Album: Black Snake Moan (1927)

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• I, I ain't got no mama now
  I, I ain't got no mama now
  She told me late last night, "You don't need no mama no how"
  Mmm, mmm, black snake crawlin' in my room
  Mmm, mmm, black snake crawlin' in my room
  Some pretty mama better come and get this black snake soon
  Ohh-oh, that must have been a bed bug, baby a chinch
  
  Can't bite that hard
  Ohh-oh, that must have been a bed bug, honey a chinch
  can't bite that hard
  Ask my sugar for fifty cents, she said "Lemon, ain't a
  child in the yard"
  Mama, that's all right, mama that's all right for you
  Mama, that's all right, mama that's all right for you
  
  Mama, that's all right, most seen all you do
  Mmm, mmm, what's the matter now?
  Mmm, mmm, honey what's the matter now?
  Sugar, what's the matter, don't like no black snake no how
  Mmm, mmm, wonder where my black snake gone?
  Mmm, mmm, wonder where this black snake gone?
  Black snake mama done run my darlin' home Writer/s: BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON
  Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 9

• AnonymousI can confidently say I've found the best interpretation of the Devil (as well as the blues Devil) in any song or movie. Sure Al Pachino in the devils advocate was good. And there's been some pretty scary versions in horror movies. "There will be blood" is up there. But hands down the best?! Easily the scene from "black snake moan" where Sam Jackson plays the title track. It's perfect. There's thunder outside. Jackson hasn't played the blues since his wife's passing. That was a different man. He takes his wedding ring off(again first time since we'll before she passed, and wedding rings are on the left hand) to put on a glass slide sp he can play the guitar. Symbolically putting down the man he's tried to be and becoming the bluesman he is again. He starts with a meandering pickin blues riff while telling a story to give context. He mentions often would forget where he was "becoming lost in the pines" (a clear reference to "where did you sleep last night" made famous by lead belly one of the 2 people responsible for the "blues Devil" myth as well as that song being very satanic, I'll break that one down later) and as he starts singing a lightning strike illuminates the crack under the door where you can almost make out the silhouette of old nicks feet outside. Then the power goes out, dark room. Christina Ricci pleads to keep playing (inviting the evil in) and the power slowly comes back on you here the static of the amp first and the a shot of a bulb slowly bringing light into the room. The song has been slow and threatening uo to now. Jackson singing very well amd harmonious. After this the distortion is way WAY up, Jackson is yelling the lyrics his voice breaking the entire rest of the piece. Every shot of him for the rest of the scene is from the left, with the single low hanging light right behind his head creating a halo. It's f--king terrifying.
  
  https://youtu.be/yYY06G4R7zY
• Roger from Milan, ItalyThe Snake image Is an African archetype. Jamming with an old Bluesman in Boston I mentioned I liked
  the song but It wouldn't fit me. He said "Why not?, oh, now I get It!". Incidentally I always thought the bite was due to pain from "desire".
• Bill Faulkner from AustraliaOf COURSE it's about sex.
  
  What else could these lines mean:
  "Mmm, mmm, black snake crawlin' in my room
  Some pretty mama better come and get this black snake soon"
  ?????
  
  What else would a pretty mama be doing with a black 'snake'?
• Jaybrook from U.s.a.SADLY WRONG!! In the movie, SHE has the 'black snake moan' & Jackson's character explains to his brother/preacher, that the reason he has the white girl locked up is because 'she has the black snake more' (bad) & he's trying to cure her of it. Jackson then says for the preacher to go in & talk to her, maybe he can help.
• Big B from The UniverseNot about sex? You decide with this one phrase:
  “That must have been a bedbug, you know a chinch don’t bite that hard...”
  
  The double entendre here is chinch. It’s a common bug that bites but it’s like a black fly, in its forward meaning in the song. But it’s also short for chinchilla which is slang for a woman’s fluffy nether regions, and used here as a metaphor for sex.
  So why would it be like a bedbug bite? Itchy red bumps? Well the two metaphors black snake and chinch (bite) together mean poor Lemon is singing the blues that he’s caught the herp, or another std that’s causing pain.
  Oh and mama would you be sticking around wanting the black snake if your man got bit by the chinch?
  Poor Lemons...
• Oldpink from New Castle, InPeople, PLEASE get a clue.
  This has nothing to do with sex or sexual innuendo.
  And I am no pollyanna, as I am fully aware that blues often has sexual themes, as in Robert Johnson's "From Four Till Late," with the lyric about a man "ramblin through its drawers."
  This is about Lemon's blindness giving him a particularly strong fear of the unknown menaces that exist, with a snake as a metaphor for the strongest of those fears.
  Consider just how fearful you would be if you had been blind from birth, told about a snake that can bite, but you have no idea what it looks like, or what it could do to you.
  I simply cannot imagine how scary the world would be, but I am certain that a blind man would have particularly powerful fears when it comes to that!
• Blog from London, United Kingdom"That must have been a bedbug, you know I just can't bite that hard - Asked my baby for fifty cents, she said 'Lemon, ain't a child in the yard'."
  
  Personal demons? Hmmm. The song skirts around intimate personal details in a knowing way, the same way most popular songs of the time traditionally did, usually for a comic effect. What's great and modern about BLJ - who was a successful, if ripped off, recording artist, don't forget - is that he expresses all the pain and misery of being broke and lonely beyond the comedy of lying in bed alone(or not) feeling horny - which IMHO is the immediate subject of the song.
• Tom from Marble Falls, ArMost old school blues songs were either written abot sex, drinking, or religion: The Trinity of the Blues. I agree with Eli that BSM was about sex, but it also was about personal demons, since Lemon had several in his life. Sad to think he was found dead, froze to death in Chicago after a snowstorm.
• Eli from Toronto, OnThis song is about sex!!!
  There have been whole doctoral papers and books written about the sexual imagery and subtexts in Blues and related music...
  Do I have to spell it out for you?
  The snake represents the male sex organ, the singer is moaning because he/she is lonely for a partner, a lover...
  
  Except for the title, which was obviously used for it's strong sexual connotations to promise something that it never delivers, this B-level Hollywood movie has little to do with the song or with Victoria Spivey or Blind Lemon Jefferson (the first two artists to record this song in 1926 and 1927 respectively).
  The interpretations in the movie regarding demons and other bad memories are strictly those that the director imposed on the plot, and have nothing to do with 80 years of tradition of sexual imagery in songs like this one.
  

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