The wait was long for Elizabeth King’s “Living in the Last Days” and Robert Finley’s “Sharecropper’s Son,” but these albums come right on time.
Words by C.H. Hooks | Photos by Matt White
For the past year, life has been on hold.
When isolation and lockdown began last March, the novelty of following New York Times recipes and browsing old cookbooks felt fresh and exciting. This devolved into enchiladas, frozen broccoli, and palate numbness to any of DoorDash’s offerings. When I lost my sense of taste last spring, food lost its joy. Like cooking, listening to music was once a way to slow down. But with the world on pause, at times it has felt as though I reached the end of the Spotify rainbow. I feared that I’d not only lost my taste for food, but also for music. I’d lost the things that brought me joy. Finding music that feels essential, rooted and foundational, feels like gold. Like most things, good music is worth the wait.
When Elizabeth King and Robert Finley were at the ages when many people would be retiring, they each had powerful musical breakthroughs. They have gained much, lost much, and share much of their hard-earned wisdom through their music. These voices of experience are precisely what we need in a time rife with uncertainty. King spoke with me from her home in Memphis, Tennessee. Finley was driving near his home in Bernice, Louisiana.
Both are incredibly gracious. I spoke with King twice, as I had to rush to pick up my kids from school during one of our windows to talk, but neither artist was in a hurry. They both took time to answer my questions, and then some. They saw no need for haste, or at least never gave that impression. This was refreshing to witness, as I feel more antsy than ever. They both have experience with waiting, and pull patience from a deeper space that I have yet to find. This space informs their music as well.
Elizabeth King released her first solo album, “Living in the Last Days,” this spring, when she was 77.
King was raised on music in Charleston, Mississippi. Her mother sang in church and her daddy “blew the harp.” She listened to the radio and sang in talent shows “and always would win.” In 1960, she moved to Memphis, sang in church, and played in a local quartet, but then got married. A move to Chicago with her first husband put her singing on hold, but a move back to Memphis in the late 1960s had her singing on a weekly basis again.
King played piano and sang, even traveling regionally to perform until her car was hit by another driver and pushed into a telephone pole. She had serious injuries to her head and leg and doctors believed she would never walk again. This paused her musical pursuits, but also prompted her to rededicate her life and her music to her God.
Elizabeth King was raised on music in Charleston, Mississippi, and sang in talent shows that she “always would win.” In 1960, she moved to Memphis, sang in church, and played in a local quartet.
King has experienced trials. When she sings “No Ways Tired,” King reminds me of the biblical story of Job. I asked her if her own story is reflected in this.
“He was a man that feared God. And then how much he'd lost … it had to be God in him to still just stand and not give up. But he held his ground, and it just run chills over my body just to think about it. Because I lost one child and I know what that did to me, but I just feel just so blessed because of what He's done for me.
“And then how He let time pass when I was young and really had a whole lot of energy to sing. I made the decision to raise my children first, that they come first, and I never thought that I would … have the opportunity … to see this day. ... I just count it all a joy from God.”
Today, King describes her music as “soul — spiritual soul.” There is a density in the soul-sound, a build in her voice, a welling up of experience released in gospel soul and laced with hints of funk throughout “Last Days.” It’s a foghorn of life.
Robert Finley has had a lifetime to watch and learn.
“I learned how to be an electrician. I'm looking over somebody else's shoulder. I watch it. So, you know, I learned how to drive mules by watching and listening. I know HEE means turn to the right and HAW means the mule goes left. Ain't nothing left in between but giddyup or whoa.”
Until five years ago, Finley spent his days as a woodworker and his nights performing in nearby Monroe, Louisiana. When he lost his eyesight at age 60 to a medical condition, he knew it was time to show what he’d learned. He released the album “Age Don’t Mean a Thing” in 2016 and “Goin’ Platinum!” in 2017. Now he’s ready to tell the story of his childhood on arguably his most impactful album yet, “Sharecropper’s Son.”
