The Story of Blues Legend, Stumpy Jr.

The Story of Blues Legend, Stumpy Jr.
 
On June 15th, 1890, one of the most auspicious events in the history of western popular music occurred, though few noted it at the time, and its importance has been mostly lost in the intervening decades. At 9:15AM that day, Elmore "Stumpy" White, Jr was born, to a share cropping family in the lower Mississippi Delta. A curious and active child, young Elmore helped his father in the cotton fields and followed him to the local brothels and honkey tonks from an early age.
 
It was in his 14th year that Elmore got his famous nickname, Stumpy, when he was blinded and lost both his arms and legs in a cotton gin accident. Doctors said he couldn't possibly survive, but nonetheless he did. This was the first indication that Elmore was different from most of us, and one of the sources of the legends revolving around his deals with dark forces that made him such a powerful performer.
 
Despite his injuries, Elmore, now Stumpy, continued to help is father in the cotton fields, pulling a bag in his teeth, and as well to the local gin joints and honkey tonks that his father loved so well. It here that Stumpy was first exposed to the early forms of what was to become the blues that he would effectively create and pass down to performers like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Learning to play the guitar with his teeth as it laid on the floor, Stumpy rapidly progressed as a musician and his local legend grew.
 
Many claim to have been present on Dec 18th, 1908, when Stumpy made his professional debut at Stinky's Bar and Grill, in Stalls, Mississippi, an event of now such mythical proportions that it is difficult to tease out the truth; a sort of Delta Agincourt that many a man then abed subsequently claimed to have participated in. However, Stumpy's later colleague and occasional collaborator, Bubba "Sugar Pump" Willis was known to have been there. Interviewed in 1968 shortly before his death, he recalled the event: "We didn't know what was goin on. Half a man on the floor, layin on a guitar. Then his ol head started ta'movin, and we saw he was playin it wit his teef. We all laf'ed at first, but half uh hour later, we won't laughin no more, we's cryin and not just cause'uh the music, though it was awful powerful. We all know'd we never was gonna be the best."
 
Those who were actually at that performance immediately spread the word and Stumpy soon found himself a local celebrity of sorts, playing regularly in bars around Missisippi. Legend has it that many a budding blues man quit the business after being challenged on stage by Stumpy. 'Cutting' as it was called in those days was the process of embarrassing another performer off the stage through one's musical prowess. In later days no one would even allow him on stage, knowing the consequences; but, in those days he built much of is reputation by 'cutting' locals in each town he passed through. Some would claim they walked away because of all the saliva Stumpy would leave on their guitar strings, but the audience always knew better.
 
So life it seemed had finally turned for Stumpy, Jr. But, even at this early stage in his career, drink and women were a cause of much pain and violence in his life. The types of establishments Stumpy was playing in those days were fairly violent to begin with. Even so, Stumpy, self conscious about his afflictions, angry at the world for what it had done to him, and also soon dealing the jealousies of many a Delta man, lead a particularly violent life.
 
Legends grow over time, but it seems likely that Stumpy killed at least five men in his life, and badly wounded four others. With a trigger finger temper and a propensity for alcohol and married women, it seems amazing in retrospect that the body count was not higher, and it might well have been. Again, Sugar Pump Willis remarked in his 1968 interview, "You could see it comin, but some fellas wasn't smart enough to notice. Or one of'em would say sumthin Stumpy took to be about his situation. The last thing that man would see was Stumpy holdin a knife in his teeth that was drippin' his blood. Stumpy would wiggle cross a table like a bullet, and have his knife in his mouth before you know'd it. And thugh women, Lawd help, it was a curse all this life, but as curses go he sho seemed to enjoy it. I wouldn'ta minded a bit o' it muhself."
 
Stumpy's reputation as a lady's man, an archetype taken on by all those who came after him, was legendary. Even when not performing, once 'liquored up', he would wriggle onto the dance floor and the women were said to gather around him like bees to pollen. Many a night saw Stumpy being carried out of a saloon over the shoulder of the prettiest girl in the house. Needless to say, in most cases the prettiest girl in the house had arrived at the saloon with someone else, and that someone else wasn't too happy about the situation.
 
But it was as a performer that the true power of his magnetism was evident. Many a legend has been passed down as to the power of his performances, some of them sounding as though those dark forces Stumpy was supposedly in league with were at work. It was said that women weeped, threw themselves at the stage, and were even spontaneously impregnated when Stumpy performed, leading of course to many child support cases in later years as his fortunes grew.
 
But these were the glory days, as Stumpy's reputation and power as a performer were at their peak. His engagements were legendary, and many a future guitar hero of the 30s and 40s first witnessed the template that they would all fit themselves into, though many tried to deny it and claim the title for themselves. But even then all was not well. As his wealth grew, so did his love of alcohol and soon drugs. And certainly his love for dangerous women only grew, if that was possible. Though, for almost a decade one would have hardly known from his performances that he was burning away from the inside and not long for this world.
 
In 1925, at 35 years old, and at the peak of his powers, most of his paternity related legal problems behind him, Stumpy seemed on top of the world. But he was to die on March 11th, in a card game in Tennesee, a site now regularly visited by a Who's Who of the rock and roll world. A young man in a card game that included Stumpy accussed him of cheating. Stumpy, went after the young man, but this wasn't the Stumpy Jr. of the 1910s. A lifetime of drink and drugs had slowed him, and he met his fate on the knife of a young man named McKinley Morganfield.
 
The entire blues world morned the loss this great innovator, and the women of Mississippi in particular were active in their grieving. According to one man from that time, "...the ladies [...] they just closed up the candy store. When Stumpy left, not a one of us got any lovin for a good three months. And even then it was like a hungry cat settlin for some leftovers. That man cast a big ol' shadow, even without any arms or legs."
 
A big shadow indeed. Stumpy Jr. was the mold from which the rock stars of the 60s, 70s and beyond were made. Like a great actor who creates a role that can only be mimic'd henceforth, Stumpy created the bluesman, and the bluesman created the rock-n-roll gunslinger. With every passing decade his legacy is diluted still more, but it also grows ever larger. Though the young guitarists of today don't even know where their own image came from, some of us still remember, and feel it is important that others become aware of the giants upon whose shoulders we all stand, even if those giants didn't really have any shoulders per se.