“She was the Stabbingest Woman I ever Seen”: Uncle Jessie White’s Story and stories
By Dr. Barry Lee Pearson
Jessie Lee White (1920-2008), AKA Uncle Jessie, was born and raised near Terry, Mississippi. His father was a cotton field forman and had him in the fields at a young age. Moving to Jackson around age 20, he worked various government jobs on a road crew and at a sawmill before trying his hand at gambling. In Jackson he was mentored by pianist Johnny Jones, and briefly played the local club and jook circuit. He claims he dropped music in 1940, moved to Detroit in 1950, and slowly resumed playing with the Butler Twins and other Detroit artists circa 1965, becoming a mainstay in the Detroit blues revival community. Clarence Butler was also in attendance at this interview in Lansing, Michigan, September 14, 1999.
“I worked 68 years. Work. My daddy had me in the field. I was born in 1920, and my daddy had me in the field picking cotton when I was five years old.
My grandkids, they don’t know what a field is. The older I got the bigger the sack he put on me. That’s the way I come up. He learned me how to pick cotton by telling me ‘if you pick 150 pounds, you can knock off.’ I got so I could pick that by 12 o’clock: 150 pounds of cotton. So that was my life coming up, we working in the cotton fields. We would be singing out there in the fields during all that and when we get through, when we come out the field we’d get the guitars and harmonicas and get us a tin tub and make us a drum. That’s what we had, you know there’s always some kind of way you can do something. You know, when you don’t know nothing else. We didn’t know nothing else because, see, I was raised up in the country. I wasn’t raised up around in town. We had to figure out everything for ourselves, you know, like I was in the country we lived about five miles from the little old town what I was raised up in, Terry, Mississippi. When I got older I went to plowing a mule. That’s what I was doing, plowing a mule in 1937. I was plowing a mule. I tell you I was getting 50 cents a day plowing them from can to can’t – that means when you can see until you can’t see. That’s what we call plowing from can to can’t. Plow them all day long and get out of there at night. Well, I was young then. It didn’t bother me. That’s right, I was making $2.50 a week. My kids tell me: Now, Daddy, I wouldn’t have done that. I say: Yes, you would have worked for that. You’d been glad to work for that $2.50 a week. That’s right. Because see back at that time, I wasn’t getting but $5 a night for blowing harp. But that was good money though, because I was making $2.50 a week working. I wasn’t getting but 50 cents a day back in 1937, and all them years. That’s all. See, wages was cheap. I was making $2.50 working a week and I was getting $5 to blow the harmonica. That’s all I was getting. But that sounds like good money back at that time, though – $5.
We was playing at some little old jook houses like out – they had one out from the little old town a guy that was on the plantation was running a place out from the little old town we was in. We’d go out there and party out there at night, you know, all that. At night, because, see, back at that time we didn’t have no amplifiers or nothing. We just had playing. But, you know, it’s funny Clarence back then it seemed like those harps sounded louder or what made it back at that time seems like they would sound louder when they were playing then. Now, if you were playing one of these harps away from the amp, you can’t hardly hear it. You know, I could hear this guy Ellis Johnson used to blow harmonica. You could hear him coming down the road, you know, blowing that harp. Hear him blowing it just as good, but now you can’t hear it if you ain’t got one going through an amplifier or something.
But back then we was doing the same things but we didn’t have no amplifiers. We’d work all day in the field and then get the guitars and harmonicas at night and get out, and that’s how we did it. See, when I moved to Jackson in 1940 I got a job paying $3 a day. And I told somebody I was making $3 a day.
‘Oh, you can’t be making that kind of money.’ I said, ‘That’s what they paying now,’ and they was. They was paying us $3 a day. That’s right. And we were working on the highways. Like the boss will tell you, didn’t get out of there with you until it started raining. He said, ‘Ain’t no such a thing as can’t.’ He says, ‘Can’ and ‘does.’ That’s what they says we had to work.
