If I Had My Way

If I Had My Way is a song refrain that enters after Levee explains how his father taught him to face white men: he could smile and say yes while privately planning revenge. Slow Drag begins the song on bass after a long pause, repeating a wish to tear down the old building. The shift from Levee’s account of concealed resistance to the song’s blunt image of demolition gives the refrain a charged place in the scene without fixing it to a single interpretation.

Form and Performance

The performance is spare and clearly staged: Slow Drag begins playing the bass, then sings the opening phrase three times before completing the thought with the wish to tear the old building down. Repetition makes the line sound like a refrain rather than an extended narrative; the evidence offers no further verse or explanation. The music arrives only after the long pause, so the interval itself separates Levee’s speech from the song that follows.

Dramatic Context

Before the song, Levee insists that his father was not frightened by white men. He recalls watching his father grin at a white landowner and sell him his land while secretly planning how to get him and what to do to him. Levee presents that example as instruction in how to handle white men, rejects the others’ criticism of his own approach, and says they should leave him alone. Slow Drag’s refrain follows this defense, placing the desire to tear something down beside Levee’s account of concealed retaliation. The sequence creates an echo between speech and song, though it does not state that the song is an answer to Levee.

Image and Significance

The refrain’s central image is concrete and sweeping: an old building is to be torn down. In the scene, that wish follows a story in which a smile conceals a plan for revenge, creating a contrast between outward composure and the force of an unhidden declaration. The song supplies no named target for the demolition, and its brief appearance leaves the image open; its significance rests in that placement and contrast rather than in any explicit explanation.