SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Mess With Me Baby

Abner Jay was a collection I got off a free bandcamp day from Mississippi Records, and I throw this music into my hard drive mix where I pick random selections to be included on my old iphone that works as an ipod, and the songs pretty much have to survive on their merit, according to my tastes. It’s a true meritocracy, albeit one heavily influenced by my personal biases, but it’s my music to listen to, so fuck it. In fact, all these songs of the day come from the most played songs over the course of a recent month. But I didn’t know shit about Abner Jay until digging on this music. His history is FUCKED. The grandson of a slave, learned the banjo and guitar from that grandfather, and the young Abner Jay played thoroughly in the minstrel circuit. He ran circles with Sister Rosetta Tharpe and was confidante and driver/assistant to Prophetess Dolly Lewis (who I will be researching more about shortly, I’m sure). At one point Abner Jay had a “converted mobile home that opened up into a portable stage, complete with amplification and home furnishings,” which apparently the performances included as much shit talking and side rants as music. He was living my dream! On top of this, he self-released a ton of his own recorded music, in small batches, prolifically. What we’re getting now (including the Mississippi Records collection this song is from) is just collections taken from pieces of that extensive discography. It’s very interesting to me though that the roots of rock-n-roll came from the rural South, where kooks like Abner Jay or Sister Rosetta Tharpe were sort of blurring the lines between secular and spiritual, and creating a spiritual secular form of art. I struggle a lot with sliding into normalcy (though I’m by no means living a normal life, lol). But goddamn, the world needs as many out there kooks as it can get. And I mean the esoteric kind, who know they can’t ever know, but keep grasping at any and everything and expressing themselves constantly while grasping. We’ve got far too many kooks nowadays who think they know, full of “information” that ain’t even halfway real, way too confident they got it all figured out, when that’s not even possible.
Anyways, here’s an Abner Jay song. And if you happen to be my sister, YOU’VE GOT TO GO LISTEN TO A BUNCH MORE OF THIS DUDE.