{"id":26,"date":"2015-12-10T19:15:38","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T19:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=26"},"modified":"2018-02-03T13:12:03","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T18:12:03","slug":"pallet-on-your-floor-aint-no-telling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pallet-on-your-floor-aint-no-telling\/","title":{"rendered":"Pallet on Your Floor (Ain&#8217;t No Telling)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kyJm-tmO-oc\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I learned a version of this song from a Cisco Houston record&#8211;he was one of my first heroes, and I learned pretty much all the songs on that record&#8211;but once I heard Mississippi John Hurt do it, I switched over to his version. (The same thing happened with Woody Guthrie&#8217;s version of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/stagolee\/\">Stagolee<\/a>.&#8221;) For a while, I started every concert with a John Hurt song, and this one served that role for a few years. His music is a perfect bridge between blues and the older African American styles that evolved into country music, and his guitar style was the bedrock for a couple of generations of fingerpickers, me very much included. As for the harmonica, I never mastered the intricacies of tongue blocking, or got my bends and tone where I&#8217;d like them to be, but I had a lot of fun with the instrument and even made my living with it off and on, including some memorably anarchic gigs as a sideman for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/joshua-gone-barbados\/\">Eric Von Schmidt<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Like most versions of &#8220;Pallet on the Floor,&#8221; this one seems to be pretty substantially expurgated&#8211;Jelly Roll Morton recorded a version for the Library of Congress that gives a better sense of what the whole thing might be about&#8230; but, on the other hand, this one is the most bloodthirsty, in a wry, gentle, Hurt kind of way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I learned a version of this song from a Cisco Houston record&#8211;he was one of my first heroes, and I learned pretty much all the songs on that record&#8211;but once I heard Mississippi John Hurt do it, I switched over to his version. (The same thing happened with Woody Guthrie&#8217;s version of &#8220;Stagolee.&#8221;) For a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pallet-on-your-floor-aint-no-telling\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pallet on Your Floor (Ain&#8217;t No Telling)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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-26","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>Pallet on Your Floor (Ain&#039;t No Telling) - 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\/pallet-on-your-floor-aint-no-telling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pallet on Your Floor (Ain&#039;t No Telling) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I learned a version of this song from a Cisco Houston record&#8211;he was one of my first heroes, and I learned pretty much all the songs on that record&#8211;but once I heard Mississippi John Hurt do it, I switched over to his version. 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In retrospect, I think I misunderstood a lot of things about\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Masters of Instrumental Blues","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Masters-of-Instrumental-Blues-229x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4481,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/coffee-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":26,"position":1},"title":"Coffee Blues (Mississippi John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 6, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Mississippi John Hurt always explained that this song was about coffee; specifically Maxwell House, because it was \"good to the last drop, just like it says on the can.\" He'd say just one spoonful of Maxwell House coffee was as good as two or three cups of any other brand.\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\/2021\/11\/Maxwell-House-can.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":771,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/louis-collins\/","url_meta":{"origin":26,"position":2},"title":"Louis Collins (Mississippi John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I learned Mississippi John Hurt's arrangement of \"Louis Collins\" from Donald Garwood\u2019s blues guitar book, which is long out of print but was fundamental to my early understanding of Hurt\u2019s style \u2014 for example, his habit of getting a high A note while playing a G or C chord by\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\/03\/John-Hurt-Today-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1143,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/spike-drivers-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":26,"position":3},"title":"Spike Driver&#8217;s Blues (John Hurt\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The first song Dave Van Ronk taught me was John Hurt's powerfully understated meditation on the John Henry legend.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"dave van ronk7","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/dave-van-ronk7.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4111,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candy-man-john-hurt\/","url_meta":{"origin":26,"position":4},"title":"Candy Man (John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This may well be the first song I ever heard from Mississippi John Hurt, because it was his first track on the Blues at Newport LP from 1963. That was one of the defining albums for me, the first place I heard Dave Van Ronk, John Hammond, John Lee Hooker...\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\/01\/Blues-at-Newport-LP-295x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1347,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/friend-of-mine\/","url_meta":{"origin":26,"position":5},"title":"He Was a Friend of Mine (Dave Van Ronk &#038;co)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This was one of the first songs I ever heard from Dave Van Ronk, and remained a staple of his repertoire throughout his career. When he recorded it in 1963 he credited it to Bob Dylan, but in later years would say, \"I learned this from Bob Dylan, who learned\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"von schmidt - cahn","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/von-schmidt-cahn.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\/26","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=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3565,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/3565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}