{"id":2083,"date":"2016-10-08T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2083"},"modified":"2017-02-01T12:21:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T17:21:50","slug":"michigan-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/michigan-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan Water (ironies of the Great Migration)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Michigan Water\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/r2YnW9eV9fM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s award for the most glaring irony in American folklore goes to the title line of this song:<br \/>\n&#8220;Michigan water tastes like sherry wine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1336\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/jelly-roll-morton-commodore-300x295.jpg?resize=272%2C267\" alt=\"jelly roll morton commodore\" width=\"272\" height=\"267\" \/>Jelly Roll Morton&#8217;s lyric metaphorically summed up the central dream of the &#8220;great migration&#8221; &#8212; that black Americans could escape bad times down south for good times up north. It was not all that different from the dream that made a lot of poor Irish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans brave the dangers of steerage in search of streets paved with gold &#8212; or that made Okies leave the dust bowl for California, where you could pluck peaches off the trees.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, none of those destinations were as pretty as they were painted, and racial discrimination made migration a more effective solution for some people than others. But for a lot of black southern expatriates, for quite a few decades, working for Ford or Chrysler provided a hell of a lot better life than sharecropping in Mississippi.<\/p>\n<p>These days, things aren&#8217;t so clear. I recently heard an NPR interview with James Young, the <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2088 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/James-Young.jpg?resize=150%2C166\" alt=\"james-young\" width=\"150\" height=\"166\" \/>black mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were lynched during the Mississippi Summer of 1964, and it sounds like a lot has changed down there. Meanwhile, up in Michigan, the news has mostly been about water that by no means tastes like sherry wine.<\/p>\n<p>I first heard this song either from Dave Van Ronk or on a Jelly Roll Morton album I borrowed from Dave. At the time, I doubt I gave much thought to its historical context, but looking through the program of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/dock-of-the-bay\/\">educational concert I gave at the India Institute of Technology<\/a> in New Delhi back in 1981, I find that I juxtaposed the black and white southern working class experience in the early 20th century by playing this back-to-back with a version of Jimmie Rodgers&#8217;s &#8220;California Blues&#8221; that included a similar verse comparing the water in Georgia and California.<\/p>\n<p>I hadn&#8217;t been playing this much in recent years, but the Flint situation <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2089\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jerron-Paxton-piano.jpg?resize=197%2C200\" alt=\"jerron-paxton-piano\" width=\"197\" height=\"200\" \/>brought it back to mind, and I was pleased to hear Jerron Paxton, my favorite current folk\/blues\/pop artist, sing it this summer with a new verse referring to the news&#8230; which, of course, I promptly stole. He plays it on piano, like it should be played, and if you don&#8217;t know his work, I strongly recommend checking him out, because he&#8217;s a monster on numerous instruments and a singularly compelling and entertaining performer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year&#8217;s award for the most glaring irony in American folklore goes to the title line of this song: &#8220;Michigan water tastes like sherry wine.&#8221; Jelly Roll Morton&#8217;s lyric metaphorically summed up the central dream of the &#8220;great migration&#8221; &#8212; that black Americans could escape bad times down south for good times up north. It &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/michigan-water\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Michigan Water (ironies of the Great Migration)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Michigan Water (ironies of the Great Migration) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/michigan-water\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Michigan Water (ironies of the Great Migration) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This year&#8217;s award for the most glaring irony in American folklore goes to the title line of this song: &#8220;Michigan water tastes like sherry wine.&#8221; Jelly Roll Morton&#8217;s lyric metaphorically summed up the central dream of the &#8220;great migration&#8221; &#8212; that black Americans could escape bad times down south for good times up north. 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Though most famous for his outlaw corridos, he was a brilliantly versatile chronicler of Mexican life, and composed insightful and poetic songs about cross-border migration, government corruption, and other\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Paulino-Vargas.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1387,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mamies-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":2083,"position":1},"title":"Mamie&#8217;s Blues (219 Blues)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In his notes to this song, Dave Van Ronk wrote, \"Jelly Roll Morton, certainly the greatest jazz composer before Ellington and a singer of incredible subtlety claimed to have invented jazz in 1902. There is little point in argument.\" This was one of Morton's most subtle efforts, and one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BasinSt.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5136,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/alabama-bound\/","url_meta":{"origin":2083,"position":2},"title":"Alabama Bound (Jelly Roll Morton, and many others)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 30, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I've known \"Alabama Bound\" forever, but never worked it up as a performance piece, and am posting it now because I used it as the theme of chapter one of my new book, Jelly Roll Blues, an exploration of Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress recordings, the world that nurtured\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Blind-Boones-Southern-Rag-Medley-No-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1331,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/buddy-boldens-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":2083,"position":3},"title":"Buddy Bolden&#8217;s Blues (Jelly Roll Morton)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk had numerous musical heroes,\u00a0 but Jelly Roll Morton was number one. Over the years, I got used to the idea that if I stayed late enough at his place we would likely end up listening to Morton records (often back to back with Phillipe Koutev's Bulgarian ensemble),\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/jelly-roll-morton-commodore-300x295.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2187,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/oil-money\/","url_meta":{"origin":2083,"position":4},"title":"Oil Money (Bill Morrissey)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In the early 1980s, I rarely played a set that didn't include a Bill Morrissey song, and this was the one I sang most frequently -- in part because Bill didn't do it all that often, so I could kind of lay claim to it. Unlike a lot of Bill\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"bill-morrissey-lp","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Bill-Morrissey-LP-300x299.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4441,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/watermelon-dream-guy-clark\/","url_meta":{"origin":2083,"position":5},"title":"Watermelon Dream (Guy Clark)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 16, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"This is probably my all-time favorite summer song -- partly because of the lyrics and the way they fit with the melody, and partly because the guitar arrangement fell together so comfortably. 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