I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman

From OHA Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Author(s)/Editor(s)

        Glen Alyn is a writer, musician, and poet who resided in the Austin, Texas area. Alyn initially met Mance Lipscomb at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 1972 and interviewed Lipscomb him at his home in Navasota, Texas from 1973 until Lipscomb’s death in 1976. The compilation of these interviews, I Say Me for a Parable, the Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, won an ASCAP Music Book of the Year Award and was accompanied by a companion CD, Tellin' Stories, Singin' 'bout Suppas. Alyn began a lecture tour at various universities throughout the country in 1998 on the lost art of the legendary bluesman, occasionally performing with the Earnest Tub Band. Alyn was killed along with his daughter Sequoia in a car accident on the evening of June 4, 2000.1

Summary

        I Say Me For A Parable is an examination of the life of farmer and blues musician, Mance Lipscomb, in eleven narratives arranged in chronological order. Lipscomb discusses many of the problems African Americans faced in the rural South in the early twentieth century, including coming to terms with Jim Crow laws, the murder of his best friend and cousin, Gainesville Lipscomb, by a white man in the midst of a fight, the back-breaking toil synonymous with sharecropping, and the lingering effects of slavery (Lipscomb was only one generation removed as he relates a story about his father being sold “in slavery time” from Alabama to Navasota, Texas). 2  Lipscomb related many personal stories, including his abusive childhood, devotion to his part-Choctaw mother, and a discussion of the musicians who offered inspiration to his early music, including Woodie Guthrie, whose wife invited Lipscomb to play at Guthrie’s birthday party. 3  Although some may believe that Alyn’s decision to retain Lipscomb’s dialect through the narrative served to encumber some of the descriptions with confusing spellings (i.e. “rail” is used for the word “real), which can work to trivialize some of the subjects discussed, Alyn has insured that Lipscomb’s voice remains intact. By weaving lyrics from Lipscomb’s songs into the narrative, Alyn uses Lipscomb’s own words to let readers and fans of his music understand the origins and inspirations for some of his most famous pieces. As Alyn states in the introduction, “You’re invited to join the group [of listeners surrounding Lipscomb on his front porch], and listen to this storyteller songster. Ask him a couple questions if you get the notion, because that’s what the rest of us are doing. And then you’ve become a part of the book”.4

Methodological Comparisons within the Oral Autobiography Genre

       Lipscomb describes his father being sold into slavery, but admits that his family did not discuss it openly, 

  “Well, no he didn’t talk much about – he didn’t know nothing about slavery, because he wadn 
grown when they fit that war an the peace was declared….He didn’t do no hawk work, until 
slavery had done come out as freedom….But he went under his slavery name. When he came from 
Alabama, I don’t know what he was named then. But when he landed in Texas, the Lipscomb people 
bought him an he had to be goin in the Lipscomb name. White Lipscombs.” 5 

In Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography, Sidney Bechet goes into much more detail over his grandfather’s experiences and the music produced under slavery, which he admits was one of his earliest musical influences: “My grandfather was a slave. But he was a man that could do anything. He could sing; he danced, he was a leader. It was natural to him; and everyone followed him. Sundays, when the slaves would meet – that was their free day – he beat out rhythms on drums at the Square – Congo Square they called it – and they’d all be gathered there around him….They waited for him to start things: dances, shouts, moods even…No one had to explain notes or rhythm or feeling to him. It was all there inside him, something he was always sure of”. 6  These two stories reflect the varying ways in which ex-slaves transmitted their stories to their families and how their experiences impacted their children and grandchildren.

- See the article on Golda Meir’s A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography of Golda Meir for further analysis.

Sources


  1. Glen Alyn,I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, 1; http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A77530 (Accessed May 12, 2009).
  2. Alyn, I Say Me For A Parable, 108.
  3. Ibid., 215.
  4. Ibid., 35.
  5. Ibid., 109.
  6. Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 6.


Retrieved from "http://www.oralhistory.org/wiki/index.php/I_Say_Me_for_a_Parable:_The_Oral_Autobiography_of_Mance_Lipscomb,_Texas_Bluesman"
Personal tools