I’ve always loved “James Alley Blues.” When I wrote a chapter on the poetry of blues for my short history of blues,  I quoted it in full as an example of the kind of piece that, although perhaps assembled from various “floating” verses,  has “an internal logic that makes it easy to think of them as poems in the most formal, literary sense of the term.” Which is a fancy way of saying it’s one of the most beautiful lyrics I know, in any form.

It was recorded in 1927 by Richard “Rabbit” Brown, a relatively obscure singer from New Orleans, and is named for Jane Alley (locally known as Jane’s or James Alley), the street where Louis Armstrong spent his earliest years, in the area between the uptown red light district a few blocks upriver from Canal Street (not to be confused with the fancier downtown district remembered as “Storyville”) and the railroad depot at the New Basin.The title has led some writers to describe Brown as living and playing in that neighborhood, which may be right, but he was more often remembered for playing around the resorts on Lake Pontchartrain. Ralph Peer, who recorded six songs from him in 1927 recalled that he “sang to his guitar in the streets of New Orleans, and he rowed you out into Lake Pontchartrain for a fee, and sang to you as he rowed.”

Another New Orleans singer, Lemon Nash, apparently knew him, but added little to that biography — and Nash’s recollection that Brown was a lousy guitar player doesn’t square with the recordings, so I’m not sure how accurate his recollections are…. and that’s all we know.

As for Brown’s recordings, they are a mix of doleful ballads about local murders and the sinking of the Titanic, a couple of comic minstrel songs, and this blues. That suggests he was not primarily a blues singer, which makes it all the more striking that his single blues is one of the masterpieces of the genre.

My Songobiography is a collection of songs I remember, performed from memory, and doing it has changed my relationship to my repertoire by forcing me to work out my own variations and fill lyrical holes rather than going back to relearn details from my sources. One result is that I’m sounding more like myself; another is that my versions are not reliable guides to the originals. This guitar part is obviously based on Brown’s, but when I hear Dom Flemons play Brown’s version — which he does beautifully — I realize how much I’ve changed it. And…

…looking back at my old transcription of the lyric, I see that I’ve left out the verse that followed the one about buying groceries and paying rent:

I said if you don’t want me, why don’t you tell me so?
You know, if you don’t want me, why don’t you tell me so?
Because it ain’t like a man that ain’t got nowhere to go.

I love that verse and am surprised it slipped my mind, and I almost went back and re-recorded the video to include it… but it’s a pretty song either way.