joked that Stokey’s tonic sold “one bottle for a quarter, or three for a dollar!”
A tour with Doc Benson’s show took Cannon to Chicago in 1927, where he auditioned for Paramount Records and recorded a session with ace guitar picker Blind Blake.
Gus Cannon and his Jug Stompers – My Money Never Runs Out
He's in the jailhouse now
The origins of the song “He’s In The Jailhouse Now” aren’t clear but it was performed as early as 1919 by Marshall & Davis, a black vaudeville team and became a favorite of black traveling shows and jug band in the 1920’s.
The song was recorded by Jim Jackson, Gus Cannon, Whistler’s Jug Band, Blind Blake among others.
Jim Jackson – He’s In The Jailhouse Now (1927)
Delia's Song
The original of Delia's Song was written by McClintock from Clinton, South Carolina. In 1923 collected a version of Delia Holmes, later better known as Delia or Delia’s Gone, and he published the words in the Southern Folklore Quarterly Vol. 1 No. 4 (December, I937, p. 3-7) under the subtitle of “A Neglected Negro Ballad”.
"Delia, oh, Delia Delia all my life
If I hadn't have shot poor Delia I'd have had her for my wife
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone"
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