Unpublished Paper
Elder Green Part 1: Reprobate Preacher or Folk Hero?
The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund Blog
(2018)
Abstract
This essay compiles evidence from newspapers, government documents, discographies, and secondary scholarship on blues, folklore, and the Mississippi Delta to argue that, contrary to the assumptions and musicological deductions of numerous scholars over the past fifty years, Charley Patton’s “Elder Greene Blues” may not be about a preacher who lacks conviction and indulges in various earthly pleasures. It may be about a formerly enslaved and rather ingenious African American farmer in the late 1880s who devises a plan to avoid debt peonage using his knowledge of the existing prejudices in white society. The protagonist, Elder Phillip Green, who had also served in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War, successfully circulates a story about his own lynching and disappears until his creditor in Vicksburg recoups what he can of his outstanding debt, at which time he returns to his family and resumes his life, only now free from the burdensome debt. The references to getting “sloppy drunk off a bottled in bond and walk[ing] the streets all night,” in this context, comes off as more of a celebration of his economic freedom rather than a preacher’s confession of libidinal desires, or social commentary on hypocrisy in the church. Patton’s lyrics, in essence, may contain a hidden transcript, dramatizing different scenes in the clever saga of a black folk hero of the Jim Crow era.
Keywords
- Elder Green,
- Charley Patton,
- Delta Blues,
- Jim Crow,
- Folklore
Disciplines
Publication Date
June 30, 2018
Citation Information
T. DeWayne Moore, "Elder Green Part 1: Reprobate Preacher or Folk Hero?," The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund Blog, June 30, 2018.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY International License.