BY
C HUES
February 13, 2021
In Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues”, the speaker describes a blues singer who does not simply play the blues, but he embodies the spirit, culture, and way of life associated with the blues. The poem substantiates that blues is not just a type of music, but blues is also the musical expression of the depression, strife, and suffering that African Americans had to endure throughout America. “The Weary Blues” shows that blues music originates from slavery and functions as an outlet for the torture and discrimination that African Americans underwent during the era of slavery and the Jim Crow era. Hughes uses onomatopoeia and alliteration throughout the poem to fully express the impact that blues has had on the singer.
In the poem, the speaker says that the blues singer “played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.”[1] Author Stephen J. Nicholson notes that blues music has its roots in ragtime and often has repeating lines:
“On February 1, 2003, Congress passed a Senate resolution that 2003 be named the “Year of the Blues”, commemorating its discovery by W.C. Handy. A ragtime bandleader, Handy was sitting on the train platform in Tutwiler, Mississippi, waiting to travel to his next engagement. Next to him, a sharecropper with a guitar, whom Handy identifies only as a “ragged Negro”, began strumming the twelve-bar tune chords and singing the three line structure that would come to be called the blues. In this version it’s an AAA structure, not the typical AAB pattern:
I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog,
I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog,
I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog.
Though a simple line, it manages to portray the depth of the blues in its expression of restlessness.”[2]
Similarly, in “The Weary Blues”, Hughes uses the speaker of the poem to portray the blues singer as being restless and exasperated. The restlessness of the blues singer is implied by the word “Weary”[3] in the poem’s title, “The Weary Blues”. The word “weary” means “1. physically or mentally exhausted by hard work, exertion, strain, etc.; fatigued; tired: weary eyes; a weary brain. 2. characterized by or causing fatigue: a weary journey. 3. impatient or dissatisfied with something (often followed by of): weary of excuses. 4. characterized by or causing impatience or dissatisfaction; tedious; irksome: a weary wait.”[4] African Americans have had much to become weary of from the era of slavery and into Jim Crow (when the poem was published). White supremacists used both physical and sexual violence to intimidate and antagonize black Americans. After being physically beaten, tortured, and overworked during slavery, black men subsequently faced lynching and more physical pain during Jim Crow: “Across the South, Jim Crow and Judge Lynch were triumphant. Black people were subject to vicious but legal discrimination, voting restraints, violent customs, and state-sanctioned terror that negated their rights and blighted their hopes. A half century after the horrific war to end slavery, black people in the South were again living in near slavery.”[5] Author Danielle L. McGuire speaks of the torment that black women had to suffer during the era of slavery and Jim Crow: “The sexual exploitation of black women by white men had its roots in slavery and continued throughout the better part of the twentieth century…The rape of black women by white men continued, often unpunished, throughout the Jim Crow era.”[6] The deep suffering felt by African Americans and the weariness of slavery and Jim Crow is felt throughout the poem, and the repetition of several lines add to the sadness that the blues singer feels. This repetition is explained in detail in author Stephen J. Nicholson’s Getting the Blues, in which he writes,
“A technical pattern could be ascribed…the second line repeats the first, and the third is a response or an answer. Consider Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1927 recording of an often-heard blues song:
I’m sittin’ here thinkin’ will a matchbox hold my
clothes
I’m sittin’ here thinkin’ will a matchbox hold my
Clothes
Ain’t got so many matches, but I sure got a long way
to go.”[7]
In “The Weary Blues”, Hughes uses (a slight variation of) this technique when the singer first begins,
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit my frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf”[8]
The first and second lines repeat (with slight variation), “Ain’t got nobody”,[9] while the third and fourth lines both function as an answer to the singer’s loneliness and depression.
In Howlin Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning”, some of the lyrics read:
Ah oh, smokestack lightnin’
Shinin’ just like gold
Why don’t ya hear me cryin’?
A whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whoo
Whoa oh tell me, baby
What’s the matter with you?
Why don’t ya hear me cryin’?
Whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whooo
Whoa oh tell me, baby
Where did ya, stay last night?
A-why don’t ya hear me cryin’?
Whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whooo
Whoa oh, stop your train
Let her go for a ride
Why don’t ya hear me cryin’?
Whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whooo[10][11]
In the lyrics, much like in “The Weary Blues”, Howlin’ Wolf repeats certain lines and words several times: “Why don’t ya hear me cryin?” and a corresponding wail of “Whoo hoo”.[12] In “The Weary Blues”, the blues singer repeats the phrases “Ain’t got nobody in all this world”, “Got the Weary the Blues”, and “Can’t be satisfied”.[13] The speaker notes that even after “The singer stopped playing and went to bed”, that “The Weary Blues echoed through his head.”[14] Although the singer finishes his song and his performance, the blues sticks with him afterwards. The singer is not merely singing the blues, but he feels the blues incessantly. Indeed, Nicholson says of the blues, “This is the nonmusical approach to defining the blues, what The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians refers to as defining the blues as a “state of mind” …Blues is a feeling, and a particularly low, if not moribund, one.”[15]
Langston Hughes portrays the place that the singer performs the blues with lowly, unkempt, and almost ghastly terminology: “I heard a Negro play / Down on Lennox Avenue the other night / By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light”.[16] The blues player is not playing at an acclaimed and prestigious club in an area of town where whites mainly visit, but he is playing at a spot “in the heart of Harlem”[17] near “an old gas light.”[18] The piano is described as “poor” and the stool is described as “rickety.”[19] “Rickety means “likely to fall or collapse; shaky” or “old, dilapidated, or in disrepair.”[20] The singer is playing the blues in a place that would be typically associated with the music: “A humorous attempt at defining the blues establishes its criteria: traveling by Greyhound counts, but not traveling by plane; driving Chevys, Fords, broken-down trucks, and an occasional Cadillac qualifies, but driving Volvos and BMWs doesn’t. The blues may be found in such places as a jailhouse, morgue, room with an empty bed, back highway, or the bottom of an empty bottle, but not at Nordstrom’s, the mall, a gallery opening, or the golf course.”[21] The blues is not associated with ostentatious or glamorous places or things, rather it is associated with homely, disheveled, and faulty things.
