When I was doing the book tour for Escaping the Delta, my book on Robert Johnson and the history of blues, I started playing this song regularly at the various events, and fell completely in love with it. It is Furry Lewis’s take on a song that has been recorded in dozens of versions, by dozens of people–Charlie Poole did a variant titled “Milwaukee Blues,” Waylon Jennings did it as “Waymore’s Blues,” a bunch of people have done it as “Jay Gould’s Daughter.” Aside from being a great piece of music, it’s a good example of the kinds of songs that were all over the South at the turn of the 19th-20th century and crystallized into blues, and of the way banjo styles affected blues guitar. I started thinking about those banjo slides when I learned Lead Belly’s arrangement of “Poor Howard,” which is very similar to the way Furry played this.
I’d like you play something of Eugene Powell (Police in missisippi blues, or blues jump a rabbit) because it’s too difficult for me. Thanks and hugs from Italy
I spent a pleasant evening with Eugene Powell, but never learned any of his songs.
Spider John Koerner plays the “Jay Gould’s Daughter” version which more amusing, because the SP and the ATSF were two of the major railroads that Jay Gould (the Mephistopheles of Wall Street) never controlled. I can find no reference to either of his daughters drinking heavily.