{"id":3962,"date":"2018-09-01T07:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3962"},"modified":"2018-09-01T07:56:08","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T11:56:08","slug":"morning-blues-uncle-dave-macon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/morning-blues-uncle-dave-macon\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Blues (Uncle Dave Macon)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Morning Blues\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fyj-CMScZyA?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>This was originally recorded by Uncle Dave Macon in 1926 and issued as &#8220;I&#8217;ve Got the Mourning Blues.&#8221; Folk revivalists have tended to correct that title to &#8220;Morning Blues,&#8221; and for familiarity&#8217;s sake I&#8217;ve gone with that&#8230; but my guess is it should actually be &#8220;Moaning Blues.&#8221; That was a common title: Ma Rainey had a &#8220;Deep Moaning Blues,&#8221; Clara Smith had an &#8220;Awful Moaning Blues,&#8221;\u00a0 Crying Sam Collins had a &#8220;Moanin&#8217; Blues,&#8221; and so on.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3967\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Uncle-Dave-Macon.jpg?resize=228%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Uncle-Dave-Macon.jpg?resize=228%2C300&amp;ssl=1 228w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Uncle-Dave-Macon.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 228px) 100vw, 228px\" \/>In any case, it&#8217;s a nice example of an older rural artist refitting his style to suit the new blues craze. Uncle Dave Macon was born in 1870, and his recordings are among the best surviving examples of 19th century rural music. His usual instrument was banjo, and his style was deeply grounded in African American traditions.<\/p>\n<p>There is a story about John Jackson, the great blues singer\/guitarist from Virginia, that when an interviewer mentioned DeFord Bailey as the only black star of the Grand Ole Opry, Jackson responded, &#8220;What about Uncle Dave Macon?&#8221; I once asked Jackson if the story was true, and he cheerfully confirmed it: &#8220;The way he sound on the radio, I always thought he was black until I seen him.&#8221; It would not just have been the sound; there was also the &#8220;Uncle&#8221; before his name, which was the standard way southern white people addressed older black men they liked: Uncle Tom, Uncle Remus, Uncle Ben, and of course Aunt Jemima&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Macon grew up around the hotel his father ran in Nashville and learned his music&#8211;as well as jokes, stories, and the tricks of an old-time entertainer&#8211;from the show people who stayed there. Fortunately for the world, he did not go into show business himself at that point, but instead made his living from farming and hauling goods in a wagon&#8211;which meant he didn&#8217;t keep changing his style to suit the times and when he finally took to the stage in the 1920s he arrived as an old man playing the music of his youth. Hence the &#8220;Uncle&#8221; before his name.<\/p>\n<p>This song was in some ways atypical of his repertoire: for once he didn&#8217;t play banjo, leaving the lead chores to his guitarist, the great Sam McGee (I&#8217;ve played his &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/africa-to-appalachia\/\">Buck Dancer&#8217;s Choice<\/a>&#8221; in an earlier post, and there&#8217;s more to come), and it is nominally a blues song. Which said, it is <em>only<\/em> nominally a blues, and both the style and lyrics reach back to earlier minstrel comedy. (I&#8217;ve edited the lyrics to omit the more offensive remainders of that tradition.) Honestly, it&#8217;s not my favorite Uncle Dave record&#8211;that would be something like &#8220;Hold the Woodpile Down&#8221; or &#8220;Down the Old Plank Road&#8221;&#8211;but it&#8217;s the one where his style overlapped mine and I could come up with an interesting arrangement.<\/p>\n<p>As for Macon, he went on to become the first great star of the Grand Ole Opry and continued to be a popular entertainer on stage and radio into his eighties. There&#8217;s a lovely clip of him at age 69, singing, dancing, twirling and swinging his banjo, and eventually playing it with his hat:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Uncle Dave Macon - Take Me Back to my Old Carolina Home\" width=\"474\" height=\"356\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-OZg1dTJin0?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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was originally recorded by Uncle Dave Macon in 1926 and issued as &#8220;I&#8217;ve Got the Mourning Blues.&#8221; Folk revivalists have tended to correct that title to &#8220;Morning Blues,&#8221; and for familiarity&#8217;s sake I&#8217;ve gone with that&#8230; but my guess is it should actually be &#8220;Moaning Blues.&#8221; That was a common title: Ma Rainey had &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/morning-blues-uncle-dave-macon\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Morning Blues (Uncle Dave Macon)<\/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-3962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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Perry was a good friend and playing with him reshaped my understanding of the guitar. He was particularly noted for his vibrato, which was incredible -- he had exceptionally strong hands and could hold a full chord and get\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\/09\/Me-and-Perry-at-Georges-80th-birthday-party-292x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3929,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/tennessee-dog\/","url_meta":{"origin":3962,"position":1},"title":"Tennessee Dog (Jimmie Strothers)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"August 18, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I loved this from the first moment I heard it, and worked up an arrangement a few years later because I was regularly singing \"Mole in the Ground\" and wanted an alternative song that would fill the same slot in my sets. This fit the bill perfectly: banjo-style guitar part,\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\/2019\/08\/Jimmie-Strothers-191x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":967,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/moving-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":3962,"position":2},"title":"Moving Day (Charlie Poole)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In retrospect it's pretty funny how much of my early exposure to old-time country music was through the Holy Modal Rounders -- but the more I think about it, the more right it feels. I appreciate the expertise of the New Lost City Ramblers, and enjoyed the technical brilliance of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"north carolina ramblers","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/north-carolina-ramblers-222x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":591,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/in-the-evening\/","url_meta":{"origin":3962,"position":3},"title":"In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of Leroy Carr's masterpieces, and one of the first blues songs I learned... oddly enough, from a Pete Seeger songbook.","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\/Seeger-songbook.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":3962,"position":4},"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":[]},{"id":1031,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-mountain-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":3962,"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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