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I have thought quite a bit about the inspiration for this song as it deals with Systematic Racial inequality, it was based loosely on a Village in southern Illinois near the Indiana border where I was born, where I lived the first three years of my life and yearly visited my grandparents every Christmas and a few weeks In the summer where life was incredibly slow. This could’ve been many small towns like this, I might presume.
I often wondered why there were no people of color in this town of 600 people when so much of my interactions in Mississippi and Birmingham and my maternal grandmother from Memphis were interwoven interracially.
When I moved to Jackson Mississippi at age 3, my two older brothers and I, I Fell in love with Black rhythm and blues and gospel.
My older brothers Chip and Steve, a great Guitarist, were great musicians, Chip, a great piano player, introduced me on to the music of Ray Charles and Little Richard and so much more.
Since then, I have performed with Some of the legends of R&B, and Jazz including Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, Mary Wells, Martha Reeves, Jimmy Witherspoon, Chuck Berry and many more
The true story of America’s sundown towns, which forbade Black people from entering after dark. The HBO series Lovecraft Country, which inspired this song, references the dark and racist history of the United States, drew a lot of attention to “sundown towns”. According to the series, three Black travelers from the Southside of Chicago, drive through 1950s America and arrive in a sundown town, where they are immediately pulled over by a cop, which is based on a novel of the same name. If they don’t leave before sundown, the cop threatens them with death.
The scene resurrected debates about the tumultuous history of sundown towns and how some still exist in various forms. Sundown towns existed in the United States from 1890 to the post-Jim Crow era. Then, they were all-white communities or countries that used discriminatory laws, threats, harassment, or violence to keep Black people and other minorities out.
Few cities have dealt with their racist pasts, and we can’t fix what we won’t admit is broken. Each sundown town has to search its own soul and reckon with a past that still threatens the lives of non-white individuals. We’re not able to change the hearts and minds of all people, but we can develop and improve policies that protect the rights of all Americans to drive anywhere, and jog anywhere safely, regardless of the time of day or their skin color.
I was Washing grandpa’s Cadillac, Tricked out 1948
Like a dream machine all chrome and jet black
To the license plate on the back
It read land of Lincoln and that got me thinking
The Irony in that very state
Four score and too many years too late
Some folks getting mighty tried to wait
People here got a wary eye
baked into grandma’s cherry pie
Dylan sang times were changing fast
But here they’re sleepwalking through the past
In a sundown town.
Where black and brown ain’t allowed
In a sundown town
Ain't it a shame how it got the name
Of a sundown town
I saw a run-down street where I was born,
Beale street mama I be torn
And ghosts from the past don’t get no sleep
til Saint Gabriel blows that horn
might be a long way till the judgement day,
Sorry papa, but I’ can’t stay
Seems like another life not mine, not so far back in time
Another one-horse town fallen in decay
mercy on its soul I pray
Remember this moment, remember the past
When November shadows fall too fast
Chorus
Have you ever walked in someone else’s shoes
And the blues they night be living in?
Can’t Nobody get to choose
shades and Pigments of our skin
for sins going way back when,
Is it too late to make amends?
Time and places of our birth.
All God’s children living on this earth
Been many years since I headed west
And grandpa long since laid to rest
And aftertaste may be bittersweet
When shadows fall on main street
A history lesson might be a confession
To pump our pride or hide our shame
In this complicit and complicated past
Where some folks still ain't free at last
Chorus
credits
from Songs Have A Life Of Their Own,
released August 29, 2023
John Lee Sanders
Piano, Lead and background Vocals, Strings, Sound Effects, Percussion,
Bruce Kaphan, Co-Producer, Mix Engineer
Lap Steel Guitar, Slide Guitar, Fender Telecaster (Mute Guitar)
Maria Silverio Gomez, Background Vocals
Dillon Vado, Drums
Polo Jones, 5 String Bass
Skip Edwards, Hammond Organ
Sam Misner, Background Vocals
Megan Smith, Background Vocals
Mastered by David Glasser at Airshow Mastering
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