Rats in my kitchen, Sleepy John Estes

Rats in My Kitchen

With Hammie Nixon, 1964

  Signed with a cross

Sleepy John's last home:

Extracts from my short interview with Sleepy John Estes, published in ISIS, 28 November, 1964:

Sleepy John:

"First off I wanted to be a lawyer or a preacher...
One day I made me a one-string guitar out of a cigar box. And when I got me a six-string I tried to make the sound of that one string."

Jim:

"Did you ever know Bind Lemon Jefferson?"

Sleepy John:

"Sure did. I often used to sing with him. He was a good friend of mine and I played many shows with him in the old days. I remember especially a show I did with him in Memphis in 1929."

Jim:

"On your recent LP you sing a song about 'Rats in My Kitchen': did you really have rats?

Sleepy John:

"Yeah. They were eating my groceries, so I bought me a mountain cat, 'cos them cats is good at killing rats. And so I said in my song, "I'm gonna buy me a mountain cat."

Broken-hearted, ragged and dirty too

See also an older posting on Lightnin' Hopkins

Listen to the music, but imagine his living conditions

"Sleepy John Estes eventually lost his sight completely and in the years after the war was living in destitution in a cabin with neither water nor electricity". Paul Oliver, The Story of the Blues, p. 134