Miss Celie’s Blues from The Color Purple
One of my favorite movies is “The Color Purple”. Alice Walker wrote the book “The Color Purple”, and this is one of the rare cases where the movie is every bit as good as the book. Both the book and the movie are epic, beautiful, and will stay in your heart forever.
Shug Avery – Miss Celie’s Blues (Sister)
The Color Purple
Sister, you’ve been on my mind
Sister, we’re two of a kind
So, sister, I’m keepin’ my eye on you.
I betcha think I don’t know nothin’
But singin’ the blues, oh, sister,
Have I got news for you, I’m something,
I hope you think that you’re something too
Scufflin’, I been up that lonesome road
And I seen alot of suns going down
Oh, but trust me,
No-o low life’s gonna run me around.
So let me tell you something Sister,
Remember your name, No twister
Gonna steal your stuff away, my sister,
We sho’ ain’t got a whole lot of time,
So-o-o shake your shimmy Sister,
‘Cause honey the ‘shug’ is feelin’ fine.
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The Color Purple is a tragic tale of a poor black woman in the south at the turn of the century, Miss Celie, and it chronicles her life from start to finish as she is abused and raped by her father at an early age, has her children taken away and sold, and later, her father sells/marries her off to an extremely abusive older man who needs someone to raise his 3 kids after his wife’s death. Later, after her husband tries to rape her young sister and she escapes him, he forcefully separates her from her sister and sends the young girl away, hides her letters from Celie for the next 20 years or so, and is, in general, the most miserable excuse for a human being that you could ever imagine. It turns out that he is also in love with Shug Avery, a famous singer who has multiple children with multiple men, and is reviled as a woman of loose morals by her preacher father and most of the town. She gets sick and almost dies, and no one will help her, so Miss Celie ends up having to nurse her husband’s mistress back to health, and in the process, they become the dearest of friends. After she recovers, as Shug is preparing to leave and go back on the road, she worries about her friend’s well being, but has to go nonetheless. She does a farewell show, during which she sings her newest song, Miss Celie’s Blues. I won’t tell you the rest of the movie (that was only Disc 1!) but I will tell you that it’s a modern day classic that you simply must see. However, if you’re not absolutely heartless, you will NEED a box of kleenex nearby. From the Warner Bros. Motion Picture “The Color Purple” .Music: Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton. Words by Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton and Lionel Richie.”