Furry Lewis When My Baby Left Me Lyrics

Thanks in office to a sale on boxed sets at Borders I've been listening to a lot of blues lately. I take to say, I'm getting quite the education. I'k finally hearing many songs that I've simply known as inspiration for other songs and even better than that I'k discovering unabridged sub-genres that I hadn't previously known even existed.

I'm not certain what to call the sub-genre that includes songs like Hirsuite Lewis' "When My Baby Left Me." Haunted country dejection? Ghost acoustic folk? The overall tone is dark and cold, simply Lewis' acoustic guitar shimmers like broken glass caught in a sudden streak of light. And the lyrics are as equally fascinating as the guitar playing. Lewis sings things like, "She caught the rumbling and I caught the falling downwardly." Grammatically and logically the line makes no sense but that doesn't stop yous from knowing exactly what he ways. I'd be less intrigued past a vocal similar this if it were some sort of lonely blow. But apparently there's a whole slew of tunes like "When My Baby Left Me." In fact, Lewis' entry into the dejection' ephemeral side came quite late. Lewis cut "When My Babe Left Me" in 1961 afterward a nearly thirty-year absence from recording during which time he is said to take fabricated a living as a Memphis street sweeper.

If blues compilations didn't have liner notes, I'd never take known Lewis' recording was done in the 60s considering "When My Baby Left Me" sounds an awful lot like records such as Blind Willie McTell'south "Statesboro Blues" and Robert 'Barbecue Bob' Hicks' "Motherless Chile Blues," both of which date dorsum to pre-Low times.

I like both McTell's and Hicks' records for the fashion they mix bravado with vulnerability, not just lyrically only also in the way the ii bluesmen perform their vocals. Both Hicks and McTell have big, commanding voices and charisma to spare. But they also both accept a keening, shrill style of ending their notes that makes them audio sad and lonely equally opposed to just pissed off. At times, their way of singing sounds like the 1920s equivalent of the male falsetto from soul ballads of the 60s and 70s.

Possibly the ultimate example of this slow and chilling type of blues melody is Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was The Nighttime, Cold Was The Ground." According to the liner notes of The Blues: A Musical Journey, Johnson wasn't a bluesman at all, rather he "was an evangelist, pure and simple." Throughout his career, Johnson is said to have sung goose egg but devotional music. "Night Was The Night" has no lyrics, but the liner notes say that's only because the hymn was then well known at the time that everyone who might've heard the song already knew the words. "Spooky and immortal" is the way the author sums upwards this performance from 1927. Given that: a) this is the most ominous-sounding 'gospel' record I've ever heard, and b) it's eighty years after and nosotros're still talking about information technology, I'd take to say both parts of the clarification are authentic.

Get your 'audio-visual ghost blues' tracks here:

-    Furry Lewis – "When My Babe Left Me" – Originally from Dorsum On My Feet Again (Prestige/Bluesville, 1961); Reissued on Shake 'Em On Down (Fantasy, 1972)
-    Bullheaded Willie McTell – "Statesboro Blues" – Originally issued as a 78rpm unmarried (Victor, 1928); Available on

The Best Of Blind Willie McTell (Yazoo, 2004)
-    Robert 'Barbecue Bob' Hicks – "Motherless Republic of chile Blues" – Originally issued as a 78rpm single (Columbia, 1927); Available on The Complete Recorded Works, Vol. one (Document, 1991)
-    Blind Willie Johnson – "Nighttime Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" – Originally issued as a 78rpm unmarried (Columbia, 1927); Bachelor on Nighttime Was The Night (Sony, 1998)

Or if you want to go the 'embarrassment of riches' road, do like I did and pick up

The Blues: A Musical Journey . It'south a five-CD boxed set that includes "Statesboro Blues," "Dark Was The Night" and 114 other classic blues recordings.

—Mtume ya Salaam

              Dorsum in the twenty-four hour period

Way back, back during what they telephone call pre-War times (meaning, of form, Globe War II), back when Jim Crow was flying loftier, back then, if you was built-in in the Due south, the dejection was your birth document. From back then there was created what was chosen the land blues. Ragtime preceded what we know today as the land blues. Simply Ragtime got smashed in the backwash of the destruction of Reconstruction.

I dearest this music. Mind to information technology at odd moments. Have my own list of favorites: Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Injure, Son House, Blind Willie McTell and, for sure, Robert Johnson. All of them playing acoustic guitar and talk-singing nigh real life, real times, real people. Fifty-fifty when they be lying, they be singing the truth.

I'thousand going to throw in another Furry Lewis ("God Be With United states of america Till We Meet Over again") and another Blind Willie McTell ("Dying Crapshooter'south Blues").

Blind Willie McTell is a master storyteller, would say "griot" merely that is so obvious it goes without saying. I've got at to the lowest degree thirty of his songs on my hard drives (yeah, I back upwards all of my music). The man was a monster: he was bullheaded but literate. Learned to read both writing and music in braille. He is not famous but ought to be.

Hirsuite Lewis on the other hand had a mode of playing the guitar as though he was ventriloquist speaking through his git-fiddle. Unlike Blind Willie, Furry is well known.

I was not that familiar with Barbeque Bob. Had heard the name and sampled a fiddling bit of his music just was not deep into information technology. This selection makes me desire to look him upwards for further investigation.

Blind Willie Johnson puts me in mind of Rev. Gary Davis who played both sacred and secular music. Whereas Davis has a bunch of releases, I've only found a handful of songs by Johnson.

For sure, we've got a agglomeration more than blues coming in the weeks and months alee. Cheers, Mtume, for peeking backwards. As nosotros become older we accept a greater appreciation for the past, for our roots, for all that came before and helped us along. And what a dandy joy to learn about aspects of our intimate history, aspects about which nosotros were previously oblivious.

Listening to the dejection is a duty of every witting black American, a duty and responsibility, and a joyful undertaking once nosotros open to the difficult history of what spirit-propelled us round the curve from where we had been on the hard highway to this troubled identify we at present stagger frontward from. Or should I say, this now-time place we hope to survive. Or something. Past the grace of God (or whatever information technology is we believe in), fifty years from at present, some of the music we leave backside will be equally roots relevant to our future as these blues are to our current conflicted condition.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

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