
          Blues for Mr. President
          By Rankin, TomTom Rankin
          Vol. 6, No. 4, 1984, pp. 12-13
          
          
            MR. PRESIDENT
          
          
            Oh, went down to the employment office this
morning
            
            Lord, didn't have a thing for poor
me
          
          
            Went down to the employment office this
morning
            
            Lord, didn't have a thing for poor
me
          
          
            Went down to the welfare
            
            Lord, the reply was the same
          
          
            Mr. President
            
            see the
poor_people out there in line
          
          
            Mr. President
            
            see the
poor_people out there in line
          
          
            Lord, they trying to find a job
            
            and a job so hard to find
          
          
            Now Mr. President, DEAR Mr. President:
          
          
            Whole fifty states writing you now 
            
            Trying to let you know their condition, people is
suffering
            
            People being put out of doors
            
            People is sitting on the streets, losing their
homes
            
            Ain't got money to pay off their
mortgage
            
            Banks going broke
            
            Little businesses shut down
            
            People suffering everywhere Mr. President
            
            I know you say that things is progressing a little
            
            But the poor man is suffering
            
            You cut the poor a whole lot; the blind, the cripple, the
lame
            
            Come live with me a little while
            
            Find out how the situation is here
            
            Then you'll reconsider a little bit
            
            Go live with the blind man
            
            Go
live with the cripple man
          
          
            Yours truly, 
            
            Whole fifty
states
          
          
            Mr. President
            
            please give
the people something to do
          
          
            Mr. President, oh man
            
            give these people something to do
          
          
            People everywhere is singing
            
            singing the no job blues
          
          
            Please Mr. President
          
          Words and Music Copyright 1983 by Richard Henry. All rights
reserved.
          Born in Beaufort on the coast of North_Carolina in 1921, Richard
"Big Boy" Henry grew up working odd jobs in town and on the farm,
trying to supplement his parents' income. When he wasn't delivering
groceries or helping his mother wash clothes for white townspeople,
Big Boy would listen to the intinerant bluesmen on the streets of
Beaufort and New Bern. In 1933, he met Fred Miller, a guitar player
from Sumter, South_Carolina who was traveling the eastern seaboard. "I
would sing for him and he would play," he remembers. "At that time I
was just trying to learn how to play. Of course, around the age of
fourteen I started to play, but before then I'd do all his singing for
him. And we'd go around on the streets and the corners and different
houses, and we'd pick up, maybe, twenty-five, thirty, fifty cents here
and twenty-five, thirty, fifty cents there." As Fred Miller and Big
Boy played music as a team, Big Boy learned new songs from the more
experienced bluesmen, but also began to improvise and compose his own
lyrics.
          By the mid-forties Big Boy Henry was providing for his wife and
children partly through his music. When he wasn't off the coast of
Mississippi or Texas pulling nets on menhaden boats, he was playing
music at a neighborhood house party or cafe. Often, he would return
from a fishing 

trip on Thursday or Friday and catch a bus to New_York
City where he would spend the weekend playing the blues' "Long about
the middle of the forties, early fifties Fred and I would catch a
weekend bus to New_York. We'd play on the streets, in the beer joints,
went up on Thompson Street in Brooklyn. We could make more money up
there than we could down here." Often he would return with eighty or
ninety dollars. In the mid-fifties, however, Big Boy exchanged his
blues guitar for the pulpit and began preaching in a church in New
Bern, North_Carolina. At one time he pastored two churches, although
he never used preaching as his main source of income: "Religion is a
thing no man should just sit down and live off." He continued to work
as a commerical fisherman on the menhaden boats while also fishing his
own nets in the Neuse River. For nearly thirty years he continued
preaching and fishing, playing no blues until 1980 when he once again
picked up his guitar and began singing and composing songs.
          A gentle and articulate man, Big Boy Henry now composes regularly,
borrowing lines and chords from traditional blues repertoires as he
comments on the world around him. One August night in Durham while
opening for a John Lee Hooker concert, Big Boy began to improvise on a
talking blues. "That was August 22 of 1982 and suddenly I thought
about a whole lot of things," he explains. "Mostly when I'm singing in
places like that, everything I sing's new. So I thought about
"Mr. President" and it went over big there."
          The song he calls "Mr. President" tells of hard times
brought on by Reagan Administration policy. "What made me think of it,
I was talking a little bit, joking about how hard things is, so it
come to me and I said I believe I'll sing some of it. Wherever I would
go, wherever I would sing, people I would entertain, and then on the
news, people be sitting outdoors losing their homes, have no rent to
pay. I think not only Reagan, I think the whole country should have
more compassion than that."
          Unlike many of the songs he sings which speak more subtly of social
problems, "Mr. President" addresses politics
candidly. The song, he feels, reflects the opinion of many blacks and
whites who have suffered from the economic and social policies brought
on by Reagan and his team. "I think that he don't have the feeling
towards us like he should," Big Boy says of Reagan's lack of concern
for blacks. "I don't think it's through hate or anything, but I reckon
he "rowed up that way."
          Today Richard "Big Boy" Henry lives in a two-story farm house in
Beaufort with his wife, Ann, and seven children. He performs in
Beaufort and Greenville often, and occasionally travels to Durham and
Winston-Salem to appear at festivals. "Mr. President" his
first record, was recorded on the label and is available from Audio
Arts Recording Company, Route 1, Box 59, in Greenville, North_Carolina
27834, (919) 758-2240.
          
            Tom Rankin is a folklorist and photographer now living in
Jackson, Mississippi. An exhibit of his photographs opens Oct. 12 at
Vanderbilt University.
          
        
