Peetie Wheatstraw -- the Great-Grandfather of Punk?

Yes, it’s been a while since we have had a feature here at Garagerocktopia, a circumstance we are feverishly trying to undo. We’ve had a lot of “yes”’s but seem to be running into some rotten timing.

Was this man the first punk-rocker?

We are very confident that the dry spell will be ending this week.  In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this week’s post, in which we tackle a a grave question which we‘ve broached before. 

We don’t claim to have answered it, and even if we did, it’s one of those questions that may actually have more than one answer. That pressing question: exactly when and where did Punk really begin?

Usually, the argument is between New York and London and whether the Ramones or the Sex Pistols were the ones to get it all started. Others may go back a half decade before, to my native Michigan, to bands like the MC5 and the Stooges, maybe throwing in New Yorkers the Velvet Underground as well. Others may even go a few years earlier and to the Pacific Northwest with the Sonics, the Monks or the Wailers.

You can make a solid case for all of the above and then some. In fact, we at Garagerocktopia are going to go for the “and then some” category and quite a few years earlier.

You could cite Dick Dale. You could also point to Link Wray. But you all know I’m a blues guy, right? Remember, when it comes to garage rock, you’re never more than a step or two away from the blues. So of course it’s going to be Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters, right?

Not quite. Certainly, Misters Dale, Wray, Burnett and Morganfield were all raw and raucous enough to be considered punk, If you’re thinking of punk as simply a musical style, you have a great case, and one wonders if the Stooges, the Sonics, the Pistols, etc. would ever happened without them. 

But what if you consider punk to be as much about attitude as you do about guitar licks and beats? 

Exactly what is the punk attitude? Again, minds more brilliant than mine have hashed out this question times aplenty. But for our purposes here, it can be summed up like so: I don’t live my life based on your expectations, or society’s expectations, or anyone else’s except my own. Punk is a finger at polite society, sometimes even a polite finger at polite society.

Now, someone can simply be an anti-social lout, which is not the same as being punk. The line between being a punk and being a troglodyte can be a very thin one indeed. But we’re going to say that punk, in a nutshell, is all about bending the rules based on conviction, telling it like it is, and living life on your own terms.

Perhaps then, “Wang Dang Doodle” or “44” by Howlin’ Wolf are the first punk songs, furious rockers by the standards of the time. But, if you’re going to go the blues route, there are guys who have a few decades on Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Peetie Wheatstraw.

A bluesman who plied his trade in the 1930’s, he may be responsible as much as anyone for the moniker the blues once had: “The Devil’s Music.” Playing on that designation, Wheatstraw called himself “The Devil’s Son-in-Law.” His songs frequently narrated his working relationship with the emperor of the Underworld.

Many of his songs were bragging blues, with Wheatstraw telling the world how wonderful he was at everything – particularly with the ladies, something Muddy Waters would elevate to a whole new level. He sang about being put in jail long before the Standells would record such a great song about it. Other times, he got topical, singing about subjects from Prohibition and the Works Progress Administration. 

 

Some might say this actually sounds more like gangsta rap than punk – but, how often have we heard NWA’s Straight Outta Compton referred to as rap’s punk rock? The Pistols and the first wave of British punkers saw themselves not so much as stirring up trouble, but merely saying how things were for the ordinary person. Members of NWA, at various times, made the same claim. Both apparently had the credibility to make it fly.

But back to Wheatstraw, his music was very much in the country blues vein of the day. His guitar work was not the hardest-edged of the day and falls well-short of the intensity displayed by Robert Johnson, and in fact, more often played piano than he did the six-strings.

Most considered him only a fair guitarist, and his image as a guitarist persists mostly because of the only known photograph of Wheatstraw posing with a steel guitar.

Wheatstraw was killed in a car wreck in December of 1941. He was sufficiently well-regarded that his death did make national news and he was particularly eulogized in the jazz press. Robert Johnson, Both thematically and stylistically, strongly bears the influence of Wheatstraw, to the point that when you say “Devil” and “blues,” it’s usually Johnson, and not Wheatstraw, that you think of.

But in 1974 comedian Rudy Ray Moore would really tie Wheatstraw to His Evilness.

Moore starred in the blaxploitation film Petey Wheatstraw in 1977, which though not specific about it, seems to be an updated film very loosely based on the bluesman. In the film, Wheatstraw is depicted as a kung-fu fightin' comedian in modern-day Los Angeles. But we know it is based on the real-life Wheatstraw as the character often refers to himself as "the Devil's Son-in-Law," just as the real Wheatstraw did. 

It's not a great film. It's watered-down Dolemite, sub-par for the great Moore and only worthwhile if you really love him or the blaxploitation genre. If you really want to see it, it turns up on Youtube from time to time.

Occasionally, a blues or rock artist will cover a Wheatstraw song, but at this point, he appears to be one of the greatest bluesmen ever forgotten.