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A song from last week’s Yer Blues playlist, the Memphis Jug Band’s “Stealin’ Stealin’” (number 250 on Ed Parker’s playlist), was featured in the second half of the first episode of American Epic. I watched the first episode last weekend, going to catch up on the current one this weekend. All in all, I liked it a lot.
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“C.C. Rider” or “See, See Rider” (songs 254 to 257 on Ed Parker’s Yer Blues playlist) kicks off this week’s installment of the Yer Blues playlist. Number 254 is Ma Rainey’s first take. Here’s her second; both were recorded Thursday, October 16, 1924.
Ray Charles played this song many, many times. I’ve picked the one from 1950 for the playlist (number 255). Chuck Willis’ version (number 256) was a hit in 1957. Here are a several other fine examples.
Big Bill Broonzy, 1934.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIGLnMQSrscLead Belly, New York, Wednesday, January 23, 1935.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPgXLqkf1ZUMississippi John Hurt, I think this is the 1963 version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGuXoorp6kRobert Jr. Lockwood, 2000 (the whole album this is on features him singing and playing a 12).
Elmore James, Jr., 2008.
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“Memphis Town” would have been Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell’s first appearance on this playlist, but I couldn’t find John Hammond’s cover of “Memphis Town” anywhere on YouTube, so I’m removing both of them and putting them here in the introduction.
John Hammond’s “Memphis Town” from Nobody But You, 1987 (click link for song on Slacker).
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Clarence “Tom” Ashley’s performance of “Coo Coo Bird” (number 258) reminded me of this 1928 recording of “Little Log Cabin in the Lane” by Uncle John Scruggs with his wife and grandchildren. This is a great glimpse into the recent past. If only we could know what he was thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TgIeaGzeLQ…………………S…i…t…t…i…n…g……O…n……T…o…p……o…f……t…h…e……W…o…r…l…d……………………
Ed Parker went all out with “Sitting On Top of the World,” including seven examples on volume 11 (numbers 262 to 268 on the playlist).
“Sitting On Top of the World” shares a melody with “It Hurts Me Too” (link to Blues Roots on song). Both share that melody with Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell’s “You’ve Gotta Reap What You Sow” (1929).
Tampa Red’s instrumental version gets right to me, also from 1929.
As does this one by Walter Davis (vocal, piano) with Henry Townsend (guitar), “You’ve Gotta Reap What You Sow” (1949).
Listen to the similarity with Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen” (recorded at the Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, TX, November 23, 1936), from the 2011 Centennial Collection.
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Sippie Wallace had a long career, long enough to record “Up the Country Blues” in 1923 (number 269 on the playlist), and again in 1966 on both Women Be Wise and Sippie Wallace Sings the Blues with Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery on piano (I don’t have the records but both pianists appear on both records). Those records inspired Bonnie Raitt, who invited Sippie Wallace on tour with her in the 1970s and 1980s. Sippie Wallace also performed and toured on her own during that time.
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Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues” (number 271) is legendary. Here’s another song he’s known for (1933).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtNZm9KXm8wTaj Mahal covered it in 1968 (second song on the album below, about 4:50 in).
The Allman Brothers covered Taj’s version; here’s live footage of them at the Second Atlanta Pop Festival, July 1970 (number 272 on the playlist is from Live at the Fillmore, 1971).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAph-PqJP0……………I……H…a…d……a……G…o…o…d……F…a…t…h…e…r……a…n…d……M…o…t…h…e…r……………
Washington Phillips made the instrument we hear him playing on “I Had a Good Father and Mother” (number 274), or at least it can be said he assembled it. I don’t know who sang the harmonies. There’s disagreement about what he called the instruments and how they were built, but they’re for sure unusual.
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Jeremy Spencer has the last word this week, on his piano and voice cover (number 277) of Robert Johnson’s 1937 recording “Hell Hound On My Trail” (number 276; recorded in Dallas, Texas; Sunday, June 20, 1937). Seems he arrived a little sooner than he should have. I like the way Jeremy turns Christmas Eve and Christmas Day around. The song is on Fleetwood Mac (1968, often called Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac) the one with the alley photo on the cover.
