The Jaybird Tales

Known as one of the most Southern place on Earth, the Mississippi Delta, a region of alluvial mystique and topographical sameness, goes hand in hand with the inhabitants’ uniqueness, especially their stubborn resolve to work the land, despite perpetual threats of flooding by the region’s western boundary: the Mississippi River.For eons 'Big Muddy' flooded this region, leaving behind virgin, fecund topsoil, ideal for growing crops, especially cotton, known as 'white gold' by the region’s earliest settlers - hardy, uneducated, penniless adventurers, with nothing to lose and everything to gain - willing to brave the torrid heat, humidity, devastating storms, snakes, alligators, and mosquitoes, to work the land and enter into a winner-take-all gamble with floods, droughts, unpredictable markets, capricious bankers, and crop-destroying insects. In those early days before mechanization, nurturing crops required hand labor, for which white landowners depended on black people. Over time, necessity bonded the two races symbiotically. The blacks discovered that singing chanteys and ditties in counterpoint among themselves while tending crops made the long days more tolerable. From this diversion evolved a musical genre as unique as the land and its inhabitants: the blues. Many black musicians rose from field-hand poverty to fame and fortune, among them John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, and my namesake, Jimmy Reed.Along with numerous other male and female artists, these blues giants honed their musical skills in hot, sweaty, smoky 'juke joints,' that to this day are found in almost every Delta town. After hard weeks of fieldwork, the blacks thronged to them on Friday and Saturday nights. The rhythms and soul-touching lyrics were universally appreciated among juke joint patrons, and when the bands played, the urge to get up and dance was irresistible. Until the wee hours of morning, dance floors were jammed with whirling, swaying, shouting, gyrating partners. This tradition has never changed, nor will it. In 1953, my father bought Dunleith, a 3,000-acre Delta plantation complete with its own cotton gin. Known by all as Boss, he received little education, suffered through The Great Depression’s extreme poverty, and came to the Mississippi Delta with two goals in mind: to wrest from the soil as much profit as possible and provide well for his growing family. A man of indefatigable energy, he developed a keen business sense, and was respected by his peers as a hard-working farmer and visionary. I was ten years old in 1953 when I met Jaybird, the African American who became my boyhood best friend, mentor, and surrogate father. Because he had lived on Dunleith Farms all his life and knew more about the land, the crops, and the gin than anyone else, my father placed him in charge of field labor and told him to teach me the value of hard work. Jaybird instilled in me a code of values that I live by to this day. A master yarn spinner, he taught me the storytelling art. Whatever value this book has, it is to his credit.