Further, Hughes uses words that convey a theme of contrast between blackness and whiteness, which is common throughout many of his poems. “[T]he pale dull pallor of an old gas light” is antithetical to both the darkness of the night and the darkness of the singer, a black man described as having “ebony hands”.[22] “Pallor” is defined as “unusual or extreme paleness, as from fear, ill health, or death; wanness.”[23] The “pallor” not only contrasts with the blackness of the night and the singer, but it also connects with the blues singer’s desire to die, as he wails: “I ain’t happy no mo’ / And I wish that I had died.”[24] After he finishes playing, the singer “slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.”[25] The ghostly symbolism of the pallor emanating from the “old gas light”[26] reflects the speaker’s “state of mind”[27] or his constant feeling of blues. When the speaker talks about how the blues musician sings “far into the night”, he says that “The stars went out and so did the moon.”[28] The brightness and glow of the stars and the moon contrast the darkness of the night. Similarly, the blues singer’s “ebony hands” contrast the “ivory keys”[29] on the piano.
Hughes uses onomatopoeia[30] throughout the poem to show that the singer’s blues is an expression that extends into other objects or things and affects them. The blues are so powerful that they have an almost supernatural ability to transcend their limitations as a musical form. The speaker mentions of the blues musician, “With his ebony hands on each ivory key / He made that poor piano moan with melody.”[31] The singer feels pain and suffering because of having the blues, but as he plays the piano, this same pain is then transferred onto the piano. “Moan” means “a prolonged, low, inarticulate sound uttered from or as if from physical or mental suffering.”[32] The line is repeated later in the poem, “I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan”;[33] it is as if the “Negro” and the piano are one and the same. Hughes uses onomatopoeia again with the lines, “Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor”[34] to describe the blues singer. Also, the line uses alliteration[35] and repeats the sounds of “t” and “f”. Hughes uses alliteration in several other lines, such as “Droning a drowsy syncopated tune”[36] with an emphasis on “d”, “s”, and “t” sounds. The line “He made that poor piano moan with melody”[37] also uses alliteration with the repetition of “m” and “p” sounds. “The Weary Blues” is a poem that reveals the blues to be beyond any musical genre. The blues are a cultural and social journey that African Americans experienced and then put into musical expression. Langston Hughes uses several techniques such as alliteration and onomatopoeia to show the extensive power and rhythmic structure of the blues.
[1] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. P 912.
[2] Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation. Stephen J. Nichols · 2008.
[3] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. P 912.
[4] Weary. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/weary?s=t. Accessed February 13, 2021.
[5] Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf. James Segrest, Mark Hoffman · 2012. Chapter 1: Poor Boy, p 2. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Moanin_at_Midnight/BSZTfrr2YkEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=howlin+wolf+smokestack+lightning&printsec=frontcover
[6] Danielle L. McGuire. At the Dark End of the Street” Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. Xviii. Vintage Books. Random House, Inc. New York. 2010. First Vintage Books Ed., 2011. ISBN: 978-0-307-38924-4.
[7] Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation. Stephen J. Nichols · 2008. P 23. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Getting_the_Blues/GIWoxdMdiHwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=blues+music&printsec=frontcover .
[8] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. P 912.
[9] Ibid.
[10] The Riffology. Wise Publications. Smokestack Lightning, Howlin’ Wolf. The Howlin Wolf, Album 1969. Chess Records. Original: 1950s. June 17, 2010. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Riffology/bU5SDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=howlin+wolf+smokestack+lightning&pg=PT113&printsec=frontcover.
[11] https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Howlin-Wolf/Smokestack-Lightning. Lyrics written and recorded by Burnett, Chester (aka Howlin’ Wolf).
[12] Ibid.
[13] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation. Stephen J. Nichols · 2008 P 23. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Getting_the_Blues/GIWoxdMdiHwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=blues+music&printsec=frontcover . P 22.
[16] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Rickety. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rickety?s=t. Accessed February 13, 2021.
[21] Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation. Stephen J. Nichols · 2008 P 23. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Getting_the_Blues/GIWoxdMdiHwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=blues+music&printsec=frontcover . P 22.
[22] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[23] Pallor. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pallor?s=t. Accessed February 13, 2021.
[24] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation. Stephen J. Nichols · 2008 P 23. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Getting_the_Blues/GIWoxdMdiHwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=blues+music&printsec=frontcover . P 22.
[28] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Onomatopoeia: 1. the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent. 2. a word so formed. 3. the use of imitative and naturally suggestive words for rhetorical, dramatic, or poetic effect. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/onomatopoeia#. Accessed February 13, 2021.
[31] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[32] Moan. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/moan?s=t. Accessed February 13, 2021.
[33] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Alliteration: the commencement of two or more stressed syllables of a word group either with the same consonant sound or sound group (consonantal alliteration ), as in from stem to stern, or with a vowel sound that may differ from syllable to syllable (vocalic alliteration ), as in each to all. Compare consonance (def. 4a).
the commencement of two or more words of a word group with the same letter, as in apt alliteration’s artful aid. Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/alliteration?s=t. Accessed February 13, 2021.
[36] The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005. Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues. 1926. 912.
[37] Ibid.