“Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie I was bawn in.“Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
And I wonder what nigger is saying to her a bootiful good mawnin’.”
A red-brown West Indian among them volunteered to sing a Port-of-Spain song. It immortalized the drowning of a young black sailor. It was made up by the bawdy colored girls of the port, with whom the deceased had been a favorite, and became very popular among the stevedores and sailors of the island.
“Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
But the sharks won’t puke him up.
Oh, ring the bell again.“Empty is you’ room,
Empty is you’ room,
Empty is you’ room,
But you find one in the sea.
Oh, empty is you’ room.“Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
But we know who feel the pain.
Oh, ring the bell again.”
The song was curious, like so many Negro songs of its kind, for the strange strengthening of its wistful melody by a happy rhythm that was suitable for dancing.
Aunt Hattie, sitting on a low chair, was swaying to the music and licking her lips, her wrinkled features wearing an expression of ecstatic delight. Billy Biasse offered to stand a bottle of gin. Jake said he would also sing a sailor song he had picked up in Limehouse. And so he sang the chanty of Bullocky Bill who went up to town to see a fair young maiden. But he could not remember most of the words, therefore Bullocky Bill cannot be presented here. But Jake was boisterously applauded for the scraps of it that he rendered.
The singing finished, Jake confided to Billy: “I sure don’t feel lak spending a lonesome night this heah mahvelous night.”
“Ain’t nobody evah lonely in Harlem that don’t wanta be,” retorted Billy. “Even yours truly lone Wolf ain’t nevah lonesome.”
“But I want something as mahvelous as mah feelings.”
Billy laughed and fingered his kinks: “Harlem has got the right stuff, boh, for all feelings.”
“Youse right enough,” Jake agreed, and fell into a reverie of full brown mouth and mischievous brown eyes all composing a perfect whole for his dark-brown delight.
“You wanta take a turn down the Congo?” asked Billy.
“Ah no.”
“Rose ain’t there no moh.”
Rose had stepped up a little higher in her profession and had been engaged to tour the West in a Negro company.
“All the same, I don’t feel like the Congo tonight,” said Jake. “Le’s go to Sheba Palace and jazz around a little.”
Sheba Palace was an immense hall that was entirely monopolized for the amusements of the common workaday Negroes of the Belt. Longshoremen, kitchen-workers, laundresses, and W.C. tenders—all gravitated to the Sheba Palace, while the upper class of servitors—bellboys, butlers, some railroad workers and waiters, waitresses and maids of all sorts—patronized the Casino and those dancings that were given under the auspices of the churches.
The walls of Sheba Palace were painted with garish gold, and tables and chairs were screaming green. There were green benches also lined round the vast dancing space. The music stopped with an abrupt clash just as Jake entered. Couples and groups were drinking at tables. Deftly, quickly the waiters slipped a way through the tables to serve and collect the money before the next dance. … Little white-filled glasses, little yellow-filled glasses, general guzzling of gin and whisky. Little saucy brown lips, rouged maroon, sucking up iced crème de menthe through straws, and many were sipping the golden Virginia Dare, in those days the favorite wine of the Belt. On the green benches couples lounged, sprawled, and, with the juicy love of spring and the liquid of Bacchus mingled in fascinating white eyes curious in their dark frames, apparently oblivious of everything outside of themselves, were loving in every way but …
The orchestra was tuning up. … The first notes fell out like a general clapping for merrymaking and chased the dancers running, sliding, shuffling, trotting to the floor. Little girls energetically chewing Spearmint and showing all their teeth dashed out on the floor and started shivering amorously, itching for their partners to come. Some lads were quickly on their feet, grinning gayly and improvising new steps with snapping of fingers while their girls were sucking up the last of their crème de menthe. The floor was large and smooth enough for anything.
They had a new song-and-dance at the Sheba and the black fellows were playing it with éclat.
Brown gal crying on the corner,
Yaller gal done stole her candy,
Buy him spats and feed him cream,
Keep him strutting fine and dandy.Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma,
Yaller gal can’t make you fall,
For Ise got some loving pa-pa
Yaller gal ain’t got at all.
“Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.” The black players grinned and swayed and let the music go with all their might. The yellow in the music must have stood out in their imagination like a challenge, conveying a sense of that primitive, ancient, eternal, inexplicable antagonism in the color taboo of sex and society. The dark dancers picked up the refrain and jazzed and shouted with delirious joy, “Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.” The handful of yellow dancers in the crowd were even more abandoned to the spirit of the song. “White,” “green,” or “red” in place of “yaller” might have likewise touched the same deep-sounding, primitive chord. …
Yaller gal sure wants mah pa-pa,
But mah chocolate turns her down,
’Cause he knows there ain’t no loving
Sweeter than his loving brown.Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma,
Yaller gal can’t make you fall,
For Ise got some loving pa-pa
