George Andrews
108 W. 12th. St.
New York City

STATION
3 CENTS 3

Langston Hughes

c/o Knopf
501 Madison Ave.

New York City

Dear Mr. Hughes,

Thanks a lot for Freedom's Plow. Except for The Weary Blues
and Shakespeare in Harlem your work is very hard to get, I've been
through quite a few of the second hand stores and I can't seem to
get a copy of Fine Clothes to the Jew or The Dream Keeper for blood
or money. Do you know of any shop where I might be able to find
them? You call your work The Weary Blues, but it's far from tired,
it's full of raucous jubilant music, and constructive anger too,
and I want to get ahold of as much of it as I can.

Sidney Bechet is playing a lot of music at Jimmy Ryan's and
there's a guy called Champion Jack Dupree up at Henry Armstrong's
place who can really sing the blues, and plays some fine piano too.
I guess there's a lot of rebop music around also, but I don't get
much of a bang out of it. New York is a pretty good town about now.
Spring rubs up against you like a good woman every time you step
outdoors.

There's a new verse going around town: T for Texas, T for
Tennessee, Judge said "Give Georgia to Thompson, And chop off that
damn Herman's stingaree". Just wishful thinking, but it sounds good.
Well, enough of politics.

I'm enclosing a story I just wrote, if it bores you, throw it
away. Take it easy down in Atlanta there. Drop me a line if you feel
like it, if you don't, don't.

The very best to you,

108 W. 12th. St.

George Andrews
c/o Browne
Box 198 RFD 1
Saugerties, N.Y.

Langston Hughes
c/o Knopf & Co.
501 Madison Ave.
New York City

PLEASE FORWARD

Dear Mr. Hughes,

I just heard you phoned me. I've got a cabin by a stream up
here, I expect to be back about the second week in September. Sort of
a grind but I'm getting a hell of a lot of work done, especially a
lot of mechanical things that needed to be done to the book that I'd
been putting off forever. It's kind of fine up here, I'm all alone,
there's trout in the river, ripe blackberries right outside my door,
and a field of green corn practically within arm's reach, about all
I need is a girl and a jazz band to make my happiness complete. My God,
I wish I could combine it all with the Village and Central Park and
Harlem and Fifty Second Street, build a new New York, one without
clothes and concrete and compulsive work, O! If I was John D.
Rockefeller, and you were an acre of tea, and the Hudson sang the
blues before sunrise as we took turns between the thighs of the
Statue of Liberty. I'm afraid I've degenerated into a Communist
fantasy. Well, when you can't make sense, make nonsense, I always
say.

I guess about all there is to write is, thanks a lot for phoning
me, and thank you very much for taking such an interest in me, it
makes me surer of myself and I work a hell of a lot the better for
it, and if you're not too busy I'll see you in September.

Best always,

Dear Mr. Hughes,

Your letter made me feel good, I'm very glad you liked it.
The expansion of it I think you might like better, it has a lot
of people in it instead of just one person all the time, and it's
fiction as well as autobiography, I let my imagination run around
a bit instead of just doing a straight reporting job, and I get a
lot more poetry into it. I'll send it to you after it shapes up
a bit more. Thank you very much for the encouragement, it comes
as a very wonderful thing after three years of rejection slips
and nothing else.

While you're in Chicago you ought to look up a guy called
Cripple Clarence Lofton, he's a piano player and he sings the
blues, and I'm pretty sure he's in Chicago now. His best numbers
are Streamline Train, Crying Mother Blues, and We'll Have A Real
Good Time When The Soldiers Get Their Bonus. He can really beat
the hell out of that piano and some of his lyrics are really poetry,
like on Crying Mother

-Tombstone for my pillow
Graveyard for my bed
Tombstone hmmm my pillow
Graveyard gonna be my bed
Black sky gonna be my blanket
And the pale moon gonna be my spread
and on Streamline Train

-Cruel ole fireman
Mean ole engineer
Onliest way, babe
I can leave you here

and

-Women in Chicago
Free as a dollar bill
Ain't fit for nothin'
But to get somebody killed

and a lot of other stuff. Jimmy Yancey plays good piano too, and
his wife can sing. I don't know who else is out there. Jack Dupree
is playing out at Coney Island and they've been playing some very
good jazz on this riverboat that leaves every weekend night from
Pier 83, it sure sounds nice on a June night way out in the middle
of the Hudson river there and the stars all around and you've got
a bottle and a girl and then they break into the Basin Street
Blues. Sidney Bechet had a heart attack and had to stop playing
but his pupil, a kid called Bob Wilber, is almost good enough to
take his place. Well, I guess that's about all the news there is
in New York right now.

Best to you,

[Andrews]