FR-2 Liner notes

"I Wish My Mother Was On That Train"
Blind Joe Taggart and Emma Taggart vcl. duet acc. by Blind Joe Taggart, gtr.
New York City, 6 November 1926
Vocalion 1063

"I've Crossed the Separation Line"
Blind Joe Taggart and Joshua White vcl. duet acc. by own gtrs.
Chicago, October 1928
Paramount 12717

Before proceeding, it must be established that this is not about prophets, as in "derives from profitis, a Greek word meaning 'foreteller.'" Likewise, it's not about prophets and prophecy, as in Isaiah, and Messianic divinations specifying that God's servant will be buried in a rich man's tomb; it's also not about foretelling.

Rather, this is about forthtelling, a concept that is primarily concerned with insight into the will of God. This is about prophets, as in—to quote passages from Taylor Branch's Pillar of Fire—men who make "biting symbols out of daily pains and predicaments," men who "while facing, even welcoming, the destruction of themselves and their own people [remain] suffused with redemptive powers." More importantly, this is about guitar evangelists from the 1920s and 1930s: those strange, chinked fragments broken off and separated from the rest of society; those men who led hardscrabble artistic existences. Such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, who sang: "I stood on the corner and almost bust my head / I stood on the corner, almost bust my head / I couldn't earn enough money to buy me a loaf of bread."

South Carolina's Blind Joe Taggart was a guitar evangelist and a prophet. His redemptive powers were rooted in his music; many of his songs were salvation narratives that helped give folks the power to begin draining the poison from their souls. And yet there was that penchant for personal destruction, shooting through him with every breath. He made it into a biting symbol: the separation line, as in, "I've Crossed the Separation Line," which could represent the demarcation between sacred and secular. Taggart, like many others, moved between two incompatible callings: the flesh-and-blood realism of the blues and the divine teachings of the church. The line was repeatedly crossed, sometimes smudged, like a thumb dragged across pen ink on paper. Bluesman-turned-minister Rube Lacy once said, "The blues are true and the Truth shall set you free." Taggart sang with a clarity and resolve that suggested he believed the same, even at the risk of damning his soul. He did this for a variety of labels (Paramount, Vocalion, Decca, Broadway, Herwin) under a variety of aliases (Joe Donnell, Blind Tim Russell, Blind Jeremiah Taylor, Blind Joe Amos) throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Before departing, we must discuss the spouse, the balancing force (the prophetess?), the slink who will sneak the husband into Heaven. On "I Wish My Mother Was On That Train," wife Emma (identified as such by blues historian Paul Oliver) dispels with call-and-response to sing in harmony with her husband. Taggart sounds a tad uneasy; Emma compensates by sounding so indifferent. I like to think that when Taggart's hands shook with a tremor of anxiety, Emma clasped them and steadied them.