Dixon, Willie James

Dixon’s upbringing lent itself to his later vocation as a songwriter. His mother, Daisy Dixon, was poorly educated but instilled in her children a respect for reading and a love of poetry—a rarity in the Jim Crow South , where African American literacy rates were generally low. His understanding of the power of language was fostered by his increasing facility at word play and in his early poems such as “ The Signifying Monkey .” The industrious Dixon wrote this mildly...