Until five years ago, Robert Finley spent his days as a woodworker and his nights performing in Monroe, Louisiana. When he lost his eyesight at age 60 to a medical condition, he knew it was time to show what he’d learned. Photo: Courtesy of Big Feat PR
The album starts with Finley’s voice on “Souled Out on You.” The music builds slowly, patiently — layers of keys, drums, brass — and it’s not until the two-minute mark that he brings in the guitar. And the man can play. But he’s patient with his music. The songs feel unrushed, unhustled.
When I ask Finley, “Why now?” for telling his story, he relates a tale from when he was on tour at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas.
“There was a cotton field across, not too far from the hotel. I just cracked the joke with the band. You know, I got a backache when I looked out across the cotton field. And we laughed about it. But it never went away. You know, most of the time, it’s something you forget about, but it never went away. It just kept coming back. So I was like, I need to go back to the cotton field and tell the story, because if just thinking about it makes my back hurt, you can imagine what it's like pulling a sack.”
Finley is thankful that his family moved off the farm while the expectations for his work were still lower than those for his brothers, but the memories of life there are still fresh. “I was the youngest of five boys. Thank God we moved off the farm before they gave me my mule, ’cause you liable to plow a mule if you had one.”
For Finley, honesty and getting the story right were paramount. When he describes his family’s life on the farm, he says, “We were just the sharecroppers that never got our share.” On “Country Child,” Finley reflects on his attempts to reconcile how his past experience has shaped his present:
Can’t stand to drive by a cotton field
It still hurts my back
Every time I look at a cotton field
I think about pulling that sack
Of the hardship he experienced working the fields as a sharecropper’s son, he says, “That's a story of not just Robert Finley. That's a story of a lot of people. They know how it was. You have to be real with the … people to keep them real with you. What comes from the heart goes to the heart.”
King’s car accident in 1969 prompted her to rededicate herself to her singing and dedicate her singing to gospel music. In the early ’70s, she recorded singles with Pastor Juan D. Shipp of D-Vine Spirituals Recordings in Memphis. Other opportunities came, but the timing in her personal life wasn’t right. “I think in ’71, I believe in ’72, I had an opportunity to go overseas, but I didn't go because my children [were] just too small.” She continued to play regional shows, but her primary dedication was to her home life. “Oh, the children was small, and then I didn't wanna go, you know, too far from them.”
By the mid-’70s, she’d stopped recording singles. Raising children, and a lack of funds, kept King’s recording paused, but she continued singing when she could.
“I had hope, because I never stopped singing. And I worked with my family, my children, and they were singing, and did some recording [for] them. And I was supposed to be focusing on doing things to get them, all of them, into the music world.”
She didn’t return to her own recordings until Pastor Shipp approached her about working with Bruce Watson (Fat Possum Records) 47 years later.
Watson was actively looking for sacred soul singers for his new imprint label Bible & Tire Recording Co. when he was put in contact with King. Upon meeting, King told Watson, “I'm looking, if I live, to do more greater things.”
Watson called King back that evening and asked her if she could get to the studio the next morning.
“I walked in the door and he said, ‘You ready to sing?’ ... So I started singing … from 10 o'clock until 2. I just stood there singing.
“Then he asked was I tired. I said no. He said, ‘Well, I’m gonna see what I got.’”
According to King, Watson later told her, “I got three songs laid down already.”
“I don't just get up and just sing a song. I like to sing songs that mean something to me and to the people that I'm singing to. I just can't explain it,” King says. “The only thing I know — this is real. I mean, even like the blues singers, you can tell when one has experienced something when they singing them blues.”
Today, King describes her music as “soul — spiritual soul.” There is a density in the soul-sound, a build in her voice, a welling up of experience released in gospel soul and laced with hints of funk throughout “Last Days.” It’s a foghorn of life.
