Singing the Blues About the Automobile and American Life Prior to WWII -- Virginia Liston, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson

Virginia Liston -- Rolls Royce Papa

Blind Lemon Jefferson


Red and Sleepy John Estes



Robert Johnson

Singing the Blues about Automobiles and Life

In the 1920s and1930s it was Blues artists – often coming from humble and racially restricted worlds – that recognized the car as being symbolic of freedom and unrestricted mobility. As Blacks living in a world of very limited freedom in the Jim Crow American South, their artistic expression – the Blues – contained the message that the car was liberating in terms of personal privacy and social and financial emancipation. It was a message of hope to those living in the Mississippi delta, connected as it was by U.S. Highway 61.

Post–WWI Blues singers often sang about Fords, and especially the Model T. It was a hard working and durable machine, built by workers who included those who were Black. It was a car ignored for its virtues, as were the African-Americans who were working the cotton fields in the vicinity of Greenville and Natchez, Mississippi. One musical example expressing the notion of neglect was Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “DB Blues,” released in 1928. One lyric proclaimed “A Packard is too expensive, Ford will take you where you want to go.” Seven years later, Sleepy John Estes echoed a similar theme in his 1935 “Poor Man’s Friend.” Jefferson sang, “The Model T Ford is the poor man’s friend.” Indeed, while a Cadillac might have been in their dreams, it was more than likely a Ford that was the friend of African-Americans living in the Delta who were fortunate enough to purchase any car before WWII.

As E. C. Widmer has so insightfully pointed out, there were strong sexual innuendoes in Blues songs, and that included tunes referring to cars.⁴³ In 1926 Virginia Liston lamented that her “Rolls Royce Papa” had a bent piston rod:

Daddy I'll drop you in my garage: and that's no doubt

I'm going to wipe your windshield: cut your taillight out

Your carburettor's rusty: this I really mean

Your gas tank's empty: won't hold gasoline

Your windshield is broken: it ain't worth a cent

Your steering wheel is wobbly: your piston rod is bent

Your fender's all broken: your wheels ain't tight

And I know doggone well: your spark plugs ain't hitting right⁴⁴

A year later Bertha Chippie Hill, in “Sports Model Mama,” claimed to receive punctures everyday.

The most important car-related song of the period was the 1936 Robert Johnson hit, “Terraplane Blues.” Johnson used the car-human being metaphor to the limit:

And I feel so lonesome, you hear me when I moan
When I feel so lonesome, you hear me when I moan
Who been drivin' my Terraplane, for you since I been gone.

I'd said I flash your lights, mama, you horn won't even blow
(spoken: Somebody's been runnin' my batteries down on this machine)
I even flash my lights, mama, this horn won't even blow

I'm gion' heist your hood, mama, I'm bound to check your oil
I'm goin' heist your hood, mama, mmm, I'm bound to check your oil
I got a woman that I'm lovin', way down in Arkansas

Now, you know the coils ain't even buzzin', little generator won't get the spark
Motor's in a bad condition, you gotta have these batteries charged
But I'm cryin', pleease, pleease don't do me wrong.
Who been drivin' my Terraplane now for, you since I been gone.

Mr. highway man, please don't block the road
Puh hee hee, please don't block the road
'Cause she's reachin' a cold one hundred and I'm booked and I got to go

Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
Yoo ooo ooo ooo, you hear me weep and moan
Who been drivin' my Terraplane now for, you since I been gone

I'm goin' get down in this connection, keep on tanglin' with your wires
I'm gon' get down in this connection, oh well, keep on tanglin' with these wires
And when I mash down on your little starter, then your spark plug will give me fire⁴⁵

Johnson’s songs served to lift the spirits of those oppressed and downtrodden during the bleak Depression years. It would be after WWII, however, with unparalleled prosperity and automobility, that music would take on broader societal significance to a far broader audience. And it would be the Blues tradition, drawn on by both Black and White artists after the war that would set the stage for the birth – in the back seat of an automobile, so to speak – of rock and roll.⁴⁶

1996 -- I begin work on my brown" 1971 Porsche 911T Targa

Again, sorry folks for no photos -- still on the road with a troublesome laptop computer that cannot upload photos. Previously, I had two posts on my Porsche 911. Here is a third -- enjoy --

