[Harp-L] Plagiarism According to Muddy Waters and Jonathan Lethem

[Roger Boyce <roger.boyce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I Have extracted a paragraph below - which quotes Muddy Waters - in an
interview with Alan Lomax, from Jonathan Lethem's splendid article ( in the
Jan. 2007 Harpers Magazine / online ) entitled - The ecstacy of influence: A
Plagiarism. Lethems article makes for entertaining reading and comes
complete with a sucker-punch-surprise-of-an-ending which puts the whole
notion of creativity & plagiarism in a fresh light.

Begin extracted Quote -

The Ecstasy of Influence:
by Jonathan Lethem 
 
³In 1941, on his front porch, Muddy Waters recorded a song for the
folklorist Alan Lomax. After singing the song, which he told Lomax was
entitled ³Country Blues,² Waters described how he came to write it. ³I made
it on about the eighth of October '38,² Waters said. ³I was fixin' a
puncture on a car. I had been mistreated by a girl. I just felt blue, and
the song fell into my mind and it come to me just like that and I started
singing.² 

Then Lomax, who knew of the Robert Johnson recording called ³Walkin' Blues,²
asked Waters if there were any other songs that used the same tune. ³There's
been some blues played like that,² Waters replied. ³This song comes from the
cotton field and a boy once put a record out?Robert Johnson. He put it out
as named ?Walkin' Blues.' I heard the tune before I heard it on the record.
I learned it from Son House.²

In nearly one breath, Waters offers five accounts: his own active
authorship: he ³made it² on a specific date. Then the ³passive² explanation:
³it come to me just like that.² After Lomax raises the question of
influence, Waters, without shame, misgivings, or trepidation, says that he
heard a version by Johnson, but that his mentor, Son House, taught it to
him. In the middle of that complex genealogy, Waters declares that ³this
song comes from the cotton field.²

End Quote


My mother came from the cotton fields ( daughter of a share-cropper ) and
sang songs ( on her own and in bands ) she learned from black and white
folks she knew there. The first song I ever sang, by myself in my crib,
turned out later to be a Leadbelly tune. Much later I would hear the
melodies and lyric variations of songs -I sang with my Mother - on the radio
in newer popular country, blues, rock-and-roll, pop and jazz tunes.

I am now a painter and an educator in the arts. I tell my students that the
creative field is an area of human endeavor where theft ( i.e. Influence, to
one degree or another ) is not just sanctioned but encouraged and crucial in
the manufacture of 'new' culture.

Respectfully Yours

Roger 'Wader" Boyce
Expatriate American thief, living in Christchurch, New Zealand