Wheatstraw was born William Bunch in Ripley, Tennessee but grew up in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, where his family relocated soon after his birth. Little is known of his early life, other than that he took up playing both the piano and guitar at a young age.
Bunch left Cotton Plant in 1927 and began living the life of an itinerant musician traveling throughout the Deep South. Like many African Americans of this time period, the great migration eventually drew his attention to the cities of the North. Places such as Chicago, Indianapolis and Detroit were favoured destinations, due to the wealth of employment in the factories located in these cities. St. Louis was another city that drew its share of uprooted individuals who sought a better life than that offered by the toil of sharecropping. It was in St. Louis that Bunch landed in 1929.
Having honed his musical talents while travelling, and influenced by the popularity of the Blues duet of pianist Leroy Carr and guitar player Scrapper Blackwell, Bunch found easy work in the clubs of both St. Louis and East St. Louis on the other side of the Mississippi River.
It was around this time Bunch decided to change his name to Peetie Wheatstraw. He also called himself "The Devil's Son-in-Law" and this title is under his name starting with his earliest recordings.
Wheatstraw's self-promotion swiftly paid off as he became a popular performer in East St. Louis, to the extent that he was asked to Chicago in 1930 to partake in recording sessions. He first entered the Vocalion Studios on August 13, 1930, and recorded a handful of numbers which included "Four O'Clock In The Morning" and "Tennessee Peaches Blues". Over the following decade, he would make several such treks, recording over 160 sides for the Vocalion, Decca and Bluebird labels.
Wheatstraw was known for his laid-back approach and adept singing and songwriting, though his instrumental talents were average at best. His songwriting appealed to working class minorities, due to their nature of the content—he often wrote about social issues such as unemployment and public assistance. There were also pieces about the immoral ways of loose women, and true to his own self-publicity, death and the supernatural. Almost all of his songs included his trademark "Ooh, well well", usually accentuated in the third verse, and this has been carried on by many subsequent Bluesmen, most noteworthy today being R.L. Burnside.
On his records Wheatstraw is occasionally heard playing guitar, but he usually took to the piano and required a guitarist to play with him—among his collaborators were Kokomo Arnold, Lonnie Johnson, Charlie Jordan, Charlie McCoy and Teddy Bunn, in addition to pianist Champion Jack Dupree. On some of his last dates, Peetie Wheatstraw recorded within a jazz inspired framework, collaborating with Lil Armstrong and trumpeter Jonah Jones.
Wheatstraw's influence was enormous during the 1930s. Perhaps the most obvious example of Wheatstraw's impact can be seen in the writings of Robert Johnson, often considered the most important Blues figure of the era. Many of Johnson's own recordings were actually re-workings of other popular artists of the time, and he drew heavily from Wheatstraw's repertoire.
Sinking Sun Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The evening sun is beginning to sink low
Just a few more hours
Ooo-well-well and I will have to go
Once I was going down the lonesome road
Once I was going down the lonesome road
I met a man, hoo-well-well
By then the sun had turned now, the whole world red
By then the sun had turned the whole world red
Poor me didn't have no place
Ooo-well-well, now to lay my worried head
Darkness fell upon me and I couldn't hear a sound
Darkness fell upon me and I couldn't hear a sound
I let fate be my pillow, hoo-well-well
My bed be on the ground
When I think about all the bad deeds I have done
When I think about all the bad deeds I have done
I say to myself, ooo-well-well, I'm no good son-of-a-gun.
Peetie Wheatstraw's Sinking Sun Blues is a blues song that talks about the end of the day and the problems that come with it. Wheatstraw uses the setting of the sun as a metaphor for the end of his life. The song talks about how the sun is “beginning to sink low” and how Wheatstraw only has a few more hours left to live, which hints at the idea that the end of his time on earth is close.
As the song goes on, Wheatstraw speaks about his encounters with a man who was “bound with heavy load”, representing the burdens that people carry in life. He also talks about how he has no place to lay his head, which symbolizes his internal unrest or lack of peace. The song then ends with Wheatstraw reflecting on the bad deeds he has done and the negative person he is.
The overall message of the song is one of despair and reflection. Wheatstraw uses the metaphor of the setting sun to explore these themes and convey the idea of the end of his own life drawing to a close. The song is a lament of sorts, a reflection on the things one has done and the burdens one carries.
Line by Line Meaning
The evening sun is beginning to sing low
The sun is setting and casting an orange glow over everything
Just a few more hours
Time is running out for the singer in some way
Ooo-well-well and I will have to go
The singer will have to leave soon, whether or not they want to
Once I was going down the lonesome road
The artist has had a difficult journey
I met a man, hoo-well-well
The artist encountered someone along the way
And he was bound with heavy load
The person the singer met was carrying a heavy burden
By then the sun had turned the whole world red
The sun had set and everything was cast in a red hue
Poor me didn't have no place
The artist didn't have anywhere to go
Ooo-well-well, now to lay my worried head
The artist needed to find a place to rest, but was worry-prone
Darkness fell upon me and I couldn't hear a sound
It became night and the artist was alone in the silence
I let fate be my pillow, hoo-well-well
The singer had to simply accept whatever happened to them
My bed be on the ground
The artist had to make do with sleeping on the hard earth
When I think about all the bad deeds I have done
The singer is reflecting on past wrongdoings
I say to myself, ooo-well-well, I'm no good son-of-a-gun.
The singer is disappointed in themselves and their actions
Contributed by Camilla C. Suggest a correction in the comments below.