Robert Johnson and the Hot Tamale Connection

Posted on May 22, 2017May 6, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

Robert Johnson and the Hot Tamale Connection

The history of the blues, Robert Johnson, and the tamale are fascinating and interlocked. Let’s start with the blues – a uniquely American form of music that reflects personal longing and historic strife.

The roots of the blues began in the Mississippi Delta – an area that extends from Vicksburg Mississippi to Memphis Tennessee. There, on cotton plantations, enslaved laborers struggled under dire conditions, unfathomable to most Americans today. One of their resources for survival were a confluence of songs rooted in their Western Africa cultures that they sung in the fields in unified voices, call-and-response interactions, and individual hollers.

The enslaved workers used these songs as a form of distraction and resistance, the words passing important information across the fields, unbeknownst to the slaveholders. Eventually, the enslaved and later freed African Americans attended church where these songs found a natural place. Unlike the European Americans formal prayer, their singing was impassioned, with heartfelt clapping and stomping. By the 1870s, these songs were recognized as the “Negro Spiritual” and about 30 years later, the blues.

Enter Robert Johnson and The Red Hots

In 1911, slavery in the Mississippi Delta was long gone but the vestiges lived on. The brutal institution of sharecropping prevailed and the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws were formidable constraints. It was in this environment, and the associated poverty, hunger and illiteracy that Robert Johnson was born.

Where Johnson got his start in music is anyone’s guess, but it grew at the Saturday night dances where he watched the first generation of blues masters, such as Willie Brown and Charley Patton, play. Eventually, Johnson took to the road, where he played on street corners and in juke joints – one of the few venues for African American blues musicians in the rural South. His talent was so stunning, it ignited a rumor that he sold his soul to the devil just to get it.

Robert Johnson’s first recording was on November 23, 1936. Twenty-nine more followed the next year. His success was as immediate as his death where, at 27 years old, he was said to have been poisoned by a jealous husband who believed Johnson slept with his wife. When he died, Johnson left behind a legacy that included a playing style that changed music forever. His influence extended to the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, and Eric Clapton who said: “I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson.”

Tamales and Hot Tamale

If you travel to parts of Vicksburg Mississippi, you find an area with an elaborate casino, now empty, and a van for transporting visitors which remains parked. The Mississippi and Yazoo rivers sluggishly move along its edges. Many of the homes are empty. Within the corner shops, small Mom and Pop restaurants, and to-go stands, you find tamales. In fact, tamales appear in all sorts of places along the Mississippi Delta.

But why tamales? These portable foods are wrapped in corn shucks, and traditionally filled with pork, or more recently beef or turkey. They may be steamed or baked, stuffed with cheese and sauce, or simply mixed with mesa or corn meal and various degrees of spices. The tamale is an old food, dating back to the Aztecs of 7000 BCE, where women served as cooks for the armies. The tamales where perfect to make: portable, easy to prepare and heat, as needed. Originally, the women buried the tamales in hot ashes – eventually they cooked or steamed them over-ground.

How the tamales got to the South is unclear: U.S. soldiers brought them back from Mexico during the American-Mexican War or when migrant Mexican workers brought them to the South. Regardless the tamale became an important food in the Mississippi Delta food culture, a favorite of the African American community with its history of struggle, and, in particular, Robert Johnson with his song: “They’re Red Hot.”

The tamales eventually became so mainstream that they were made into a candy in 1950 by Just Born. Today, they are one of the most popular spicy candies in the U.S., enjoyed by thousands of Americans unaware of its fascinating history.

They’re Red Hot

Robert Johnson

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
I got a girl, say she long and tall
She sleeps in the kitchen with her feets in the hall
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale, I mean
Yes, she got’em for sale, yeah

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
She got two for a nickel, got four for a dime
Would sell you more, but they ain’t none of mine
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale, I mean
Yes, she got’em for sale, yes, yeah

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
I got a letter from a girl in the room
Now she got something good she got to bring home soon, now
It’s hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got em for sale, I mean
Yes, she got’em for sale, yeah

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got ’em for sale
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got ’em for sale (they’re too hot boy)
The billy got back in a bumble bee nest
Ever since that he can’t take his rest, yeah
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes you got’em for sale, I mean
Yes, she got’em for sale

