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I don't remember when I first became aware of Langston Hughes' character Jesse B. Simple. Simple could have been modeled after any number of persons in my neighborhood. Simple is an urban folk legent who resides in African-American communities throughout America. I was impressed by Simple's indirect, unsophisticated and inarticulate path to the heart of an issue, though I hadn't a clue about the articulate and sophisticated thinking that went into making the urban folk sage sound simple.
In the forward to the "Best of Simple," Langston Hughes talks about the real person who spoke Simple's first words. He met the young man at a neighborhood bar in Harlem during the second great war. Over a glass of beer, Hughes found out that the fellow worked in a war plant. Hughes asked him what they made there and the fellow answered cranks. What kind of cranks, Hughes wanted to know, but the young man didn't know. Do they crank cars, tanks, buses or planes Hughes inquired further. "I don't know what them cranks crank - white folks don't tell colored folks what cranks crank," the fellow answered. Hughes writes that it was out of this mystery about what the cranks of the world crank that the character Simple evolved. Now here is Sleepy Willie to further explore that mystery.
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