Part III

Once the car was in the garage, the money pit opened for the first time. For those interested in reading more on this human agony, see Stefan Wilkinson’s The Solid Gold Porsche. It truly becomes a contest of man (or woman, I guess), verses machine. Aha, the car won’t start because it turns over too slow! Well, go buy two batteries -- one is not enough on these cars. Little did I know that the batteries are in parallel, and I could have bought just one. Since the size of the batteries is difficult to find, the next thing you have to do is somehow adapt these batteries to the hood compartment area, not that easy a task, because you sure don’t want a battery or two rolling around the front of the car. Live and learn. Pep Boys draws first blood. The batteries are there because Porsche needed to put more weight evenly distributed left and right, and to replace what were once lead weights that resided up front.
OK, the car now cranked well, but sputtered and died. It started in zero degree temperatures before I bought it! So the car gets its first ride to Stuttgart Automotive in Centerville, a great place to get financially hosed down. My only consolation is the lead mechanic there is now dead, and hopefully burning in the hottest regions of hell. First major problem – gas has gone bad, rust has formed in the gas tank, and has burned out the electric fuel pump. Also, the Weber Carburetors – that look like they were just rebuilt – needed to be rebuilt, as the idle jets are clogged. Take out tank. Clean and scrape out with a chain. For $500, Ray, a less than forthright mechanic, was more than willing to rebuild the carbs -- probably didn’t need it now that I look back. Solve problems? Hardly. Get it home, drive around a bit, and car dies. More debris in carbs. Another electric fuel pump burns out. Wife comes with Volvo and strong robe and pulls me home. Back to Stuttgart and more money down this deep pit that undoubtedly extends to China.
This car was rather filthy, especially underneath. And because it had sat and before that undoubtedly neglected and mistreated, there was plenty of surface rust in nuts and bolts. Cleaning is a strength of mine; however, mechanics certainly do not rank high on my list of inborn abilities. One of the things I quickly discovered was that this car had many areas underneath that were coated with a thick, granular tar. That saved much of it from rusting, but became a great challenge to me as I had to remove this stuff, putty knife after putty knife. It was encrusted in the fender wells, and it was so thick that the horns, located in the left fender well, were literally filled with tar and stones.
Besides this obvious problem, the car was not a complete car. Sure there were to extra boxes of parts and two extra front seats, but some critical pieces were missing – like the belly pan, which protects the master cylinder and fuel pump for road debris and rocks that could disable these important components. My friendly mechanic Ray had plenty of extra parts that I needed, and would add to his growing fortune at my expense by selling me these parts, thus reducing his extensive and slow-moving inventory.
The rebuilding of the carbs was my first experience with twin Weber 40IDAC units. On several occasions during those first weeks of ownership I had to clear the idle jets of junk, as the fuel lines and gas tank remained a bit of a problem even though the tank had been cleaned. Weber carburetors are the gold standard of carburetors for the racing and sports car crowd, although now aftermarket injection systems have cut into the business somewhat particularly related to U.S. car applications. They are a formidable technology, with many variants due to interchangeable idle jets, main jets, emulsion tubes, and air correction jets. When you combine this complexity with issues related to balancing and synchronizing, mastering a set of Webers takes someone who has both intuitive sensibilities and rational mechanical skills. Naively at first, I thought all I needed was my old Unisyn synchronizer from my youthful days of owning an MGA to take charge of the Webers. Never was I more wrong.
Indeed, was wrong about so many things concerning Porsches and restoration. To bring back a car to life takes more money that a novice can ever imagine. It also takes persistence, inner strength, knowledge, luck, and good friend like Cliff Brockman. Porsches are so different than conventional, water-cooled, Detroit iron. They are precisely put together, idiosyncratic, and devilishly designed in terms of the ergonomics of repair.
One thing I learned the hard way is that unless you have a relative in the body repair and auto paint business, don’t buy a car that needs to be repainted, for that will cost you more than you think. My Porsche was repainted from its original Conda Green to a dark brown, a dark chocolate color that was popular in the late 1970s. As one friend called it, it was “shit brown.” Not only was the color atrocious, there were areas that were cracked and checked, probably because coats of the enamel were put on before the previous layer had fully dried. Furthermore, the lower part of the driver’s side was damaged and poorly puttied, with the result that the door did not close properly. Gaps, as I would learn are important. And the left rear quarter panel was also not right, but then this car, no matter how I detailed it could look somewhat right at 20 feet, but up close it was horribly disfigured. More than likely the owner, who had the car painted, also decided at that time to update it, and thus it had a more modern 1975 or 1976 look, with the addition of Cookie cutter wheels and a rear reflector and bumper that was imperfectly installed.
The interior of the car was fairly intact, although there was an ugly hole in the dash where there was once a fog light switch. A minor flaw in the driver’s seat would be fixed with the extra seat skin that I could take of the spare seat that came with the car. An Alpine radio didn’t work, the tach was dead, windshield wipers didn’t wipe, the horn was silent, and the heater defroster controls controlled nothing. Looking out of the dash with the sun was directly shining on it revealed pitting on the passenger side. Boy, was I a fool to buy this car!