That song probably contributed to the “crossroads” myth related to Robert Johnson. In life it was another bluesman named Johnson who had said he sold his soul to the devil, but somewhere down through the years with Robert Johnson’s rise after the release of King of the Delta Blues Singers in 1961, the story got attributed to him. Here’s a pretty nice article from 2012 on HuffPo that includes bits of interviews with Robert Jr. Lockwood, Henry Gray.
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songs numbered 254 through 277
“SEE SEE RIDER BLUES” MA RAINEY
“SEE SEE RIDER” RAY CHARLES
“C.C. RIDER” CHUCK WILLIS
“SEE SEE RIDER” THE ANIMALS“COO COO BIRD” CLARENCE “TOM” ASHLEY
“COO COO BIRD” BIG BROTHER & THE HOLDING COMPANY“NOTHING IN RAMBLING” MEMPHIS MINNIE
“NOTHING IN RAMBLING” LUCINDA WILLIAMS“SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD” THE MISSISSIPPI SHEIKS
“JUST SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD” MILTON BROWN & HIS MUSICAL BROWNIES
“SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD” THE RAY CHARLES TRIO
“SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD” CARL PERKINS
“SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD” HOWLIN’ WOLF
“SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD” THE GRATEFUL DEAD
“SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD” CREAM“UP THE COUNTRY BLUES” SIPPIE WALLACE
“CHURCH BELL BLUES” LUKE JORDAN
“STATESBORO BLUES” BLIND WILLIE McTELL
“STATESBORO BLUES” THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND
“STATESBORO BLUES/CHURCH BELL BLUES” DAVID BROMBERG“I HAD A GOOD FATHER AND MOTHER” WASHINGTON PHILLIPS
“I HAD A REAL GOOD MOTHER AND FATHER” GILLIAN WELCH“HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL” ROBERT JOHNSON
“HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL” FLEETWOOD MAC:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::S:I:T:T:I:N:G:::O:N:::T:O:P:::O:F:::T:H:E:::W:O:R:L:D:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
In order to speed up the rate at which the page draws in, I’m putting many of the cover versions in this playlist. The handful of individual videos on this page are particularly valuable or meaningful to me, I wanted to be sure you see them, or at least know they’re here. But there are only good songs on playlist, with 34 of them as of now, including Big Joe Williams and Bob Dylan from Three Kings and The Queen (1964); B.B. King from his 2009 album One Kind Favor; Otha Turner, Jessie Mae Hemphill and Ed Young on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (’80s); Crying Sam Collins’ “I’m Still Sitting On Top of the World” from 1927, and many other artists I know you like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn1EFOhvMQk&list=PLsY6VJc9zDqmreexL-BwGVJl0sVX-txT2&index=1
One summer day
She went away
She gone an left me
She gone to stay
But now she gone
An’ I don’t worry
‘Cause I’m sitting on top of the worldWorks all the summer
And worked all the fall
I had to take my Christmas
In my overalls
But now she’s gone
An’ I don’t worry
Because I’m sitting on top of the worldGoing down to the freight yard
Just to meet a freight train
I’m gon’ leave this town
Work has done gotten too hard
But now she’s gone
And I don’t worry
Because I’m sittin’ on top of the worldOne summer day
She went away
She gone an left me
She gone to stay
But now she gone
And I don’t worry
Because I’m sittin’ on top of the worldIn Ed Parker’s Yer Blues playlist, Howlin’ Wolf’s 1957 version is the fifth “Sitting On Top of the World” there, at number 266. Here’s nice live version from Say, Man (a Boston TV show, 1973), with Eddie Shaw Jr. (saxophone), Hubert Sumlin (and unknown second guitar), Detroit Junior (piano), Andrew McMahon (bass), S.P. Leary (drums). Howlin’ Wolf was undergoing regular dialysis treatments; that’s what the bandages on his left arm are from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXRrchuXHrMHere’s the version from the London Howlin’ Wolf sessions, 1971.
Johnny Shines from his 1972 album of traditional blues songs, Sitting On Top of the World.
Sam Chatmon, 1978. Filmed by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long at Sam Chatmon’s home, Hollandale, Mississippi, August 1978.
Hubert Sumlin from his 1989 album Heart & Soul, someone posted this as a tribute 4 days after he died on December 4, 2011
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Sam Chatmon, McIntosh County, Oklahoma, 1939 or 1940
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDc6FtyMg54
Don D.
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