{"id":1491,"date":"2016-06-21T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2024-02-17T12:36:45","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T17:36:45","slug":"why-dont-you-do-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/why-dont-you-do-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Don&#8217;t You Do Right? (Lil Green)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5wY69_qpqrg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Most of the early blues albums I bought during that year with Van Ronk were by male guitarists, with a few by male pianists. Aside from the complete Bessie Smith sets, the only album by a female blues singer I recall buying in that period was of <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1493 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Lil-Green-LP.jpg?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Lil Green LP\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Lil-Green-LP.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Lil-Green-LP.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Lil Green, and I\u2019m pretty sure I bought it only because her accompanists included Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Slim, and because I&#8217;d heard one song of hers, &#8220;Knockin&#8217; Myself Out,&#8221; on a compilation of songs about drugs.*<\/p>\n<p>Green has not been much remembered or enthroned in the blues pantheon, but for a moment in 1939 she and Billie Holiday were hailed as co-leaders of a blues revival \u2013 the African American press had pretty much stopped writing about blues after Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and the other pioneering blues queens ceased to get hits in the late 1920s, and when Holiday hit with \u201cFine and Mellow\u201d just as Green hit with \u201cWhy Don\u2019t You Do Right?\u201d it was treated as a significant new wave.<\/p>\n<p>They were superficially similar singers, with lighter, thinner voices than their most famous predecessors, but otherwise were very different. Holiday favored hip, forward-looking musicians \u2013 most famously Lester Young \u2013 and changed jazz singing forever, while Green was in the mainstream Chicago style of the mid 1930s, complete with Slim and Broonzy backing her on piano and acoustic guitar. That made her work a good deal less distinctive, but also a good deal more approachable for me \u2013 especially since Broonzy\u2019s guitar solo on her biggest hit was particularly simple. It was not a great solo, and I have completely forgotten it, but it was probably the first single-string lead I ever learned.<\/p>\n<p>As for the song, I\u2019ve continued to sing it off and on ever since. It was <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1494 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/kansas-joe-mccoy.jpg?resize=200%2C230&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"kansas joe mccoy\" width=\"200\" height=\"230\" \/>composed by Kansas Joe McCoy, Memphis Minnie\u2019s ex-husband and the leader of the Harlem Hamfats (which I like to think of as \u201cthe Harlem Hamfats, a Chicago band led by a Mississippi guitarist named Kansas Joe\u201d). He\u2019d recorded another lyric to the same tune, called \u201cWeed Smoker\u2019s Dream,\u201d and apparently rewrote it for Green. In any case, it was a well-written lyric to a distinctive minor-key 12-bar blues melody, and did well for her, then even better for Peggy Lee, who got a career-establishing hit with it as vocalist for Benny Goodman&#8217;s band.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t perform this much, but sang it for my own amusement or for friends late at night, until I did a tour of Japan with the folk-rock-avant garde singer-songwriter\/ performance artist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/mikami.html\">Mikami Kan<\/a>. Between our first and second gigs he asked me why Americans <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1495 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/mikamime.jpg?resize=282%2C183&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"mikamime\" width=\"282\" height=\"183\" \/>never did any songs in minor keys, since Japanese people like that sound,\u00a0 so I said we did, and sang him this one, and ended up doing it on every show for the rest of the tour, and fell in love with it all over again.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*I also learned &#8220;Knockin&#8217; Myself Out,&#8221; which Green did wonderfully, and although I don&#8217;t remember all the verses, I still perfectly remember the way she phrased the tag line:<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m gonna knock myself out, I&#8217;m gonna <em>kill<\/em> myself<br \/>\nI&#8217;m gonna knock myself out, gradually, by degrees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most of the early blues albums I bought during that year with Van Ronk were by male guitarists, with a few by male pianists. Aside from the complete Bessie Smith sets, the only album by a female blues singer I recall buying in that period was of Lil Green, and I\u2019m pretty sure I bought &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/why-dont-you-do-right\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why Don&#8217;t You Do Right? (Lil Green)<\/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-1491","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>Why Don&#039;t You Do Right? (Lil Green) - 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\/why-dont-you-do-right\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Don&#039;t You Do Right? (Lil Green) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most of the early blues albums I bought during that year with Van Ronk were by male guitarists, with a few by male pianists. Aside from the complete Bessie Smith sets, the only album by a female blues singer I recall buying in that period was of Lil Green, and I\u2019m pretty sure I bought &hellip; Continue reading Why Don&#8217;t You Do Right? 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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":2245,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/down-and-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":1491,"position":1},"title":"Nobody Knows You When You&#8217;re Down and Out","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"January 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Most blues fans associate this song with Bessie Smith's version from 1929 and think it was written about the Depression, but it was originally popularized in the early 1920s by its composer, Jimmie Cox. Like most of the first round of commercial blues performers, Cox tends to be left out\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"jimmie-cox-and-magnolia-cox-from-lynn-abbott","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Jimmie-Cox-and-Magnolia-Cox-from-Lynn-Abbott.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1176,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/good-old-wagon\/","url_meta":{"origin":1491,"position":2},"title":"You&#8217;ve Been a Good Old Wagon (Bessie Smith\/Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"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's greatest records, featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet and Fred Longshaw playing unobtrusive piano. Other guitarists faced with Smith's\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"dave van ronk5","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/dave-van-ronk5.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2884,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/statesboro-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1491,"position":3},"title":"Statesboro Blues (Willie McTell)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not sure exactly how I learned \"Statesboro Blues\" -- of course I listened to the original recording by Blind Willie McTell, and I know Woody Mann's tablature played a part, but I don't recall playing it much until I was touring in the early 1980s, and even then I\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\/05\/Willie-McTell2-300x277.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1223,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/midnight-hour-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1491,"position":4},"title":"Midnight Hour Blues (Leroy Carr)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another classic Van Ronk guitar arrangement, this was also the first song I learned by Leroy Carr. Carr was a massively influential figure who virtually redefined blues in the late 1920s and early '30s, turning it from rowdy, shouting dancehall, theater, or streetcorner music into a sensitive, moody style suited\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/images\/carrpic.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1031,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-mountain-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1491,"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. Dave had learned it from Bessie Smith's recording, and had the bright idea of combining her\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Scrapper_Blackwell and Bessie Smith","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Scrapper_Blackwell-and-Bessie-Smith-197x300.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\/1491","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=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4971,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions\/4971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}