Dynamic Dayton Ohio -- General Motors and Dayton before WWII

Hi folks -- going back to Dayton Ohio from Florida tomorrow after a research trip to a library in Naples. The Dayton I am going back to is nothing like it once was. Now we have high unemployment, people and corporations fleeing, a terrible image, a dying central core, and poor urban leadership. From my book, here is a short account of a great corporation (GM) and a great medium sized city (Dayton) in 1938:

Next to Flint, Michigan and perhaps Russelheim, Germany, no city in America had been influenced by GM’s success more than Dayton, Ohio.33 With a history in agricultural implement manufacture and the home of the National Cash Register Company, Dayton was home to a large number of skilled machinists who subsequently found employment in the rapidly-growing automobile-related firms established by Boss Kettering and his associates. According to Fortune, in 1938 approximately 100,000 of the 200,000 residents of Dayton owed their economic livelihoods directly to General Motors. And not all of these activities were strictly involved automobile manufacturing, for Frigidaire employed 12,000 workers making refrigerators, beer coolers, air conditioners, electric ranges and water heaters. Nearby, in central Dayton, Delco Products made electric motors not only for Frigidaires, but also for Maytag washers, Globe meat slicers, and DuPont rayon spinners. It was estimated that some 10 million motors worldwide could be traced back to Dayton. Additionally Delco made coil springs and shock absorbers for GM, Nash, Hudson, Graham and Packard automobiles. Finally, Delco had a brake operation, making hydraulic brake assemblies and brake fluid while housed in perhaps the only flop to bear GM’s corporate name, General Motors Radio. Often overlooked, GM’s Inland Manufacturing in Dayton had its origins in WWI and the Dayton-Wright Airplane Co. After the war, its woodworking department formed the basis of an enterprise to make wooden steering wheels and later rubber-based ones. Product diversification followed, so that the firm made everything from rubber cement to running boards, motor mounts, and weather strips. To borrow a phrase from a book boosting the city during the 1950s, truly GM’s Dayton operations were at the heart of was “dynamic Dayton.”

The Toyota Recall -- Floor Mats, Hacked rather than Defective Computers, Sabotage or a Conspiracy?

Hi folks --again, I have to apologize for a lack of images -- I am on the road, and my new computer has a problem with uploading my pictures....

The big question at Toyota right now is it just floor mats that are causing accelerators to stick? Or is it the computer system, which Toyota denies.
All of this started with a four-person fatal accident of an off-duy policeman and 3 passengers near San Diego.
Is this a computer flaw from the Toyota hardware as it came off the line? Could a hacker change the computer to program it so that unintended acceleration took place? Could the accident in San Diego really been a planned murder? In these other cases of complaints involving Toyotas and Lexus, could someone have sabotaged the computers to embarass Toyota and thus put a huge chink in their brand reputation for quality?

Computers in cars have raised many, many questions that challenge the notion of the car as a feedom machine. What if you have OnStar? Can someone listen to your conversations.?Follow exactly where you are located? Cause the car to accelerate and involve you in a potentially fatal accident?

Film of the 1930s and the Automobile

The following three images are from on of my favorite films, The Crowd Roars (1932)




From Burn Em Up Barnes

Filming on the Race Track and Soundstage


Filming the automobile in motion during the 1930s was much less involved than it is today, primarily because many of the scenes featuring cars were produced on a sound stage. One of the most interesting films dealing with auto racing during the 1930s was “The Crowd Roars” (1932), directed by Howard Hawks and starring James Cagney. Hawks, who had a personal interest in auto racing at that time, shot a number of remarkable racing scenes at Ascot Park in California and Indianapolis. Duesenbergs, Millers, and modified Ford speedsters are featured in this film about two brothers, a faithful friend, their women (played by Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell), a fiery accident, fear, and redemption. “The Crowd Roars” provides a rare glimpse into the world of racing and the cars of the 1930s. According to one recent reviewer, footage from “The Crowd Roars” was removed and inserted in a later Warner Brothers film, Indianapolis Speedway (1939). Later, when the footage was reinserted, it contained some 1939 scenes, and so automobiles, racing announcers and the ambulance were not in the original version. Despite its weak plot and at times cheesy acting, this film contains an important historical record, including scenes with Indy winners Billy Arnold, Fred Frame, and Lou Schneider.47
The serial was part and parcel of American moviegoers during the Depression era, and one serial adventure that prominently featured racing cars and automobiles was the 1934 “Burn ‘Em Up Barnes.” It starred Jack Mulhall, Frankie Darro, Lola Lane and a host of evil characters that included Jason Robards Sr. Viewers watched 12 episodes filled with crashes, chases, races, and treachery, as two capitalists and their henchmen attempt to swindle “our” heroes out of land that contains a bonanza of oil underneath it.48 The 1930s brought out not only the best in Americans, but also the worst, if this film is at all a true reflection of everyday life and human motives and needs.
One immensely powerful film about the American automobile that was not seen in the local cinema during the 1930s was Master Hands (1936). Produced by the Jam Handy Organization, a firm that specialized in corporate-funded public relations, Master Hands used innovative cinematography similar to that in much more famous Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will to portray the men and machines that made quality Chevrolets in Flint, Michigan. Opening with a score by Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre, it contained little narrative and many powerful images. After viewing this film, the question is “which was more important, the hands of factory workers or the machines which they work with?” The human beings in this film are portrayed as intense and almost devoid of emotions, like the machines they are charged to operate. Scenes from the foundry as fiery, molten metal is being poured into sand molds to cast engine blocks are both stunning and a reminder of the harsh work environment that many automobile workers faced back in those days. Master Hands is perhaps the single best example of cinematography depicting what assembly line work was like in the era before World War II.49