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Man don’t mess around em hot tamales now ’cause they too black bad,
If you mess around ’em hot tamales
I’m gonna upset your backbone, put your kidneys to sleep
I’ll due to break away your liver and dare your heart to beat ’bout my
Hot tamales ’cause they red hot, yes they got em for sale, I mean
Yes, she got em for sale, yeah

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
You know grandma loves them and grandpa too
Well I wonder what in the world we children gonna do now
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale, I mean
Yes she got’em for sale

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Me and my babe bought a V-8 Ford
Well we wind that thing all on the runnin’ board, yes
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale, I mean
Yes she got’em for sale, yeah

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale (they’re too hot boy!)
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes, now she got em for sale
You know the monkey, now the baboon playin’ in the grass
Well the monkey stuck his finger in that old ‘Good Gulf Gas’, now
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale, I mean
Yes she got’em for sale, yeah

Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale
I got a girl, say she long and tall
Sleeps in the kitchen with her feets in the hall, yes
Hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes she got’em for sale, I mean
Yes she got’em for sale, yeah

Penny Candy Collection

Chocolate Balls Are In and They’re Amazing!

Posted on May 18, 2017May 6, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

So excited! We just received our first batch of cacao balls from Grenada – used to make chocolate tea…a true delight, I can assure you! I discovered them during my trip last month…after a few interviews and visits to farmers’ collectives and other such places, I got the story behind the drink.

Here’s how you make a chocolate ball, as told to me by someone at a Grenadian nutmeg processing company…aka the GCNE Nutmeg Pool

How to make a chocolate roll – aka chocolate balls

As described at the Pick a cacao pod

Take the cacao bean out of the pod
Dry in the sun for about a week
Put it in a big pot over a fire of coals for 15-20 minutes.
Stir the whole time or it will burn
Let it cool for a day or so
Remove the shell
Get the bean
Grind it in a hand grinder with spices: nutmeg, bay leaf, clove, cinnamon

The spices and the natural fat in the cacao held the balls together.

How to make chocolate tea

Once you actually get the chocolate balls, making the tea is easy: just dissolve the balls in boiling water, strain, and add milk and sugar to taste.

For more about the traditional use of the cacao balls, check out this interview I did with Alvin Heinz and posted a few weeks ago.

Grenada – Ian Roberts: Mangos of the Island

Posted on May 16, 2017June 2, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

Ian Roberts is a craftsman who sells bracelets and other trinkets from a stall at the beach. He uses black coral and other natural elements which he polishes and shapes using a cigarette lighter. The results are finely crafted pieces with a rich amber hue.

My people came from indentured Indian people who mixed with Africans. There were so many races here, the Indian people, the Africans, they mixed with the overseers. My people came after slavery and signed a five-year contact. After the contract ended, they stayed. Maybe it was better than in India. Maybe they didn’t have enough money to leave. I don’t know. I was raised by my grandmother and mom. My mom had so many children, eight children, I had to make it on my own.

There was a big estate up on the West coast. The grandparents worked on the estate; they got coconuts and sold them to a factory for making soap. There were sugar cane plants – every farmer had a ¼ acre. When one was cutting the others would help. They would cut the cane and trucks would come and the children would load up the trucks. Mr. Nichols owned the estate. He was French. He didn’t like locals…He hardly paid them for the sugar cane.

A group of us, of boys, would come together and sell fruit from the estate to the yacht people at the harbor – oranges, mangos, sapodillas that grow on the hill. People from all over the world would come and relax in Halifax Bay at the nice clean water. We had to steal the fruit – we were boys. You know boys. We didn’t call it stealing. We called it pilfering and hunting. Sometimes, the overseer would run you down. You could go to jail for that. (He smiles.) We would sell the fruit to the yacht people – oranges, grapefruit, bananas.

In the dry season we would go hunting and fishing at night, especially when the mangos were ripe. All the children would go on a hill with buckets and collect the mangos. Everything was drying out and the possums would come out looking for water and get the mangos. We would hunt them down with a sharp rod and get them like this (jabs into the air) and we would cook them and eat them.

Everyone was looking for survival in those days.