Finley’s first album, “Age Don’t Mean a Thing” (Big Legal Mess Records, 2016), was also produced by Watson, who first encountered Finley through the Music Maker Relief Foundation. Finley then connected with Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys) on the soundtrack for the graphic novel Murder Ballads and on “Goin’ Platinum!”. With “Sharecropper’s Son,” Finley has taken ownership of his lyrics and his story.
Finley identifies as the son of a sharecropper, as a veteran, a carpenter, and an electrician. He recognizes that his music gained polish from his decades of experience. “Every time you do it, you get better and better and better. And then, before you know it, you’re worth more than what you thought you were worth.”
Finley recalls, “I [was] playing by myself. People were dancing and I was playing an old acoustic guitar. One guy got up from the table. He got close enough, he grabbed it, smothered the neck of the guitar — and you know, anytime you do that, the music stops. Everybody looks at him like, ‘What the hell wrong with you?’ But he didn't believe all that music coming out of one guitar, so he grabbed the guitar neck. He apologized over and over and over. Then he apologized to the audience because the joke was on him. He was gonna prove that there must be a radio in that thing or something, you know. He thought I was playing along with a track or something.”
He pauses.
“And then, when he turned it loose, I went back to playing, I didn't even feel offended by it because it made my night.”
For both artists, when the years of working and waiting for professional production ended, the accolades came quickly.
For Finley, success feels like a dream.
“It's been happening so fast till I have to pinch myself every now and then. See, is it real? But my motto is, I'm so grateful to be doing what I'm doing because I'm living my childhood dream.”
Finley toured both the East and West coasts with Auerbach, but to his surprise, he wasn’t treated as an opener. Instead, he was brought onstage as a special guest. According to Finley, he “had to shine.”
“Everywhere we went, we got standing ovations, even in Nashville,” Finley says.
King feels that she is better able to appreciate her success now.
“I don't just get up and just sing a song. I like to sing songs that mean something to me and to the people that I'm singing to. I just can't explain it,” King says. “The only thing I know — this is real. I mean, even like the blues singers, you can tell when one has experienced something when they singing them blues.”
“It's something to be appreciated because of what I'm doing now. And the blessing that I'm getting now, something that my children and my grandchildren, great-grands can look and see that Grandma, you know, suffered through a whole lot of stuff. And now, you know, she's being blessed. ‘Mama is blessed.’ That's what my kids say. My older kids, they know my struggle.
“You know, I wanted … mostly to see the expression on people's face that said I wasn’t gonna make it. … It doesn't really matter about what people say, if I'm down on the south side, God gonna raise me up on the north side. North, south, east, and west. If anybody had told me that I would be in Paris in 2019. … God is an awesome God, and I know God can take me anywhere that he wants me to go.”
Success in the arts can be fleeting, and both artists find fulfillment in something greater than their personal success. They have both relied on this fulfillment as their careers, late in the making, came to a pause with the coronavirus pandemic.
No strangers to waiting, both King and Finley have made the most of this difficult year. But they both have hope for the reopening.
Finley feels a sense of responsibility to his fans.
“I'm concerned about the people that's supporting me, too, you know? And I don't want to jeopardize their lives because me, myself … I walked the shadows of death and fear no evil, but it's the other people that I’m in contact with … I shouldn't gamble with their lives.
“I don't have no problem staying 6 feet from the next man. … I waited this long, and at the age of 67 to be blessed with my health and my strength and still be able to get out and dance and play, that's a miracle within itself.”
King sees the pause as another temporary distraction from her lifetime of work, not a derailment.
“Things just don't happen to you overnight. I mean, life is not like a microwave. You can’t just stick it in and get it overnight. It's just only a few people that win the lottery.
“Life has its good. It has its bad. But the thing of it is whether or not you had the patience enough to wait. Because one thing you can be sure [of] in life is, we know we gonna die. In between that time, you don't know what life is gonna present to us. Is it gonna be good? I know a few days gonna be a lot of trouble. That's what Job said. If you endure it through the trouble, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. So that's what I’ll be looking for: the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Both artists are excited and hopeful for a reopened world and a future of live music and performances. They will be ready when it happens.
