She began playing the guitar at the age of seven ,and also played drums in various local Mississippi fife and drum bands. The first field recordings of her work were made by blues researcher George Mitchell in 1967 and ethnomusicologist Dr David Evans in 1973 when she was known as Jessie Mae Brooks, using the surname from a brief early marriage, but the recordings were not released. In 1978, Evans went to Memphis to teach at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis). The school founded the High Water recording label in 1979 to promote interest in the indigenous music of the South. Evans made the first high-quality field recordings of Hemphill in that year, and soon afterwaeds produced her first sessions for the High Water label.
Hemphill then launched a recording career in the early 1980s, releasing singles produced by Evans on this university label, which later became a production company who licensed their masters to labels like HighTone and Inside Sounds. In 1981 her first full-length album, She-Wolf, was licensed from High Water and released on France's Vogue Records. In the early 1980s, she performed in a Mississippi drum corps put together by Evans composed of herself, Abe Young, and Jim Harper on Tav Falco's Panther Burns' Behind the Magnolia Curtain album; she also appeared in another drum group with Young and fife-and-drum band veteran Othar Turner in a televised appearance in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Other recordings of hers were released on the French label Black and Blue, and she performed concerts across the United States and other countries including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and Canada. She received the W. C. Handy Award for best traditional female blues artist in 1987 and 1988.
In 1990 her first American full length album, Feelin' Good, was released, which also won a Handy Award for best acoustic album. Hemphill suffered a stroke that paralyzed her left side in 1993, preventing her from playing guitar, resulting in her retiring at that time from her blues career. Her musical background began with playing snare drum and bass drum in the fife-and-drum band led by her grandfather, Sid Hemphill. Aside from sitting in at Memphis bars a few times in the 1950s, most of her playing was done in family and informal settings such as picnics with fife and drum music until her 1979 recordings.
She was unique in country blues as a female defying tradition by singing her own original material while accompanying herself on electric guitar and playing tambourine with her foot. She employs a folk-blues open tuning style with a hypnotic drone in her guitar playing instead of relying on standard, 12-bar blues styles. She occasionally was accompanied on a second guitar by producer Evans.
French videographer Marc Oriol produced a documentary on Hemphill called Me & My Guitar, Jessie Mae Hemphill, which was shown on France's TV Cannes in 2001. In 2003 Olga Wilhelmine founded the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation to preserve and archive the indigenous music of northern Mississippi and to provide assistance for musicians in need from the region who could not survive on meager publishing royalties. The same year, HighTone released Heritage of the Blues: Shake It, Baby, a budget CD containing tracks from previous releases, along with three previously unreleased tracks.
In 2004 Wilhelmine and Tyler Austin of the fledgling Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation released Dare You to Do It Again, a double album of gospel standards, newly recorded by the ailing vocalist singing and playing tambourine with accompaniment from Steve Gardner, DJ Logic, and descendants of the late musicians Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside, and Otha Turner. The release, her first recordings since the 1993 stroke, also included a DVD.
Also in 2004, Inside Sounds released Get Right Blues, containing material recorded from 1979 through the early 1980s; Black & Blue released Mississippi Blues Festival, which included seven live tracks by her from a Paris concert in 1986.
On July 22, 2006, Jessie Mae Hemphill died at The Regional Medical Center in Memphis, after experiencing complications from an ulcer.
Crawdad Hole
Jessie Mae Hemphill Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You get a line and i'll get a pole babe
You get a line and i'll get a pole we'll go down to the crawdad hole honey, sugar baby mine
Sit on the bank til my feet get cold honey
Sit on the bank til my feet get cold babe
Sit on the bank til my feet get cold we'll go down to the crawdad hole honey, sugar baby mine
Crawdad hole way down to the crawdad hole lets go
Crawdad hole way down to the crawdad hole lets go
Crawdad hole way down to the crawdad hole lets go
Crawdad hole way down to the crawdad hole lets go
What will you do when the lake goes dry honey
What will you do when the lake goes dry babe
What will you do when the lake goes dry sit right there watch the crawdads die hone, sugar baby mine
You get a line and i'll get a pole, honey
You get a line and i'll get a pole babe
You get a line and i'll get a pole we'll go down to the crawdad hole honey, sugar baby mine
The song "Crawdad Hole" by Jessie Mae Hemphill is a traditional American folk song that has been passed down over generations. It is believed that the song originated in the South, possibly during the time of slavery, when African American slaves would sing it while fishing for crawfish (also known as crawdads) in nearby streams and lakes.
The lyrics of the song suggest a romantic relationship between the singer and the listener, with the suggestion of going on a date to catch crawdads together. The repetition of the line "You get a line and I'll get a pole" throughout the song reinforces this idea of togetherness and camaraderie. The line "Sit on the bank til my feet get cold" also suggests a sense of ease and relaxation, as if the two are enjoying each other's company and the simplicity of their activity.
However, the last stanza of the song takes a sudden turn towards a more grim reality. The question "What will you do when the lake goes dry?" suggests a sense of impending doom, and the line "sit right there watch the crawdads die" paints a picture of the end of something. This could be interpreted as a metaphor for the end of a relationship, or it could be a commentary on environmental destruction and the impact on local ecosystems.
Overall, "Crawdad Hole" is a song that is steeped in tradition and folk history, while also conveying important messages about companionship and the fragile state of the natural world.
Line by Line Meaning
You get a line and i'll get a pole, honey
Let's work together to catch crawdads in the crawdad hole.
Sit on the bank til my feet get cold honey
Let's relax and take our time while we wait for the perfect catch.
Crawdad hole way down to the crawdad hole lets go
Let's make our way to the crawdad hole to catch some tasty crawdads.
What will you do when the lake goes dry honey
What will we do when our usual crawdad spot dries up?
You get a line and i'll get a pole, honey
Let's find a new spot and keep catching crawdads together.
Writer(s): traditional
Contributed by Eva W. Suggest a correction in the comments below.