Filming the automobile in motion during the 1930s was much less involved than it is today, primarily because many of the scenes featuring cars were produced on a sound stage. One of the most interesting films dealing with auto racing during the 1930s was “The Crowd Roars” (1932), directed by Howard Hawks and starring James Cagney. Hawks, who had a personal interest in auto racing at that time, shot a number of remarkable racing scenes at Ascot Park in California and Indianapolis. Duesenbergs, Millers, and modified Ford speedsters are featured in this film about two brothers, a faithful friend, their women (played by Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell), a fiery accident, fear, and redemption. “The Crowd Roars” provides a rare glimpse into the world of racing and the cars of the 1930s. According to one recent reviewer, footage from “The Crowd Roars” was removed and inserted in a later Warner Brothers film, Indianapolis Speedway (1939). Later, when the footage was reinserted, it contained some 1939 scenes, and so automobiles, racing announcers and the ambulance were not in the original version. Despite its weak plot and at times cheesy acting, this film contains an important historical record, including scenes with Indy winners Billy Arnold, Fred Frame, and Lou Schneider.47
The serial was part and parcel of American moviegoers during the Depression era, and one serial adventure that prominently featured racing cars and automobiles was the 1934 “Burn ‘Em Up Barnes.” It starred Jack Mulhall, Frankie Darro, Lola Lane and a host of evil characters that included Jason Robards Sr. Viewers watched 12 episodes filled with crashes, chases, races, and treachery, as two capitalists and their henchmen attempt to swindle “our” heroes out of land that contains a bonanza of oil underneath it.48 The 1930s brought out not only the best in Americans, but also the worst, if this film is at all a true reflection of everyday life and human motives and needs.
One immensely powerful film about the American automobile that was not seen in the local cinema during the 1930s was Master Hands (1936). Produced by the Jam Handy Organization, a firm that specialized in corporate-funded public relations, Master Hands used innovative cinematography similar to that in much more famous Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will to portray the men and machines that made quality Chevrolets in Flint, Michigan. Opening with a score by Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre, it contained little narrative and many powerful images. After viewing this film, the question is “which was more important, the hands of factory workers or the machines which they work with?” The human beings in this film are portrayed as intense and almost devoid of emotions, like the machines they are charged to operate. Scenes from the foundry as fiery, molten metal is being poured into sand molds to cast engine blocks are both stunning and a reminder of the harsh work environment that many automobile workers faced back in those days. Master Hands is perhaps the single best example of cinematography depicting what assembly line work was like in the era before World War II.49

Dagmar and the front end of 1950s American Automobiles -- when the sensual and auto design merged

My thanks to Ed Garten for bringing this topic up for conversation. Both Dagmar and Ed are native West Virginians!

Ask any old guy about Dagmars, and the early 1950s Cadillacs are sure to come up, with their front bumpers. And ask any real old guy, and he will be sure to remember Dagmar as one of the first stars on Television during the early 1950s. Who was Dagmar?

Dagmar Dagmar declined to give her birth date, although it is listed as November 29 in 1920, 1921, or 1927. She was born in a small town in West Virginia, and her real name was Virginia Ruth Egnor. Before marrying a Naval officer by the name of Lewis in 1941, she worked in a drug store, and as a waitress in Huntington, West Virginia. In New York City she fell in to a number of small parts in burlesque and theater. Her character was that of the dumb blond with obvious physical attributes up front.

Beginning in 1950 she appeared on television, as she was featured in Broadway Open House and with Jack Paar. She was voted the most photogenic girl on TV by a nationwide poll of editors and she appeared on the cover of Life magazine. In 1952 Dagmar starred in her own TV show, Dagmar's Canteen. A flash in the pan, she went though at least two other husbands during the 1950s and faded off the scene -- but her attributes was forever etched in the American Memory. She died on Oct. 9, 2001.

The linking of this woman and her breasts with the grill and front end in the early 1950s was one of the most powerful examples of the merging of the automobile with sexuality and sensuality in the immediate post-war period. Perhaps the only other aspects of cars that held a similar connection were a number of luxury car hood ornaments of the pre-WWII era that featured beautiful flowing female profiles.