The estate is closed now. The government took a big portion of the land – they called it land of the landless. During the Revolution they took a portion of the land for a playing field. The revolution was nice. It brought a group together to cooperate. People came together.

After the interview, he shook my hand. “I hope I will see you soon, sister.” I was wearing one of his bracelets when I left.

My people came from indentured Indian people who mixed with Africans. They came after slavery and signed a five-year contact. After they stayed. Maybe it was better than India. Maybe they didn’t have enough money to leave. I don’t know.

I was raised by my grand aunt and Mom. My mom had so many children, eight children, I had to make it on my own. Sometimes a group of boys would come together and catch iguanas and possums.

We’d sell fruit to the yacht people at the harbor – oranges, mangos, sapodillas that grow on the hill. We would sell the yacht people oranges, grapefruit and bananas. People from all over the world would come and relax in Halifax Bay at the nice clean water. We would sell them fruit from the estate. Sometime you had to steal it – the overseer would run you down. We didn’t call it stealing. We called it pilfering and hunting. The grandparents worked on the estate, they got coconuts and sold them to a factory for making soap.

The grandmother I grew up with was a fisherwoman, I use to help her sell plastic bags to put fish in. I helped in the garden, growing corn, wheat, yams. We used to sell fish, agriculture, peas, sweet potatoes and corn. We sold the mangos at the local market in St. Georges. We had early pigeon peas. Everyone shared food, it was very nice in the ‘70s.

My Mom would clean the roadside, put down pavement.

It was a big estate up on the West coast. It is closed now. They were Every farmer has a ¼ acre, when one is cutting the others would help. When it was the dry season the trucks would come and the children would load up the trucks.

Everyone was looking for survival in those days.

Mr. Nichols owned the estate. He was French. He didn’t like locals…He hardly paid them for the sugar cane. The government took a big portion of the land- they called it land of the landless. During the Revolution they took a portion of the land for a playing field. The revolution was nice. It brought a group together to cooperate. People came together.

Grenada – Alvin Heinz: Cacao Tea

Posted on May 9, 2017May 30, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

Alvin Heinz spends much of his day in a tree outside the Radisson Hotel at the Grand Anse beach or at St. Georges when the cruise ships come in. He carves coconut shells into polished dolphins, palm trees, nutmegs, and other medallions which he sells to tourists. His job, he says, is to make sure they have a good time on the island. When they come, he says, they bring money.

I am 46. I was raised by my great-grandmother. My grandmother lived with her mother. We would all wait for money from my mother. She lived in Trinidad. I was born there.

To make more money, my great-grandmother made chocolate rolls that she sold to the people in the village that they melted into tea. Everyone bought chocolate for the weekends, so on Friday, we made three times the amount.

For meals we got a coconut, put sugar and limes in the juice and that’s what you’d eat. You’d go to the garden close by and get bananas and cook them and make bread fruit and yams, mangos, plums. There were a lot of fruits you could survive on. You can’t go hungry that way.

The fruit grew through generations. One banana tree puts out another – in a few months there are other banana trees. You don’t need to cook for the kids – they had bananas, mango, sugar cane. If a neighbors’ tree had lots of mangos, all the kids would come and get it. The neighbors shared – they had plums, mangos, paw-paws, cane sugar. Nutmeg supported the family for years – from children to grown-ups. We used it as a spice – and for cooking, pastry and cakes. Some sold them to market vendors.

Split Cacao Pod

All the trees got its use. Bamboo was the main thing for brooms, baskets to carry the cocao and other things. Or you would put wood together in a big pit fire to make charcoal. It would sit for days. People didn’t have gas or electricity – the food was cooked on three stones and a pot.

There weren’t many doctors. You go to the person who has the most experience. They say, go to the river and get this and you get it and in a few days you are OK. No one had vehicles. Everyone had a donkey that we put in one place, like horses. The donkey carried the load, we fed the donkey and got fertilizer for the garden. We had rabbits, goats, all animal feces went back to the garden. Everything grew right there.

Most people worked on estates. There was lots of land – like slave land. They did work for the estate owner to sell to the big companies. People would leave their homes, and work for a certain amount – no matter how big or small, you have to get that amount to survive.

