By Dr. Barry Lee Pearson
Algia Mae Hinton (1929 – ) was born near Selma in Johnston County, North Carolina. She learned guitar and banjo from her mother, a locally famous multi-instrumentalist, and Ollie O’Neal and from other family members. She’s also an outstanding dancer and her son Williette Hinton continues to dance on the festival circuit.
Interviewed in Largo, Maryland, September 18, 1994.
I was raised in Johnston County, North Carolina. My mama, she had a lot of young ones. She had 14 and I was the baby girl. I come from a big family and they all played. But my mother she was good at it. She played a lot of blues and spirituals. She did both of them. And she played everything. And she played guitar. She played piano. She’d blow a harp. She’d knock her spoons, Jew’s harp. She done all of that. You name it, she played it. Ain’t nothing she could see that she couldn’t play. So I’m gonna come on and do the same thing. I tried to learn like my mother did.
The first song I ever learned to play, that’s “Honey Babe,” I learned it from my mama. And my aunt, she’s from Broadway, North Carolina, and she taught me some songs: “Cook cornbread for your husband and biscuits for your outside man.” And I learned a lot from my cousin, my mama and my brother. I got so many people that play. And my daddy, he was a buck dancer. I learned some steps from him too. So I learned from both of them.
My mother she played for parties around the house on Saturday night. We’d have a lot of dances, her uncle, her brother, we’d have a party sometimes of our own. So many people would come. Mama would be playing you know. We were a lot younger than now so we had to be sitting down on the wood floor. We could hear them but not be standing around. We could hear it but we couldn’t go in there. But we’d be stomping the floor to it. Not too loud though. We’d be in there. I’d be in there doing the fishtail and everything. But if I’d hear Mama coming, right down on the floor I’d go. But that’s where I got the idea of it. Yeah I’d be dancing around. I’ve been that way since – I believe before I learned how to walk, like the rest of the young ones standing up. I walked in one of them walking chairs and every time I’d walk, I’d dance in it. That’s the way I learned to walk. Now I’m trying to teach my young ones some steps now before I get too old. I’m trying to learn them and also my grand babies. Everyone I got can dance. I ain’t got but seven kids.
I done a lot of work. We picked cotton, pick up corn, shell corn, shuck corn, prime tobacco. We done a lot of work in the field. Pulling up peanuts. It didn’t bother me because we would dance in the field. See, we always danced, honey. My daddy would get in the field. “Algia, what you doing?” “Nothing.” I’d be just dancing.
And we would sing this here song about “ I’m looking for the man that don’t love Jesus.” – that was a spiritual. And my sister would sing “Lord, I’m looking for the man” – and we’d come in, “I’m a looking. I’m a looking.” I said, “Lord. I’m gonna find mine.”
So we kept something going on all the time in the field and it made me feel good when you’re carrying on fun. But when you’re out there fussing and fighting it ain’t no fun. I’ve done some fighting now, but I didn’t want to. But sometimes you have to do something. But I wasn’t raised that way, thank God. I had a lot of switch on me. My mom and dad raised me up right before they left me.
Corn shuckings. That was way back when my mama and daddy were living. We had an old milk cow we had to shuck corn for too. Hogs. My daddy raised his food mostly. But now they don’t do that. You have to go to the store and buy it.
They had them jukeboxes mostly in the store, you know, you used to go in the store put a dime in and Piccolo and, Lord, you could rock then I saw a Piccolo in this here girls house where we used to play. I used to dance so hard at that Piccolo. But it costs a quarter now. It wasn’t but ten cents. Rock all you want to. Pepsi Cola, ten cents. But you don’t get nothing that cheap. Everything gone up. I played at the house parties. I was playing at one party in Virginia. This here lady walked in. See, I didn’t know them people. She walked in and said: “You got my man.” She said: “That’s my man.” And the woman got killed. That was the woman’s husband. Oh Lord, so I run in the bathroom said, “I hope that man ain’t coming in here” – because I don’t know about them people and I’d hide.
You take people doing things, you know what jealous is. The older I get the more I learn. My father wasn’t jealous, but my husband was so jealous, I couldn’t even do nothing. I couldn’t’ hardly give my mama a piece of candy. When I had the old man, I had to sit still. He was so jealous he couldn’t even stand me to talk. That ain’t no good. He used to keep his eyes on m. I liked to play guitar, but he didn’t like to see me play. I say: “Man, I’m used to playing guitar.” He say: “You ain’t playing no guitar now.” He cussed though. I ain’t gonna tell you what he said. I said, “Well, one of these days I will be playing my guitar.” So I thanks the Lord he slipped away. He went somewhere and died in New York and he got killed. Of course I hate it I didn’t know how he got killed neither. They buried him in an unknown tomb. You know how people do nowadays. He left with my brother. He didn’t never come back. I didn’t play until after he died. It was about six years before I went out playing to the house parties.
So that’s why I’m playing now. I can jump up now. Ain’t got no man telling me to make no biscuits. Because all my old young ones is grown. And so I got a right to jump. Ain’t not one of them in jail when I left home. I raised them young ones if I did play guitar. I can do all of it. So I got a right to jump. I’m fixing to jump up here now. I’m gonna tell you like it is. A lot of people they love blues and church songs too. They played all of it. The Lord will be the judge. So that’s what I do. Once in a while I have to have a church song and I like this song “If you don’t want to get in trouble you better leave that liar along.” That’s a church song. I play that most everywhere I go. I got that song from an old man about 70 years old when I was about five years old. He used to come to the house and sit down and talk to my mama. He said “Lord have mercy. If you don’t want to get in trouble you better leave a liar alone.”
I try to live for God but sometimes the devil’s using me too because I know who he is. So I serve God and the devil both. I tell it like it is. I play blues and spirituals like my mother did. My mother was a church woman but I hate to tell you this, my mama was so good in music she used to play (the guitar) so much she believed the devil run her one time. One day she was going down the road and she said something black. She said she was by herself and the only way she could stop him, she just reached down and grabbed her dress and hitched her dress up over her head. She put it up over her head and kept backing up. And she said she run in the house and she believed that was the devil. And my daddy said the devil couldn’t help but turn around. So I hope the devil don’t ruin me. But if he ruins me, I’m gonna keep on jumping, playing wrong. I feel like bustin’ loose I love that song about “Did you get that letter that I dropped in your back door.” Now I’m gonna get up here. I got to shout a little bit, and I got to dance. I got to do all this. I just can’t sit still, because when I get old, just give me that old time religion. It would be good enough for me.
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Dr. Barry Lee Pearson, Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland stands as the most steadfast supporter of the local acoustic blues scene in the greater Washington, D.C., area and beyond. As a musician, author, college lecturer, folklorist, and personal friend to the musicians, he has been the voice of this regional blues scene.