blind steet singer 2004

blind steet singer
Originally published 5/24/2004

“A blind beggar wearing dark glasses, with a cottony gray beard, plucked chords on a mandolin as he sang a heartrending song about the sinking of the Titanic. On his shoulder stood a parrot picking at its feathers with its beak. The beggar’s wife, young and as agile as a dancer, collected alms in a tambourine.”

Wow, that description sounds like quite the blues or gospel act, eh? William and Versey Smith? Or some other duo in a southern town around 1920?

Nope. That passage is from Isaac Bashevis Singer, A Day of Pleasure, and it took place in a ghetto, but not of the type you might have thought. It’s a scene from a Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw, around 1913.

So Singer’s street performer was not playing the blues, although he may have had the blues. On the other hand, he was doing OK, with that agile young wife. And he’s playing a mandolin. The parrot is a nice touch, too! Sure would love to hear what he sounded like.

The blind street singer has probably been a common figure in human societies for eons – even in the U.S., before World War II anyway, when many famous blues and gospel singers fit that description. And lots of not-so-famous ones did, too.