Banana, cacao and nutmeg. It was hard but at the end of the day, we are here now.

How to make a chocolate roll – aka chocolate balls

As described at the GCNE Nutmeg Pool

Pick a cacao pod
Take the cacao bean out of the pod
Dry in the sun for about a week
Put it in a big pot over a fire of coals for 15-20 minutes.
Stir the whole time or it will burn
Let it cool for a day or so
Remove the shell
Get the bean
Grind it in a hand grinder with spices: nutmeg, bay leaf, clove, orange peel, cinnamon

According to Alvin, the spices and the natural fat in the cacao held the balls together

New! Gummy Cola

Posted on May 8, 2017May 24, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

A little known fact: the gummy candy started life as the Turkish Delight – a medicine used for sore throat around 900CE – and is a cousin to the Chuckles and jelly bean. Our question: which new gummy should we introduce at the store? The consensus: the gummy cola. And let me tell you –they’re flying off the shelves. More than the gummy bear, gummy bear, and even the jelly beans! I’m serious m- they’re delicious.

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Gummy Cola Candy — After : Later 20th Century

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Turkish Delight, Rose, Assorted Fruit — Before: 900 CE

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The Story of Hate and Love

Posted on May 6, 2017September 23, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

Throughout my career as a candy researcher, I have encountered much love – candy that grandparents gave to grandchildren, parents gave to their kids, lovers gave to each other. I’ve also encountered hate through the realities of the displacement of Naive Americans, the enslavement of African Americans, and the horrors of the spice trade, to name a few. These were no economic activities – they were rooted in a hate that makes the most egregious activities commonplace. So, when I confronted hate in my hometown of Shepherdstown, West Virginia I expected the community to rise up against it. Yet, that didn’t happened. I wrote an article about the response that was recently published in the Spirit of Jefferson. I have attached it here.

The Almost-Astonishing Story of Chocolate Covered Peppermint Candy

Posted on May 4, 2017May 6, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

From Ice Cream Cones to a Retro Candy Favorite

As you may remember, in my previous blog “The Almost-Astonishing Story of Chocolate Covered Peppermint Candy” I revealed the ascent of the peppermint pattie from Henry C. Kessler’s first ever smooth-and-creamy filled York Peppermint Pattie to the Welsh-Brothers’ Junior Miss nine years later.

But, let us not forget all those other peppermint patties that rose up through the 40’s and beyond, including our newest (old-time) peppermint patties, using an original 1940s recipe from the original shop. They were a favorite at mid-20^th century family-run candy stores and likely made an appearance at bridge games and holiday parties, year round.

Do the hand-crafted, traditional patties taste different from the manufactured variety? Only a taste will tell!

Mass Melted: Truly Delicious!

What’s the difference between handcrafted, original-recipe peppermint patties and the chemical-infused mass-manufactured stuff? As I was shooting pictures of our handcrafted patties, I found out. The candy started melting under the hot sun, creating a fascinating ooze which, as I discovered at the project’s end, was luscious.

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Handmade Peppermint Patties — Peppermint Pattie Smooth & Tempting

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Peppermint Pattie — Ummm…Slightly Melted

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Melted Peppermint Patties — Looks yucky but creamy and delicious!

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Grenada- Carl David: The Cane and the Corn

Posted on May 4, 2017June 2, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

“Without working, you cannot inherit your part in life.”

Carl David is a taxi driver and our guide while researching the spices on the island Grenada. He left school when 11 years old. He helped his family grow yams, sweet potatoes, corn and sugar cane. Later, he held many jobs, among them a diver, pipe-fitter at the water works, and soldier for revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop. He said the revolution taught him much and made him “sensible.” He said people worked hard back then. They don’t work as hard today.

I was born in 1954. My mother moved to Trinidad and left me in 1955 – I was very small. [At first] I lived with a family. Being that I was not the lady’s child everything I did was wrong. It was very bad and I was forced to run away. Then I was adopted by these people, they were very good, they were my adopted mother and father…My adopted father lived for 99 years.

My mother and father worked on land at the estate – that’s what they did for a living. We never knew the people who owned the estate. There was no “massah”, no head of slaves, lashes, that was abolished in the 1800s. By then, the government owned the land – you paid a tax to the government, something small.