When they did come through there, it seem funny, the United States talking about they wasn’t ready for war. And it took them a week. It took them a whole week for all them Army trucks and tanks and things to come through there. They say, ‘We ain’t ready for the war, we got to get ready.’ And all that. I was there looking at all them big guns and anti-aircraft guns they had back at that time. And then I was stacking lumber in a sawmill for them to build battleships out of. I was working from 6 o’clock in the morning until 9 o’clock at night straight. And that was an upright sawmill and that cat was cutting going and coming. Cutting from that a way and cutting coming back and that lumber was coming. That slip table was long as from here to I don’t know where. It was just covered with lumber and I was sawing it for them to build battleships out of during the war. Aw, we had to work . We really was working then. Yes, sir, I was married. I’d be so tired my old lady told me, said, ‘You working that job – either me or that job. One got to go’ . . . (laughs). Oh, I’d be so tired I’d hit the bed I’d go right to sleep. Oh, those were some days, but we made it. Yeah, I had a rough time of it. It seemed rough but it didn’t seem rough then.
I kept on playing music in Jackson and I knew lots of musicians. I knowed Muddy Waters and Peetie Wheatstraw – he was a piano man. Walter Davis was a piano man. Otis Spann was a piano man. Johnnie Jones – he’s the one that lernt me how to play. Me and him we been at this Crystal Palace playing and he could play and sing too. That guy was really good. He died in 1965.
But, anyway, I was out, me and him was out all that day and then when I went on home I had this other gal. That was before I ever married the kids’ mother. I come home. He was supposed to play at the Crystal Palace, me and him. When I walked in, my old lady stabbed me all the way through this arm. I sure am glad my arm caught that knife. That knife went in this side and come out of the other one. Do you know, he canceled his show. He wouldn’t go play. I said, ‘Well, you can go play.’ He said, ‘No, if you ain’t gonna go, I’m gonna stay here with you.’ She cut me, almost cut me and tried to run me down to finish me off but I ran. (Laughs) She was going after me with that big knife and I sure had to get out of the way. And that’s the awfullest woman. And you know he wouldn’t go do that show that night. He called and told them he couldn’t make it. He stayed right there. I went to the doctor and they said, ‘We gonna have to call the police.’
I told him about it. I told him about it. He said, they said, the polices told me said, ‘Look, you didn’t get cut accidentally. Somebody cut you. You just won’t tell us.’ But I couldn’t tell them all because that was my old lady done stabbed me.
Anyway, she dreaded it though because she had to get out and go to work then, because I wasn’t able to work. She say, told me: ‘I sure hate I did that.’ (Laughs) I couldn’t work. I laid around there. Yeah, that knife went in this side of my arm and it come out the other side. All the way through this arm. Yeah. I sure am glad it hit my arm instead of, you know. It caught that thing, because she would have hit me in the side with that big knife she cut me with. But she sure had to get out and work because I couldn’t do nothing for about three or four months. But I was so glad when she told me she was gonna leave. Honestly I was. We were up in the Delta, you know, in the Delta? Pulling all that cotton. We was up there. Me and her and it was getting kind of late and we was sitting there in the camp. I wasn’t saying nothing. She say: ‘I’m going to leave.’ I said, ‘What? You say what? I misunderstand you?’ She said, ‘I’m gonna leave.’ I said, ‘You mean to say you’re gonna leave?’ I say, ‘Well, I’m gonna help you pack.’ Laughs. I did. And got up and helped her pack her things and walked her to the bus line.
I said, ‘I sure hope that bus don’t break down.’ I walked her to the bus line and sure enough she got on that bus. I didn’t see her no more in about six months.
I was at this club, the ‘Rhumboogie,’ that night club out there that night. And she walked in there. And I hadn’t seen her in about six months. She happened to walk in there. She say, ‘Hello, Jessie.’ I say, ‘Hi.’ She say, ‘I’m going home with you tonight.’ I said, ‘Is you?’ I was scared to tell her no. Sure enough that’s the truth. She said, ‘I’ll be down there.’
