52 weeks of blues

Mance Lipscomb was a Texan songster who was ‘discovered’ during the blues revival of the 1960s. He could play a wide variety of styles, had a 50 year history of performing before being recorded and represents an important window to the older styles of music that developed into the blues.
He was born on April 9th, 1895, in the Bravos bottoms area of Burleson County, Texas, between the Bravos and Little Bravos Rivers near the town of Navasota. His parents were Jane, a Choctaw native Americans and Charles Lipscomb. Charles was an ex-slave from Alabama who was given the surname Lipscomb when he was sold to a Texan family of the same name. Mance was given the name “Bowdie Glenn”, or “Beau de Glen” or “Bodyglin”
The family were very musical – his father played the fiddle, an uncle played the banjo and his brothers played the guitar. When he was 11 his mother bought him his own guitar and he was soon accompanying his father at country suppers and dances. He was friends with an elderly man named Emancipation, and when the man died he adopted the name “Mance” in remembrance.
He quickly became a proficient musician and singer and was performing solo at “Saturday Night Suppers” and country dances in Brazos, Burleson, Grimes and Washington Counties. In the town of Brenham he befriended and performed with a blind guitarist Sam Rogers who taught him the “dead thumb” style of bass. He met and received some tuition from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson when they were performing in the local area.
He married Elnora in 1913 and they remained lifelong partners, producing a son, Mance Jr, and adopting 3 other children. He and his wife started hosting “Saturnight Suppers”, performing for the local community. In 1922 he was asked to tour with a fellow musician, but he declined, preferring to stay with his young family in Navasota. He remained based in the town all his life, working as a tenant farmer for various employers, playing music at night and the weekends. This was his life until the 1960s.
Texas in the 1920s and 1930s wasn’t known for its racial harmony. Segregation existed and black people were very much treated as second class citizens by a lot of the white population. Field labourers and farmers were very often exploited by white landowners. In 1956, Mance was working at the farm of Tom Moore, a notoriously mean landowner. One of Moore’s foremen abused Mance’s mother and wife, and Mance punched him in the face. Fearing for his life, Mance went into hiding. He went to Houston where he worked at a lumber yard during the day, and competed with Lightnin’ Hopkins, who he had met in 1938, for audiences in bars at night.
Compensation from a work place accident in the lumber yard gave Mance some money, and thinking that after 2 years the heat had died down, he returned to Navasota and bought himself a house and some land. He took a job at a road construction company, mowing lawns along the highways in Grimes County.
In 1959, blues researchers Mack McConnell and Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie records, heard about Mance while searching for Lightning Hopkins in Texas. They visited him, and Mance performed for them. Impressed with what they heard, in July and August the following year, they recorded Mance in the kitchen of his home. “Mance Lipscomb: Texas Sharecropper and Songster” became Arhoolie’s first release featuring 14 of the more than 40 songs recorded in these sessions.
This record made Mance central to the blues revival. Here was a bonafide, old style musician performing traditional country styles of music from his corner of Texas. Mance didn’t consider himself a bluesman; he considered himself a songster and had a massive variety of styles – ballads, rags, dance pieces, breakdowns, waltzes, one and two steps, slow drags, reels, and really old styles he named as ballin’ the jack, the buzzard lope, hop scop, buck and wing, heel and toe polka, as well as and popular, sacred, and secular songs. Audiences hadn’t seen any of these style before, and combined with Mance’s gentle nature and good humour, he because very popular.
In 1961 he recorded and released “Mance Lipscomb: Trouble in Mind”, and later that year performed in from of 40,000 at the Berkeley Folk Festival. 1964 saw the release of “Mance Lipscomb: Texas Songster Volume 2”. Volume 3 followed in 1965 – all up Arhoolie released 6 volumes in the series. In 1970 a documentary of Mance and his life title “A Well Spent Life” was released.
Mance suffered a stroke in 1974 which ended his recording days and further declining health meant he was in and out of hospitals and care. He died on January 30, 1976, in his beloved home town of Navasota is buried at West Haven Cemetery.

“I Want To Do Something for You” is a 10 bar blues, played in the key of F in standard tuning; either tune up a half step of use a capo on the first fret. The key feature of the song is Mance’s lyrical melodies over his “dead thumb” style of playing bass – the thumb hits a muted string on the beat every beat.
The song is somewhat unusual for blues in that it only changes chords on 2 of the 40 beats in the progression. Mance starts in G (and makes a G7 with the melody), then uses a quick one beat B bass note on the last beat of bar 5 to go into a C chord for half a bar in bar 6.
To play this song, play the G chord using your ring finger on the low E 3rd string, the little finger on the high E 3rd fret. You want the index finger free to play the melody notes on the 1st fret when they come around without losing the death bassline. Your pinky needs to play a few of the melody notes, including some small bends – if it’s been a bit neglected this song will bring it up to speed pretty quickly. I usually anchor my middle finger on the A string 2nd fret, but it’s only really necessary for one beat (though it does sound like Mance hits it a few times when his thumb hits that low G note).
The melodies are all built around the G minor pentatonic scale, he uses just 7 different notes for the entire song, but he uses them very well. The melody follows the voice, so there is a bit of variation in the repetitions of the progression, but the general theme is really similar each go around. It pays to sing while playing to get the emotional impact of the melody lines on point.
Mance is a master of this style, and plays it quick. I suggest slowing it down a bit, get the thumb on auto pilot and concentrate on the melodies to get them to ‘sing’. Then gradually increase speed as you get more comfortable with it.
The lyrics tell of a story of a man trying to woo a woman by offering her things, and getting rejected. The first verse introduces the main concept, then the verses alternate between the man offering, and the woman rejecting. The last verse has the woman accepting.

G                                                 G7
Well, I want to do something for you
G
Well, I wanna do something for you
G                                 C       G
I'll do anything in the world I can
G
I want to do something for you
G
If I can

I'll buy you a house and home
I'll buy you a house and home
Yes I'll buy you a house and home
Want to do something for you
If I can

I don't want no house and home
I don't want no house and home
I don't want nothing in the world you got
You can't do nothing for me
You understand?

I'll buy you a strip of land
I'll buy you a strip of land
Yes, I'll buy you a strip of land
I want to do something for you
If I can

I don't want a strip of land
I don't want no strip of land
Don't want nothing in the world you got
Man, you can't do nothing for me
Understand?

Buy you a diamond ring
Buy you a diamond ring
Yes I'll buy a diamond ring
I want to do something for you
If I can

I don't want no diamond ring
I don't want no diamond ring
Don't want nothing in the world you got
You can't do nothing for me
Understand?

I'll buy you a chevrolet 
I'll buy you a chevrolet 
Yes I'll buy you a chevrolet 
Want to do something for you
If I can

I don't want no chevrolet 
I don't want no chevrolet
Don't want nothing in the world you got
You can't do nothing for me
Understand?

I'll buy you a sedan Ford 
I'll buy you a sedan Ford
Yes, I'll buy you a sedan Ford
Want to do something for you
If I can

Yes, I'll take a sedan Ford
Yes, I'll take a Sedan Ford
Thought I didn't want nothing in the world you had
But I will take a sedan Ford

The progression is a ten bar, but Mance leads into it the first time with a one bar intro. Keep the bass strings muted and keep that thumb hitting every beat.
Verse 2
Verse 3

The outro is a neat little bit of noodling on a G chord. Nothing too tricky, but like most of Mance’s work it’s very quick.