{"id":5024,"date":"2024-03-09T07:08:02","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T12:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5024"},"modified":"2024-03-09T10:09:11","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T15:09:11","slug":"ticket-agent-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ticket-agent-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Ticket Agent Blues (Willie McTell\/Carl Martin)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ticket Agent Blues (Carl Martin\/Willie McTell)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hNMHbI8BSnc?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>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&#8217;s recordings. They were not <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5027 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Carl-Martin-e1709647536352.jpg?resize=230%2C282&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"230\" height=\"282\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Carl-Martin-e1709647536352.jpg?w=254&amp;ssl=1 254w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Carl-Martin-e1709647536352.jpg?resize=245%2C300&amp;ssl=1 245w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 230px) 100vw, 230px\" \/>spectacularly virtuosic, or deep, or funny, or, indeed spectacular in any way. In retrospect, it was sort of like my earlier passion for<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/the-killer\/\"> Cisco Houston<\/a> &#8212; they were both good musicians, but I can&#8217;t explain why they caught my ears in a way other good musicians didn&#8217;t; they were each just what I was looking for in particular periods of my life.<\/p>\n<p>Martin didn&#8217;t make many recordings as a solo guitarist\/singer, and at one point I think I&#8217;d worked out versions of all of them. I played &#8220;Badly Mistreated Man&#8221; and &#8220;Farewell to You\u00a0 Baby&#8221; &#8212; the latter long enough that I taught it to Les Sampou, who recorded<a href=\"https:\/\/lessampou.bandcamp.com\/album\/borrowed-and-blue\"> a nice version<\/a>&#8230; though by the time I heard her play it, my reaction was &#8220;That&#8217;s a good song; where&#8217;d you find it?&#8221; And I&#8217;ve already posted my version of his version of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crow-jane\/\">Crow Jane<\/a>.&#8221; But mostly it was a passing passion&#8211;not that I stopped liking his songs when I heard them, but they drifted out of my repertoire.<\/p>\n<p>All of that was before I met <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/barnyard-dance\/\">Howard Armstrong<\/a>, who worked with Martin for decades and played a couple of his songs &#8212; when Howard had a guitar in his hands (rather than a fiddle or mandolin), he typically played either Martin&#8217;s &#8220;Good Morning, Judge&#8221; or a gorgeous arrangement of &#8220;Stardust&#8221; that somehow never seems to have been recorded&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5028 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Willie-McTell-LP.jpg?resize=282%2C287&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"282\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Willie-McTell-LP.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Willie-McTell-LP.jpg?resize=295%2C300&amp;ssl=1 295w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 282px) 100vw, 282px\" \/>All of which is by way of introducing this song, which I picked up from a record by Willie McTell, but sing over a half-assed version of Martin&#8217;s guitar part for a song issued in 1935 as &#8220;Old Time Blues,&#8221; though I&#8217;m guessing that title was just slapped on by the record company as a description. It was a generic eight-bar blues, and so was McTell&#8217;s &#8220;Ticket Agent Blues&#8221; &#8212; I&#8217;m not actually sure how many of the verses I sing are from &#8220;Ticket Agent,&#8221; aside from the obvious one; I may have combined two or three McTell songs. I do know I left off a verse he used to sing: &#8220;Take my advice and let married women be\/ Cause her husband will grab you, beat you raggeder&#8217;n a cedar tree.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s about it: A generic eight-bar blues, picked up from Carl Martin and Willie McTell; nothing special, but fun to play.<\/p>\n<p>(I also picked up a few of McTell&#8217;s guitar arrangements, some reasonably accurately, others in even more half-assed versions [less half-assed? quarter-assed?] than this Martin arrangement, and have previously posted my takes on his &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/georgia-rag\/\">Georgia Rag<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/statesboro-blues\/\">Statesboro Blues<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kill-it-kid\/\">Kill It, Kid<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kind-mama-blues\/\">Kind Mama Blues<\/a>.&#8221;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s recordings. They were not spectacularly virtuosic, or deep, or funny, or, indeed spectacular in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ticket-agent-blues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ticket Agent Blues (Willie McTell\/Carl Martin)<\/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-5024","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>Ticket Agent Blues (Willie McTell\/Carl Martin) - 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Like much of what I was buying, it was a reissue of recordings from the 1920s and 1930s on the Yazoo label, but this one had a particularly strange cover and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Mr Charlie's Blues","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Mr-Charlies-Blues-298x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1531,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/miss-brown-to-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":5024,"position":1},"title":"Miss Brown to You (Judy Roderick)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When I began delving into old-time pop material, I was particularly attracted by musicians who had found ways to play that stuff using normal folk-blues guitar techniques. I was blown away by Guy Van Duser, who was playing guitar like a cross between Chet Atkins and a swing pianist, but\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\/Judy-Roderick3.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5295,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pearline-son-house\/","url_meta":{"origin":5024,"position":2},"title":"Pearline (Son House)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 13, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"To me, Son House will always be the defining Delta blues musician, and in some ways the defining blues musician, period. That is partly a statement about his talents and partly about when I heard him and how he affected me, personally. Like most people who were around in the\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\/07\/Son-House-LP-e1720864029890.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5136,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/alabama-bound\/","url_meta":{"origin":5024,"position":3},"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":1190,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crow-jane\/","url_meta":{"origin":5024,"position":4},"title":"Crow Jane (Carl Martin, country blues LPs)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By sheer coincidence, the nine months I spent in New York taking lessons from Dave Van Ronk coincided with a unique opportunity to build up my blues library. I assume a collector had died, because a record store called Dayton's, on Broadway just across 12th Street from the Strand bookstore,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"dayton lps","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/dayton-lps-262x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3696,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bye-bye-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5024,"position":5},"title":"Bye and Bye Blues (Tommy Johnson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The first trip I made after getting\u00a0 back from Africa was to the Mississippi Delta, where by a series of unlikely coincidences I ended up as part of the band for the dedication of Robert Johnson's grave marker. I've told that story in my book, Escaping the Delta, but the\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\/04\/Kenny-Robbie-EW-at-Robert-Johnson-memorial.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\/5024","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=5024"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5051,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024\/revisions\/5051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}