Finley is hopeful but also recognizes that we’ve never been promised a life of ease. He’s prepared for the future. “Take nothing for granted. It's the pandemic this time. It's the ice storm. There’ll be a flood coming. … You survive one, then start preparing for the next one. ’Cause something else coming, ain't no doubt about it. It's not gonna be a perfect world.”
He leans on what he’s learned, and the reopening gives him hope.
“It's gonna be better than ever, because everything happens for a reason. And all this stuff that people been taking for granted, now they know that you don't have to have all those things. I mean, you don't miss your water till your well run dry. But this is a lesson, more or less, to make us stronger and wiser. Not a time to give up. You gotta realize that, though. You're taking things for granted, you know, you're missing out on your blessing. That struggle’s what makes you stronger. Struggling is what makes you learn how to live with or without. I'm not, in no way, a person that can give advice about how not to make mistakes, ’cause I made my share. At the same time, each mistake I made, I learned from it. Just like with the music.”
When I spoke with King, she’d received her second vaccine but maintained that she was prepared to wait as long as it takes to emerge from the crisis safely. She is tireless. She has 15 children, 58 grandchildren, and 35 great-grands. When I caught up with her at home, she was watching “Judge Jerry” and sewing. In the course of the pandemic, she’s also made face masks and Christmas pajamas for all of her great-grandkids, and a dress for one of her grandbabies.
“Well, so I started making throw rugs. So that's what I'm doing now. Making rugs for the bathroom and the living room. Yeah, I stay busy, so when I go to bed, I don't have to do nothing but just go to sleep.” To keep moving, she’s also continued her exercise routine.
“After the weather warmed up, I started back yesterday doing my exercises. And I live on the hill, so I run up and down the hill, so, trying to get back in shape. I'm determined. I still have the mind to continue to learn more about music, and … do that and sit down one day and write … really write my soul song, that's what I really want to do.”
When I speak with King in the Bible & Tire studio alongside Watson, I mention to her that it sounds like she has a goal in mind.
“I told Bruce [Watson] that one day I would like to have … an orchestra, that's playing behind me, that's what I want my last song to be.”
Watson quickly jumps back in, “Hopefully it won’t be the last song!”
“Not the last song,” she laughs. “The song that I got in my mind!”
My stamina for waiting has increased, but the calls for patience feel perpetual. There’s so much to learn from those who’ve experienced more life. So much patience still to gain.
We’ve been waiting — through fears of the unknown, the possibilities of a virus’s unpredictable behavior in our bodies, our employers’ reductions in force, a hug from our relatives as they wait out their days behind the window of a nursing home.
This hung heavy in my mind as I drove to the Federal Emergency Management Agency site in Jacksonville, Florida, for my second shot. There was no wait, until after the shot. I sat in the area cordoned off for the mandatory 15 minutes. One of the EMTs read a book, the other played a game on his phone.
A mother and daughter sat down in the row next to me. The mother turned to the daughter and said, “I’m just glad it’s over with.” The shot was over, but the waiting is not.
Many have talked about the first song they heard upon getting their shot — their vaccine soundtrack. Back in my car, I pulled up King’s new album, and turned up “No Ways Tired.”
C.H. Hooks is the author of the forthcoming collection Eye Teeth (Summer Camp Publishing, 2021) and the novel Alligator Zoo-Park Magic (Bridge Eight Press, 2019). His work has appeared in publications including American Short Fiction, Burrow Press, and Four Way Review. In April 2020, he interviewed several musicians about how they maintained hope during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic for The Bitter Southerner. He has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar and Contributor at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and attended DISQUIET, Dzanc Books’ International Literary Program. He teaches at Flagler College.
