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Last Kind Words Blues

music and words by Geeshie Wiley

WE DON’T KNOW VERY MUCH about Geeshie Wiley and, until recently, we knew nothing. All we had was three records – six sides – made in Grafton, Wisconsin, in 1930 with another singer and guitarist named Elvie Thomas. And we knew nothing of her, either. The two women had apparently come from nowhere, made their recordings, then vanished.

But in 2014, John Jeremiah Sullivan wrote up years of musical sleuthing for The New York Times Magazine, revealing the following: Elvie Thomas was really L.V. Thomas (she herself was unsure what the initials stood for), born L.V. Grant in Houston, Texas in 1891. She quit school at the age of eleven and supported herself by playing the guitar. By 1961, when she was found and interviewed back in Houston, by blues historian Mack McCormick, she had left her playing far behind her. The only singing she did by then was in the choir of her local Mount Pleasant Baptist church, long since having abandoned the ‘sporting life’. She died in 1979.

L.V. Thomas told McCormick about the trip to Wisconsin with Geeshie Wiley, who she said was sixteen years younger than her. Geeshie’s real name was Lillie May Wiley, and L.V. had given her the nickname, except that it was Geetchie – pronounced ‘Gitchie’. We can hear L.V. calling to her in what sounds like rehearsed banter at the beginning of one of the recordings, ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’. L.V. insisted to McCormick that she’d neither seen nor heard from Geeshie Wiley since they last toured together in 1933, but she’d heard in the 1950s that Geeshie was living in West Texas. McCormick told Sullivan he felt sure L.V. was hiding something.

Sullivan’s own investigations led him to conclude that Geeshie was born Lillie Mae Scott in Louisiana in 1908 and that she may have stabbed her husband, Thornton Wiley, to death in 1931. Taking into account family reminiscences of L.V. as unusual, masculine, deep voiced and trouser-wearing, the music critic Greil Marcus thinks it possible that the two women were a couple. We may never know. But we have their recordings.

On three of the recordings, L.V. sang and played lead guitar, with Geeshie on second guitar. On the others, including ‘Last Kind Words Blues’, their roles were reversed. ‘Last Kind Words Blues’ is the best known of the six recordings, and both the singing and guitar playing are remarkable. The song itself is more remarkable still.

First there’s the structure. The song is like an eight-bar blues, but because Geeshie routinely adds two or three beats to the fourth bar and about six beats to the final bar, it’s more like a nine- or ten- bar blues. And that’s if it’s a blues at all. The song is in A minor – blues are rarely in minor keys – each verse going to E major/minor and B major, before ending firmly in E minor.

Marcus stresses something L.V. Thomas told McCormick. She said she began playing the guitar in 1902 and that there was blues ‘even back then’. Marcus suggests that we may conclude from this that L.V. recalled a time when there wasn’t blues, a time before the blues, and that she carried this memory with her in her music. It’s speculative – like everything else about these singers and this song – but given L.V.’s contribution to the recording as second guitar player, it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the song as a pre-blues, which would explain its structure.

Then there’s the words.

The last kind words I heard my daddy say

Lord, the last kind words I heard my daddy say

If I die, if I die in the German war

I want you to send my body, send it to my mother in law

If I get killed, if I get killed, please don’t bury my soul

I prefer just leave me out, let the buzzards eat me whole

When you see me comin’ look ’cross the rich man’s field

If I don’t bring you flour, I’ll bring you bolted meal

I went to the depot, I looked up at the sun

Cried, some train don’t come, there’ll be some walkin’ done

My mama told me, just before she died

Lord, precious daughter, don’t you be so wild

The Mississippi river, you know it’s deep and wide

I can stand right here, see my face from the other side

What you do to me baby it never gets outta me

I may not see you after I cross the deep blue sea

Marcus has taken a considerable interest in this song, writing about it more than once and at length in his book Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations. He points out, in particular, the oddness of the lyrics. That first verse, for instance, goes nowhere. What are the singer’s father’s ‘last kind words’? Are we to assume they consist of the following verses? There is nothing especially kind about these words. The ‘German war’ is presumably World War I, but why does the father (if it is the father) want his body sent to his mother-in-law? How can you bury a soul? What and where is the ‘rich man’s field’? Why did the singer at the depot look ‘up at the sun’? How can you see your face from the other side of the Mississippi river?

Some of these questions have been answered over the years by simply changing the words. It’s not ‘the rich man’s field’ it’s ‘the Richmonds’ field’; when you go to the depot – the railway station – of course you look up at the sign, not at the sun; you can’t see your face from the other side of the Mississippi, but you can see your baby. And so on. These and other rationalisations have been included in later performances of the song in an attempt to iron out the oddness. But Marcus, quite rightly, insists upon that oddness. Wiley clearly sings ‘rich man’, ‘sun’ and ‘face’, and she sings them fiercely.

Hers in an impassioned performance. Unlikely words are stressed, drawn out, exaggerated. ‘If I die, if I die in THE German war,’ Geeshie sings, placing the definite article on the melody’s highest note and holding it. In each verse, the first word of the second line is held. Four times the word is ‘I’: ‘IIIIIIIIII want you to send my body.’ And all this is accompanied by Geeshie and Elvie’s thrillingly percussive guitar playing.

Impassioned yet inscrutable: the song might almost be a metaphor for Geeshie and Elvie themselves. But while we may never learn any more about these remarkable performers, their recording of ‘Last Kind Words Blues’ will continue to prick the curiosity of all who hear it.