Mississippi 9

Listen to Mississippi 9, a 79-year-old woman from Clarksdale, Mississippi, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 79

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/03/1937

PLACE OF BIRTH: Clarksdale, Mississippi

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: hostess at a funeral home

EDUCATION: two years of college

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: none

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Mendy McMasters

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/10/2016 (with emendation 2017)

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um, my young son, Frank’s younger brother, had, was in college in Memphis, and he was bringing home a lot of friends for a blues festival here, and they were sleeping all over the house, and I was feeding them, and so I thought, well, I was in Memphis at the Kroger, at the delicatessen, and I’d just, you know, buy a lot of cold cuts, so I would have an — so I asked the lady at the delicatessen when, after she gave me, you know, the things I needed, I said, “Can you tell me where the beer is?” And she said, “ma’am?” I said, “Can you tell me where the beer is?” And she said, “I don’t understand you, ma’am.” And I said, “The beer, B E E R, beer.” And, ah, sh, I wonder why she didn’t understand me? So when I told my daughter this story — my little granddaughter was about this tall — and she said, every time we get in polite society she’d say, “Momma, tell them about Momma Jane and the beer.” [laughter] Does beer sound normal to you? [laughter]

My friend Louisa’s uncle, Brick [name removed] — and he was sheriff here and died by being shot when he went to a, you know, something he was going to. But, anyway, when he was growin’ up, he was kind of a bully. I guess that’s where he got the name Brick because he was tough and it was all in this neighborhood, you know, where the episcopal church was and the rectory was next door, and all these people lived in this area, and they were growing up and they would bully poor, little Tom — Tennessee Williams — because he was kind of sissyish. [laughter] So they bully, would — what’s the word I’m trying to say? Bully ‘im. They would bully him. So when he wrote um, Str, no, what was it? [Her son says: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof] Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he named Brick, who was impotent in the thing, uh, named him Brick. [they laugh]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Mendy McMasters

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/10/2016 (with emendation 23/03/2017)

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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