We planted yams, sweet potato, corn, and sugar cane. We made mounds for the sugar cane that were round and long. Each stalk has joints and we cut the cane at the joint and planted it so a group grows out of the joint. We cut the cane every year in the dry season, just before the rainy season. These days the rainy season may be in June, you never know, with global warming, it’s not like before. You plant in June and reap in August.

Sugar Cane -Before and After

We cut on different days: everyone came together and cut one field at a time. Then the young people would put the cut cane in heaps and put it on trucks and we would sell it to the Woodline sugar factory. It was nice cane – very good and very tall. It was soft cane with a good long joint.

We would peel the cane with our teeth. The cane juice would run down our (motions to chest and stomach)… we were half naked in those days. I remember my mother would cut the stalk and hold it up like this, and the juices would run into her mouth. There are different kinds of cane, black cane, green, yellows, crayfish – red and yellow – each one tasted a little different. The sugar cane was soft, you could squeeze it, it was so soft. Not like today. Today it’s hard and not as good.

I never knew my (biological) mother again until 1984. I went to look for her. I didn’t sit down and ask her questions or any of that. I just saw her. That’s all. Now, I have one son – he is a chef – and a life I have enjoyed.

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Cinnamon Tree

Posted on May 3, 2017May 30, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

What is this gnarled tree? Today we know it well – we use its bark as a flavoring and garnish which we associate with love, comfort and fun. Yet for millennia, it had multifold uses in the Mideast, Mediterranean, and Asia – as a perfume, spice, embalming agent, medicine, appetite stimulator, digestive, and, like so much else, aphrodisiac. It was transported from Asia through the brutality and currency of the spice trade and has had a a leading player in the American food and beverage landscape since the 1700s. It’s the cassia, aka cinnamon, tree.

“I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come let us take our fill of love till morning.” (Proverbs 7, 17-18)

Another cinnamon, less widely used, is the Ceylon, named for its home of origin, now called Sri Lanka. Most of us don’t know the difference, although in the Book of Exodus (30:23) God made a distinction, commanding Moses to use sweet cinnamon and cassia in the holy anointing oil.

The candy of today makes good use of the cinnamon flavor, such as these favorites:

The early selections, as listed in the Ohio Journal of Education in 1857,[i] were cream candy, pop-corn, peppermint, molasses, rose, clove, Butterscotch, sugar plums, lemon drops, lemon candy, peppermint drops, French kisses, cinnamon.

[i] “Lessons in Common Things,” Ohio Journal of Education, May 1857, p. 159. Link found in A Century of Panic and Pleasure by Samira Kawash, (Faber and Faber Inc., 2013), p. 36.

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Grandma’s Hard Candy: More than a Sweet Treat

Posted on May 1, 2017May 6, 2022 by Alvino Sandoval

Candy serves many purposes – a reward, pick-me-up, breath-freshener, and symbol such as the candy cane and Easter chocolate eggs. But none is so embedded with meaning on an everyday level as the hard candies that grandmothers’ kept in their candy bowls at home or their purses, dispensing them to children and, above all, grandchildren.

No mere treat, these candies were loaded with meaning that rose from the World Wars and Great Depression. At those difficult times, sugar was in short supply – during war they went straight to the soldiers and in economic crises they were too expensive to afford. When times got good – or at least better – sugar was back and the much loved candy was prevalent.

Hard candies had their own significance. They evolved from medicines where pharmacists mixed herbs, spices, and other remedies to sugar, very often boiled or in a paste. The hard candy appeared as such treasures as the 17^th century sugar plum, a hard candy with a seed or nut inside, the 18^th century hard tack, where the sugary blend was cracked, not molded, and starting in the turn-of-century, the sour balls, rum balls, butterscotch candy, and even Lifesavers, we know today.

So significant and wondrous were these candies that glittery candy bowls were made to hold them. Grandmothers carried them in their purses: a sign of prosperity, well-being, and, above all, love which they passed along in discreet quantities to those who mattered most.

And so it goes, today.

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Grandmother's Purse Candy — Grandmother’s Purse

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Sour Ball Hard Candy — Hard Candy Sour Balls

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Butterscotch Hard Candy — Hard Candy Butterscotch

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