I went home and got in the bed. About 2:30 that night somebody knocked on my door. (I didn’t believe it was her.) But I’m gonna tell y’all the truth. I wouldn’t tell you a story. She come in there and stayed all night with me. She ain’t bothered me from that day to this one. Of course she died about three years ago. But I seen her when I went back down South. See, she’s dead now. But she stayed with me that night and from then on. She never bothered me no more. She never said nothing else to me. That was Francis, that mean woman I had. She’d cut people. And she had scars. You could cut her and she looked like she didn’t -you know, I ain’t messing with a person look like they don’t care about their hide getting cut up. You know she was fighting a girl, and that girl was cutting and she was licking that blood and cutting back. She was the stabbingest woman I ever seen.
But when I moved to Jackson, that’s when I started working at the sawmill. Well, I quit that.
Then we started having gambling houses and I started working at the gambling house. That’s how I met my wife. She was 17 years old. And I’d go down there and I was lucky. I told her. I was just lucky. And eventually one day she told me, she said, what really what made me marry her, I’d been beating this guy out of about $200. And he, his name was Dudley, and he done throwed a gun, Christine, she say, ‘Mr. Dudley got a gun on you.’ Well, he did have a gun throwed on me, talking, getting madder and madder. She come in there and got between me and him. She say, ‘You can’t’ – and she was 17 years old, that’s all. ‘You can’t shoot my man. You have to shoot me.’
Now I married her the next week. I stayed with her 41 years and we raised nine children. That’s right, me and her stayed together 41 years before she passed away. And we got nine children living and three dead. We had 12 children. I told her, I say, ‘You know I winned you gambling.’ I used to joke about that. ‘You know, I kind of agree with what you said.’ But she don’t know. She suffered after she married me. Because me and her walked, it was cold, the ground froze, we walked about three or four miles and I lost everything I had. And she was working, cooking for a lady. I lost that money and then we hit the road walking again.
I says, ‘I don’t think I can get broke,’ but when I lost my last dollar, she say, ‘I ain’t got a pair of stockings.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s too late now.’
The ground was froze and everything and she was bare legged, but she followed me though. She stuck with me. That’s right. My old lady stuck with me.
But you know you don’t stay in that kind of luck always. I don’t care what you do, you can’t win all the time. If you’re gambling, you might win some but you’re gonna lose. And I was a guy. I would lose everything I had. I didn’t have sense enough to stop. I would lose every penny I had gambling, when I was gambling. If I got in bad luck. That’s right. That’s the way it was in my life coming up through life. But I made it. And she married me and stuck with me. No matter what I did, my wife will stick with me. Like I tell my kids, you all had a good mother because she really stuck with her kids and everything.
But I had a rough life come to think about it, coming up working in them field and things but that was all we knowed. We didn’t know nothing else but that.
But what happened I quit that music business for about 25 years.
I was blowing the harmonica in 1936. I played up until 1940, and I quit. But I was hauling this whiskey doing that I say I could make more money back at that time than I could playing music.
Well, when I moved to Jackson, see, was 20 years old before I left there. Before I moved to town. Well, I moved to Jackson in 1940. Well, I stayed there 10 years until 1950, and that’s when I came to Detroit.
I didn’t play from 1940, 1950s. But in the 1960s, see, they used to come out to my house. I just kind of started back a little bit. They used to come out to the house back – did I start back in 1965. I think I quit from 1940 to 1965. I quit down there. See, I was running a gambling house and selling whiskey and doing all that kind of life and I let the music went. I quit that but after I got up in age you know, like I am now, and quite gambling.
I decided I start back with my piano and harp. But I quit all that for 25 years. I didn’t play no kind of music. We all started back together when Curtis Clarence and them used to come out to the house. We started back at that time. But I lost a lot of years in the music business. I quit for all them years, but after the kids got grown and I got up in age, I quit doing the little things I was doing and we started back in music. So I guess I’ll stick to it, because I ain’t doing nothing else. I’m too old. I ain’t doing no running now and no gambling. So I’ll stick with the music, because it’s bad if you sit down and not do nothing.”
Barry Lee Pearson
University of Maryland
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.