"Nut Factory Blues" - Hi Henry Brown - St. Louis, MO
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 38° 38.122 W 090° 12.189
15S E 743443 N 4280025
Intersection of 2nd St. & Elm St., was razed to create the Gateway Arch and Park....but history was made there before the Arch. In the song 16th St. & Franklin Ave., is today 16th & MLK Blvd. and huge modern warehouses.
Waymark Code: WM10APF
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 04/03/2019
Views: 2
County of song & site: St Louis Independent City
Location of song: 2nd St. & Elm St., St. Louis
Composer: Charley Jordan
Artist: Hi Henry Brown
The blues are many things -- the original protest music, for starters. The people of St. Louis have always had just reasons to protest. In the 1930s, it was Hi Henry Brown's turn to explain: "Way down on Deep Morgan, just about 16th Street / Well, they tendin' their business where the women do meet / Down in the basement when they work so hard / Well, it's out on the corner, they husbands ain't got no job." In "Nut Factory Blues," Brown crafts a story that should not be forgotten, and which still speaks to this moment. Women were at the center of the struggle, and those who worked at the Funsten Nut Factory -- and other industries in the city -- were fighting to keep themselves and their families alive. As Brown tells it, the thanks they often received was to get busted in the jaw by the husbands they supported. Sometimes, they had no choice but to turn tricks. A year after Brown and Charley Jordan recorded this song, the women of the factory went on strike, shut the joint down and doubled their pay. That's the blues in action for you." ~ By Roy Kasten, Riverfront Times
Lyrics:
Down on deep Morgan
Down about 16th Street
Raised down on deep Morgan
Down about 16th Street
Well... it's down in our basement
Where they women do meet
Down in our basement
Where they work so hard
Well it's down in our basement
Where they work so hard
Well it's all on account that they husbands ain't got no job
Saturday evenin'
When they draw they pay
Ohhhh... on Saturday evenin'
When they draw they pay
When they don't draw nothin' else
Husbands gon' drive them away
Some draw a check, babe
Some draw nothin' at all
Some draw a check, Lord
Some draw nothin' at all
When they don't draw nothin' else
Husbands bust them in the jaw
Down on Franklin Avenue
Jellybeans standin' to and fro
Oh...Down on Franklin Avenue
Jellybeans standin' to and fro
Well...you hear one Jellybean ask the other one
"Which a-way did my good girl go?"
To explain the street changes, etc one could read this whole thing...but I picked out the good part:
The Drive begins now in a southeastern suburb of East St. Louis, near one of my favorite place names—Bunkham—then angles north to the river and crosses as the Martin Luther King Bridge. It rests a moment downtown and begins again on the western side of the America’s Center. At one time just the stretch that was initially named “Franklin” and ran parallel to Delmar until it swerved northwest to strike Cass (where Cass customarily became Easton) was called Martin Luther King Boulevard. I have a map with only this slanting section bearing the famous name. If you find this hard to follow, it is no easier in a car. Nowadays Martin Luther King Jr. has taken over for Easton and remains a boulevard till it passes through Wellston, when it finally becomes a drive before the whole shebang collides with St. Charles Rock Road." ~ The Boulevard of Broken Dreams