{"id":1387,"date":"2016-06-15T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T11:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=1387"},"modified":"2025-03-05T09:13:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T14:13:27","slug":"mamies-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mamies-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamie&#8217;s Blues (219 Blues)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kbI-PVdL-yM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In his notes to this song, Dave Van Ronk wrote, &#8220;Jelly Roll Morton, certainly the greatest jazz composer before Ellington and a singer of incredible subtlety claimed to have invented jazz in 1902. There is little point in argument.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1336 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/jelly-roll-morton-commodore.jpg?resize=263%2C258&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"jelly roll morton commodore\" width=\"263\" height=\"258\" \/>This was one of Morton&#8217;s most subtle efforts, and one of Dave&#8217;s. Dave stripped the spare piano accompaniment down to an even sparer guitar arrangement, and sang it simply and directly, just telling the story.<\/p>\n<p>On his recording, Morton recalled, &#8220;This is the first blues I no doubt heard in my life. Mamie Desdunes, this was her favorite blues. She hardly could play anything else more, but she really could play this number.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Desdunes (sometimes written Desdoumes) was a well-known singer and pianist in &#8220;the District,&#8221; as Black New Orleanians called the area now generally remembered as &#8220;Storyville,&#8221; and the Black saloons and honky tonks further uptown. Bunk Johnson recalled playing numerous dates with her and told Alan Lomax: &#8220;She was pretty good looking \u2014 quite fair and with a nice head of hair. She was a hustling woman. A blues-singing poor girl. Used to play pretty passable piano around them dance halls on Perdido Street. When Hattie Rogers or Lulu White would put it out that Mamie was going to be singing at her place, the white men would turn out in bunches and them whores would clean up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5067 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Jellycover-e1710359243890.jpg?resize=200%2C302&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"302\" \/>I wrote a good deal more about this song, and what little more is known about Desdunes, in my book <em>Jelly Roll Blues<\/em>. Morton remembered that she was missing a couple of fingers on her right hand, and I found a newspaper clipping that told how her hand was crushed in a trolley accident. I also turned up a bunch of songs with overlapping verses, especially about the hard life of streetwalkers, but never managed to sort out the train schedules&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The song title is often given as &#8220;2:19 Blues,&#8221; as if the number was for a train time, but Charles Edward Smith recalled Morton explaining that the 219 was the train that &#8220;took the gals out on the T&amp;P [Texas and Pacific railroad] to the sporting houses on the Texas side of the circuit&#8230; [and] the 217 on the S.P. [Southern Pacific] through San Antonio and Houston brought them back to New Orleans.&#8221; I can find no confirmation that those numbers matched trains on that route, and another scholar has the same trains running between New Orleans and Chicago &#8212; so I&#8217;m dubious, especially since the matched numbers would make more sense for trains going back and forth on the same line, but Morton assigned them to different lines.<\/p>\n<p>My guess is <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1398 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BasinSt.jpg?resize=308%2C185&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"308\" height=\"185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BasinSt.jpg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BasinSt.jpg?resize=300%2C180&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 308px) 100vw, 308px\" \/>Morton was improvising an explanation to match the lyric, and very likely shifting the location: there was a 219 train that ran from Memphis to Little Rock, with the 220 returning, and this couplet may well be from Memphis, another strong blues town. On the other hand, another famous blues lyric that mentions the 219 is &#8220;Trouble In Mind&#8221; (&#8220;Gonna lay my head on that lonesome railroad line\/ Let the 219 ease my trouble in mind&#8221;), by Richard M. Jones, who was also from New Orleans.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, this was one of a half-dozen songs I got from Morton via Van Ronk, and I&#8217;ve elsewhere posted about &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/buddy-boldens-blues\/\">Buddy Bolden&#8217;s Blues<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wining-boy\/\">Winding Ball<\/a>&#8221; (a.k.a. &#8220;Winin&#8217; Boy&#8221;), &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/michigan-water\/\">Michigan Water<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sweet-substitute\/\">Sweet Substitute<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/the-pearls\/\">The Pearls<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his notes to this song, Dave Van Ronk wrote, &#8220;Jelly Roll Morton, certainly the greatest jazz composer before Ellington and a singer of incredible subtlety claimed to have invented jazz in 1902. There is little point in argument.&#8221; This was one of Morton&#8217;s most subtle efforts, and one of Dave&#8217;s. Dave stripped the spare &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mamies-blues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mamie&#8217;s Blues (219 Blues)<\/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":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mamie&#039;s Blues (219 Blues) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A classic blues about streetwalking, recalled by Jelly Roll Morton from the playing of Mamie Desdunes at the turn of the twentieth century.\" \/>\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\/mamies-blues\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mamie&#039;s Blues (219 Blues) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A classic blues about streetwalking, recalled by Jelly Roll Morton from the playing of Mamie Desdunes at the turn of the twentieth century.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mamies-blues\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-15T11:00:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-03-05T14:13:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/jelly-roll-morton-commodore-300x295.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/mamies-blues\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/mamies-blues\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elijah Wald\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"headline\":\"Mamie&#8217;s Blues (219 Blues)\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-06-15T11:00:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-03-05T14:13:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/mamies-blues\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":571,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/mamies-blues\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/05\\\/jelly-roll-morton-commodore-300x295.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/mamies-blues\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/mamies-blues\\\/\",\"name\":\"Mamie's Blues (219 Blues) - 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Over the years, I got used to the idea that if I stayed late enough at his place we would likely end up listening to Morton records (often back to back with Phillipe Koutev's Bulgarian ensemble),\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\/2016\/05\/jelly-roll-morton-commodore-300x295.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3254,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wining-boy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1387,"position":1},"title":"Winin&#8217; Boy \/ Winding Ball (Jelly Roll Morton)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I learned this from Dave Van Ronk, who got it from Jelly Roll Morton, and it's at this point in the Songobiography because my trip south in 1985 included a brief stint with a trad jazz band in Charleston, SC. I hitched down from Southport via Myrtle Beach and don't\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\/2018\/11\/Michael-Tyzack.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5136,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/alabama-bound\/","url_meta":{"origin":1387,"position":2},"title":"Alabama Bound (Jelly Roll Morton, and many others)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 30, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I've known \"Alabama Bound\" forever, but never worked it up as a performance piece, and am posting it now because I used it as the theme of chapter one of my new book, Jelly Roll Blues, an exploration of Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress recordings, the world that nurtured\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\/2024\/03\/Blind-Boones-Southern-Rag-Medley-No-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":814,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/stealin-stealin\/","url_meta":{"origin":1387,"position":3},"title":"Stealin&#8217;, Stealin&#8217; (Sam Charters&#8217; reissues)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A canonical jug band song from the canonical Memphis Jug Band, learned from Sam Charters's canonical blues reissue LP, \"The Country Blues.\"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"The Country Blues","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/The-Country-Blues.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1645,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hesitation-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1387,"position":4},"title":"Hesitation Blues (deep history of a dirty blues)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I heard this one, yet again, from Dave Van Ronk, who got it from Reverend Gary Davis,* but either of us could have learned it from any number of other sources. Indeed, this song became somewhat a bane of my existence in the 1970s, because whenever some musician or musicians\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\/2016\/06\/Gary-Davis-LP2-297x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1182,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kansas-city-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1387,"position":5},"title":"Kansas City Blues (I&#8217;m Going to Move to Kansas City)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the defining blues hits of the late 1920s for Jim Jackson, and the Apollonian ideal of a Dave Van Ronk guitar accompaniment.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Van Ronk in the tradition","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Van-Ronk-in-the-tradition.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1387"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5696,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions\/5696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}