Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues

Today is tax day, and as promised we will take a look into the burden of the working man. Here is one of my favorite old blues tunes, Skip James' "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues"

"Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" by Skip James
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 Like many of you I was first introduced to this song through the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?, in which it was performed by Chris Thomas King. Check that version out here. The movie came out at a time in my life that I was really into movies, and I saw it on the night it opened. The soundtrack was so impressive to me that I went out the next day and bought it. I must not have been the only one because despite rumors that the soundtrack tested bad because it was "too twangy," the album has been certified 7x Platinum. T-Bone Burnett, the album's producer has since won many awards, been the mastermind behind many excellent soundtracks and collaborative releases featuring American roots music.

Skip James wasn't quite as successful. He was a blues musician active mostly in the nineteen-thirties. He recorded a handful of songs for Paramount, and while his songs were depression era appropriate, they did not sell well. This was most likely due to the fact there was a depression going on. James' work would probably have been lost if it were not for the British interest in the 1960's of early American blues music. The resurgence into this American art form brought Skip James into relative popularity for the last few years of his life.

The haunting style and dark honesty of "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" is what drew me to it, and it is from this song that I gained my love of old time country blues. The song starts with James' iconic fingerpicking. We hear only a few seconds of guitar before James' high, aching call comes in. "Hard times are here an' everywhere you go times are harder than ever been before." If you are hurtin', and many are these days, this statement feels as prominent today as it did in 1931. "Now people are driftin' from door to door, can't find no heaven don't care where they go." James wails because he knows what it is like to drift like the wind, thin and empty, from door to door.

"Let me tell you people just before I go these hard times'll kill you just dry long slow." It's here to stay. If it hasn't hit you yet, it's coming and there's no preparing for it. There's no real way to survive it. It's all about enduring with the faint hope that you can deal with it.

"If I ever get off of this killin' floor I'll never get down this low no more." A killing floor is the area in a slaughterhouse where the animals are killed. Today this is automated, but in the thirties this was mostly done by individuals. It was a physically hard and brutal on the psyche, but work is work. In this context one wonders if James is working on the killing floor, or waiting there. Does he want out of the only dead-end job he can find, or does he hoping to escape the hammer?

"And if you say you had money, you'd better be sure. These hard times will drive you from door to door." So no one is immune, it gets us all eventually. That sense of self protection, that light at the end  of the tunnel, the hope of escape itself is essentially futile. 

"Sing this song and I ain't gonna song no more. These hard times will drive you from door to door." So I'll leave you with this, dear reader, things are bad right now and they are going to get worse. The common man's definition states that a recession is when your neighbor loses their job, a depression is when you lose yours too. There is a good possibility there will be a lot of us going door to door in the next few years, so make sure you're kind no matter which side of the door you are on.

As always feel free to comment here or at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net