A SONG can't stop a bullet. Music can't make the killer go away. And yet, for black people in America, the blues was a survival mechanism.

Willie Dixon maintains that without the blues "the black man couldn't have made it--the blues was his only defense.

"The blues taught the black man to relax to his conditions," the Mississippi-born composer and performer notes; "It taught the black man to bide his time."

The music was a way of saying, "(White man) you got me today but you won't have me tomorrow," Dixon continues. It was a way of sustaining the hope that a better day was coming.

Dixon claims he was born with blues, and that he's been singing them for as long as he's been on this earth--58 years. He's written over 400 songs including: "Little Red Rooster," "The Seventh Son," "Spoonful," "You Can't Judge a Book By It's Cover," "Back Door Man," "Wang-Dang Doodle," "Hoochie Coochie Man," and "My Babe."

Willie Dixon was last in Boston several weeks ago, performing at Joe's Place in Cambridge.

Dixon started his songwriting career when he was a young boy. He wrote love poems, which he set to music and sold to record scouts that passed through his community.

"When I first started, I used to sell (my songs) outright, for ten or fifteen dollars, anything I could get," he recalls. His songs were not copyrighted, and and he did not receive any royalties. For a time, he and his partner, Eddie Cooper, made nickels and dimes as schoolboy pornographers. Dixon wrote the dirty verses and Cooper drew the cartoons.

THEIR LITTLE comic books told the story of the Signifying Monkey, a devilish animal who's always instigating fights. The Signifying Monkey, Brer Rabbit, and Anansi the Spider are part of the same West African folk tradition. All three are small creatures that use their wits to survive and to cause trouble.

In 1946, Dixon recorded a version of "The Signifying Monkey" for Columbia Records. The first verse went like this:

"Said the Monkey to the Lion, on a bright summer day,

'There's a big, bad cat, living down your way,

He talks about your folk in a heck of a way,

A lot of things I'm afraid to say.'"

Dixon didn't say how well the Columbia recording of "The Signifying Monkey" sold, but he did note that the "dirty" version was quite successful.