Bed bugs, hookworms and mosquitoes: a public health playlist for the blues
The great blues songs of the 1920s have a lot to teach us about the miseries of what experts call insect vectors of human disease. Let's listen.
By Janet Golden and Jeffrey Anderson
The great blues songs of the 1920s have a lot to teach us about the miseries of what experts call insect vectors of human disease, many of which remain a problem throughout the world. Our last look at music recounted blues bacterial lyrics through the ages.
Now, buggers of the '20s:
In 1927, Bessie Smith told us all about the misery of bed bug bites in her "Mean Old Bed Bug Blues."
Known as the “Empress of the Blues,” Smith (1894/95-1937) delivered her songs with a soulfully haunting voice that left no doubt she drew from personal experience. Born into abject poverty in the segregated South, Smith became one of the highest paid African American performers of her era; she played with the greats, including Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman. In 1921 she moved to Philadelphia. Killed in an automobile accident while in Mississippi in1937, her body was returned to Philadelphia, where over 10,000 people paid their respects. Her grave remained unmarked until 1970, when successful reissues of her music led to a media campaign, and Janis Joplin and others arranged for a gravestone.
Bed bugs were eliminated from most homes in the developed world thanks to indoor spraying of DDT. We learned about the dangers of DDT thanks to the work of crusading biologist Rachel Carson and her 1962 publication Silent Spring, which led the government to ban its use. But now they’re back.
In her lyrics, Bessie Smith tells us: “Gals, bed bugs sure is evil, they don’t mean me no good.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is somewhat more upbeat: “bed bugs should not be considered a medical or public health hazard.”
Arthur (Blind) Blake (1890-1933), deemed one of the finest pre-war blues guitarists and one of the first commercially successful black guitarists, gave us
“Hookworm Blues” in 1929. The lyrics begin with an accurate description of an infection: “Hookworm in your body and your food don’t do you no good.” See:
The hookworm is a parasite that lives in the intestines, causing blood loss, anemia and protein deficiency. In children, a hookworm infection can retard growth and mental development. At one time hookworm infected up to 40 percent of the population in the southern United States. The building of sanitary outhouses, careful waste control, wearing of shoes (hookworm larva in the soil can penetrate the skin), and new treatment of those who were infected led to its eradication.
Blind Blake, also known as the "King of the Ragtime Guitar," died from tuberculosis (according to one report) or was run over by a Street Car (in another). The grave was unmarked for more than three-quarters of a century, until his stone was unveiled last October.
In 1929 Blind Lemon Jefferson (1897-1929) gave us yet another great song: "Mosquito Moan." Jefferson was born in Texas and began singing on the streets and in "juke joints" before moving to Chicago in the 1920s, where he began recording the songs that made him an influential blues singer.
Blind Lemon Jefferson's death has been blamed variously on being caught out in a snow storm, attacked by a dog, and being beaten for money he had received from his recordings. His grave, too, remained without a proper marker until 1967, even though he expressed that it to be looked after in his song "See that My Grave is Kept Clean."
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