{"id":1176,"date":"2016-05-25T07:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2024-04-25T13:35:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T17:35:52","slug":"good-old-wagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/good-old-wagon\/","title":{"rendered":"You&#8217;ve Been a Good Old Wagon (Bessie Smith\/Van Ronk)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"You&#039;ve Been a Good Old Wagon\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R-PSRf9GHnk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Another of my favorite Dave Van Ronk guitar arrangements, and a perfect example of how he would edit an accompaniment down to its absolute essentials. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1177 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/dave-van-ronk5.jpg?resize=202%2C254&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"dave van ronk5\" width=\"202\" height=\"254\" \/>His model was one of Bessie Smith&#8217;s greatest records, featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet and Fred Longshaw playing unobtrusive piano. Other guitarists faced with Smith&#8217;s more ragtime-influenced blues records tend to get complicated and work out intricate arrangements that mimic piano ragtime, but Dave was thinking as a singer and wanted something that would support his vocal, not distract from it. The result is a singer&#8217;s dream, gently swinging while leaving plenty of space.<\/p>\n<p>The lyric was one of Smith&#8217;s best, and she is credited as co-writer with someone<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1178 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/bessie-smith.jpg?resize=220%2C248&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"bessie smith\" width=\"220\" height=\"248\" \/> named Stuart Balcom, or sometimes John Henry &#8212; there are internet sites that suggest these are the same person, but I have no idea what their source is. John Henry, as best I can find, was a pseudonym for Perry Bradford, composer of numerous blues songs including the original breakthrough hit by a black recording artist, Mamie Smith&#8217;s &#8220;Crazy Blues,&#8221;and since Balcom seems to have no other songs to his credit, he might be another Bradford mask.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, it&#8217;s a wonderful song, and a good example of the kind of lyrics that were more popular back when blues was mainly women&#8217;s music, in terms both of the performers and the audience. Actually, among black listeners the blues audience is still overwhelmingly female and the theme of the aging male lover getting traded in on a more recent model is still popular. As Moms Mabley used to say, &#8220;The only thing an old man can do for me is take a message to a young man.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(Mabley also used to say, &#8220;Making love to an old man, honey? Making love to an old man is like pushing a car up a hill&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;with a rope.&#8221;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another of my favorite Dave Van Ronk guitar arrangements, and a perfect example of how he would edit an accompaniment down to its absolute essentials. His model was one of Bessie Smith&#8217;s greatest records, featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet and Fred Longshaw playing unobtrusive piano. Other guitarists faced with Smith&#8217;s more ragtime-influenced blues records tend &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/good-old-wagon\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You&#8217;ve Been a Good Old Wagon (Bessie Smith\/Van Ronk)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>You&#039;ve Been a Good Old Wagon (Bessie Smith\/Van Ronk) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/good-old-wagon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You&#039;ve Been a Good Old Wagon (Bessie Smith\/Van Ronk) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Another of my favorite Dave Van Ronk guitar arrangements, and a perfect example of how he would edit an accompaniment down to its absolute essentials. His model was one of Bessie Smith&#8217;s greatest records, featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet and Fred Longshaw playing unobtrusive piano. 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That set was an oddity of the LP era: the records were issued with the notion that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"bessie smith lp2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/bessie-smith-lp2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1272,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/the-pearls\/","url_meta":{"origin":1176,"position":1},"title":"The Pearls (Jelly Roll Morton\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I arrived on Dave Van Ronk's doorstep just as he reached the high-water mark of his interest in ragtime guitar, so I emerged from my year of study with \"St. Louis Tickle,\" \"Maple Leaf Rag,\" \"The Entertainer\" (which was so overdone that I quickly forgot it), and Jelly Roll Morton's\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Davis-Van-Ronk 11","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Davis-Van-Ronk-11.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1219,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/maple-leaf-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":1176,"position":2},"title":"Maple Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk was hailed as the pioneering arranger of \"classic\" ragtime for fingerstyle guitar more or less by default. In the early 1960s he did an arrangement of \"St. Louis Tickle\" that was the first recording of a multi-part piano or orchestral ragtime composition on fingerstyle guitar -- but\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"sunday st","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/sunday-st.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1372,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/nobody-knows-way\/","url_meta":{"origin":1176,"position":3},"title":"Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Morning","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I got this from Dave Van Ronk, who presumably got it from Clara Smith's, Alberta Hunter's, or Margaret Johnson's recordings -- he sings a somewhat different lyric, but that may just be a quirk of memory or he may have decided to do some rewriting, which he often did when\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Clara Smith","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Clara-Smith-206x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3007,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/antelope-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":1176,"position":4},"title":"Antelope Rag (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"August 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In the early 1960s, when other people on the folk scene were learning rural string band and blues music, Dave Van Ronk recorded the first fingerstyle guitar arrangement of a formal, multi-part rag, \"St. Louis Tickle.\" As I wrote in the \"Tickle\" installment (and others),\u00a0 that piece spawned a small\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/dave_van_ronk-e1499731736570.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1031,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-mountain-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1176,"position":5},"title":"Black Mountain Blues (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I got this from Dave Van Ronk's first album -- once again, it was the kind of violent, bragging song that perfectly suited the tastes of a teenage boy who was getting into blues. 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