Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo

“Some of the clearest descriptions of magical materials and their methods of employment can be found in acoustic blues of the period between the two World Wars,” the introductory text on this Web page says. The page is part of a site for the Lucky Mojo Curio Company, a Forestville, California-based purveyor of hoodoo supplies—jinx removers, hot foot powders, goofer dust and such. What the page catalogues are lyrics to blues songs that contain references to mojo bags, black cat bones, card readers, hoodoo women and other aspects of the kind of folk magic that Southern writer Zora Neale Hurston once chronicled. The lyrics are an entertaining read, like this 1929 Tampa Red and Georgia Tom Dorsey tune: “Mama bought a rooster, she thought it was a duck / She brought him to the table with his legs straight up / In came the children with the cup and a glass / To catch the liquor from his yas yas yas.”