But what Michael is certain of is that the current credits on “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade” are incorrect. He says he and his father are looking into possible legal options, but stresses that a lawsuit hasn’t been filed, nor has a letter signifying one been sent. Jackson’s son, Michael Lee Jackson, is a lawyer whose practice involves music and intellectual property (Michael also moonlights as a musician and once played with Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan). Jackson - now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Buffalo - says Slim’s real name was either Willy or Willie Davis using the information available, Rolling Stone tried to track down additional information about Davis, who was in his 50s when Jackson met him in 1964, but was unsuccessful.)įollowing publication of this article, a spokesperson for the 18 album team told Rolling Stone that the duo “are reviewing the enquiry relating to the song ‘Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade.’ If appropriate, additional copyright credits will be added to all forms of the album.” Jackson gave aliases to all the incarcerated people he spoke to to make sure they didn’t get in trouble with their wardens. (Slim, it should be noted, is a pseudonym.
I’ve been publishing stuff for 50 years, and this is the first time anybody has just ripped something off and put his own name on it.” I’ve never encountered anything like this. “Everything else is from Slim’s performance in my book. “The only two lines I could find in the whole piece that contributed are ‘Big time motherfucker’ and ‘Bust it down to my level,’” Jackson claims. Their song, “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade,” off their new album, 18, appears to pull numerous lines from “Hobo Ben,” including one that ostensibly gives the song its title: “ou better try to keep you ass in this corner of shade/’cause if the Man come you make a sad motherfuckin parade.” Some of the lines quoted above - “I’m raggedy, I know, but I have no stink,” “God bless the lady that’ll buy me a drink,” and “What that funky motherfucker really needs, child, is a bath” - also appear on “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade.” On 18, “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade” is credited to Beck and Depp there is no mention of Slim Wilson, Bruce Jackson, or Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me. Nearly 60 years after Jackson recorded Slim, “Hobo Ben” appears to have found some new fans in Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck, though you wouldn’t know it as things stand. In his heavy Arkansas drawl, Slim sounds at once unbothered and delighted as he peels off uncouth line after line, that lackadaisical nature ceding to bites of excitement as he approaches a bawdy punch line. A decade later, Slim featured heavily in Jackson’s 1974 book about toasts, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me, and you can hear him exhibiting his craft on the 1976 corresponding album of the same name. On top of all that, Slim was, to Jackson’s ears, “one of the best narrators” of poetry and toasts he’d ever heard.ĭuring their time together, Slim shared stories from his life and several toasts - a wildly outlandish, funny, ribald form of narrative Black folk poetry - with Jackson. He was also a pimp, did time for murder, and was in Missouri State Penitentiary for armed robbery when he met the folklorist Bruce Jackson in 1964. For money, he did odd jobs and threw dice, but Slim proudly proclaimed he wasn’t a gambler - he was a cheat. A tramp in the classic sense, he hopped trains and traveled the country, picking up all manner of scars from bullets and knives along the way.
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