{"id":1617,"date":"2016-07-07T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2017-02-04T12:52:08","modified_gmt":"2017-02-04T17:52:08","slug":"kill-it-kid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kill-it-kid\/","title":{"rendered":"Kill It, Kid (Blind Willie McTell)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6iUgNhqNcbI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Willie McTell was one of the few early blues artists who managed to record in every decade from the 1920s through the 1950s. This song <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1619 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/mctell-lp-cover.jpg?resize=280%2C280\" alt=\"mctell lp cover\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/mctell-lp-cover.jpg?w=280&amp;ssl=1 280w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/mctell-lp-cover.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/>is from a session he did for the embryonic Atlantic Records in 1949, well before it became a powerhouse jazz and R&amp;B label. In a long\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/webcache.googleusercontent.com\/search?q=cache:jcMlOlwv-PgJ:www.rollingstone.com\/music\/features\/the-story-of-atlantic-records-20010426+&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;gl=us\" target=\"_blank\">interview for <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> magazine<\/a>, Atlantic&#8217;s founder, Ahmet Ertegun told the story:<\/p>\n<p><em>I was walking along a main street in the black section of Atlanta\u00a0\u2013 to me this is the most incredible story of my whole career \u2013 and there was a blind man who was sitting on the corner of the street with his back to the side of the building singing gospel songs, with a hat in front of him for people to drop money into. I stopped to listen to him because he was playing incredible slide guitar and singing so beautifully. I handed him some money so that the fellow could tell it was bills, not coins, and he said, &#8220;Oh, thank you \u2013 thanks.&#8221; So I said, &#8220;Have you ever heard of Blind Willie McTell?&#8221; And he said, &#8220;Man, I am Blind Willie McTell.&#8221; I said, &#8220;I can&#8217;t believe it. You are?&#8221; He said, &#8220;Yeah, that&#8217;s who I am.&#8221; And I said, &#8220;I would love to record you. I&#8217;m from a record company in New York.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1620\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Blind-Willie-Mctell2.jpg?resize=208%2C264\" alt=\"Blind Willie Mctell2\" width=\"208\" height=\"264\" \/>We went to the studio that same day, but he only wanted to play gospel songs. I said, &#8220;Oh, man, but we wanted some blues.&#8221; He said, &#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t sing blues anymore, I&#8217;ve found God.&#8221; I said, &#8220;But you make great blues music \u2013 this is not a bad thing \u2013 if you could just sing some blues.&#8221; &#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;don&#8217;t put my name on it.&#8221; So I said, &#8220;OK, we&#8217;ll call you Barrelhouse Sammy.&#8221; So we made some blues records and they came out under that name until after he died, when we released them with his actual name. It would have been criminal not to let people know who he was.<\/em><\/p>\n<div>\u00a0Actually, they released only one single under the Barrelhouse Sammy pseudonym &#8212; &#8220;Kill It Kid,&#8221; backed with &#8220;Broke-Down Engine Blues,&#8221; one of the songs he&#8217;d recorded back in the 1920s &#8212; and that was it until they released a full LP in 1972. By 1949 McTell wasn&#8217;t playing with the virtuosity of his first recordings, but he was singing beautifully, and that album has some of his best material, including a lovely version of &#8220;Delia,&#8221; and &#8220;Blues Around Midnight,&#8221; and &#8220;Dying Crapshooter&#8217;s Blues.&#8221; I loved that record, and listened to the blues side a lot &#8212; the gospel side, not so much &#8212; and I&#8217;m not sure why this is the only song that stuck with me, because I learned several of the others&#8230; but in any case, this is the one. (I also copped the turnaround lick at the end of each chorus for my version of Kris Kristofferson&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/best-possible-worlds\/\">Best of All Possible Worlds<\/a>.&#8221;)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Willie McTell was one of the few early blues artists who managed to record in every decade from the 1920s through the 1950s. This song is from a session he did for the embryonic Atlantic Records in 1949, well before it became a powerhouse jazz and R&amp;B label. In a long\u00a0 interview for Rolling Stone &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kill-it-kid\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Kill It, Kid (Blind Willie McTell)<\/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-1617","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>Kill It, Kid (Blind Willie McTell) - 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\/kill-it-kid\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kill It, Kid (Blind Willie McTell) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Willie McTell was one of the few early blues artists who managed to record in every decade from the 1920s through the 1950s. This song is from a session he did for the embryonic Atlantic Records in 1949, well before it became a powerhouse jazz and R&amp;B label. 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It was a somewhat troubled relationship, because he played twelve-string guitar on most of his\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\/Willie-McTell-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5024,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ticket-agent-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1617,"position":3},"title":"Ticket Agent Blues (Willie McTell\/Carl Martin)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 9, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"During the months I lived in New York City, briefly attending college as an excuse to take guitar lessons from Dave Van Ronk and spending all my spare money on Yazoo blues reissues, I developed a special taste for Carl Martin's recordings. They were not spectacularly virtuosic, or deep, or\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\/2025\/03\/Willie-McTell-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4122,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/future-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":1617,"position":4},"title":"Future Blues (Willie Brown\/Son House)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 17, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This is one of the defining Delta blues guitar pieces, apparently originated by Charlie Patton, though I got it from Willie Brown and Son House. Brown's version is the one that was titled \"Future Blues,\" and I first came across it in Stefan Grossman's Delta Blues Guitar instruction book. That\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\/Grossman-Delta-Blues-233x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1285,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/jones-oh-jones\/","url_meta":{"origin":1617,"position":5},"title":"Jones, Oh Jones (Bahamian Blind Blake\/Paul Geremia)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A uniquely bloodthirsty bit of minstrelsy, via the Bahamian Blind Blake and the matchless Paul Geremia, with elucidation of the \"wedding butcher\" fallacy.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"geremia hard life","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/geremia-hard-life.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617","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=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2503,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/2503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}