Dear Bessie

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Yolanda Wisher & The Afroeaters

5:05

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I remember how I got started with you
It had to be watching The Color Purple
One time while I was still in high school
I was fascinated by the scene in which Shug Avery is taking a bath
After she has shown up at Mister's and Celie's home
There was music in the background
A fluttery wail of blues that seemed cranked up against heavy static
I coined it "bathtub music"
I went out and bought some of that music with your name on it
I played it when I was in the tub
I wanted it to make me renewed like it made Shug Avery
Perhaps in my idealism
I thought I would leap out of the tub "after I was ailin"
And bring the house down in some juke joint
Grown woman, musk strutting out of my pores

But the tape only comes out once in a while now
I used it in a class to let my students hear what the blues sounded like
I always thought your voice was too rough-I preferred Billie
In some ways you reminded me of my great aunts down at "the club"
Guzzling corn liquor into the late hours of the night
Humming church songs over games of pinochle
You know-I'm ashamed to say it-but that used to embarrass me
I didn't understand what there was to be cherished
When I was about 13 or 14 years old
That humming, your washboard voice
Is the voice that steered me into womanhood
How could I deny something like that is beyond me
Sometimes shit you learn at school
Makes everything at home look like shoes stuffed with newspaper

But you could not stay out of my mind for too long
I was intrigued when I read somewhere
That James Baldwin had left Paris for the Swiss Alps
With only his typewriter and one of your records
To the rhythms of your voice, he wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain
Visiting with my friend Tonya two nights ago
I learned that Langston Hughes traveled with his record player
And several of your recordings
These "learned" men were supposedly moved to words by your phrasing
You didn't need high falutin orchestra arrangements
They say you just got up there and sang
You lived a fast life--drinkin, fist-fightin, lovin men and women
It absolutely amazes me how you struggled to live free in the 1920s
A Black woman

Last week, Tonya and I were in the car on our way to the Good Will
When a special interview with Aretha Franklin came on NPR.
They played the very first song she recorded with Columbia Records
I think it's called "Today I Sing the Blues"
Something happened to us when that song came on
We were looking out the windshield
And it was as if we were both looking back through time
And we could see you up there on a little bitty stage
Big, full bodied woman wearin yo plumes
With the nerve to wear red and sweatin devils cuz of the heat up there
Chile, let me tell you how all I could hear was you
In Aretha's fresh out of church voice
Even now when I listen to Mary J. Blige or Whitney, I hear you
Now I understand how it must have been
Some stompin up in Harlem when you sang
People hangin out of windows like wet nylons
Cuz they could still hear you from miles and miles
If I had been there-I think I would-yes, I certainly would
Throw myself to the floor to feel the vibration of your voice on my body

They say the crash mangled one of your arms
You bled to death out there with your lover
I think of Osiris-those spread parts all over the universe
How many more pieces of Black women lay across the earth awaiting recognition
I aim to find them and try to collect them into one body

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