Let me just start off by saying that I am a man who likes hard work. I was born working and I worked my way up by hard work. I ain’t ever got no where, but I got there by hard work. Work of the hardest kind. I been down and I been out.
I worked my way up and I worked my way down. I've been drunk and I've been sober. I've been baptized and i've been robbed at gunpoint. Worked my way in jail and I worked my way outta jail. Woke up a lot of mornin’s, didn’t know where I was at.
The full names Jackson Thaddeus Polk Jr. folks and i's born somwere off in them hills o east tennesee sometime round the turn a the century. Never got a chance to meet my folks but always heard my mama was full blooded cherokee, the 12th of 15 children, who fled to oklahoma not long after i's born. My daddy was a moonshiner, who's daddy had got killed in the civil war when he's just a boy. Daddy had a alercation with some fella down in arkansas over a deal gone sour and ended up on the wrong end of a gun. I was raised by my daddy's sister Ida May Rider but spent most of my youth taggin along with ol' Lucius Rutherford "Mad Dog" Washington, an old black fella who worked at grandma's grocery store. He taught me to play the blues on the old six string and old slave songs i reckon had been passed down to him.
