{"id":5350,"date":"2024-09-14T11:38:03","date_gmt":"2024-09-14T15:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5350"},"modified":"2024-09-14T13:40:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-14T17:40:39","slug":"bad-luck-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bad-luck-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Luck Blues (Lemon Jefferson)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bad Luck Blues (Lemon Jefferson)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/utU6vPG0CLE?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>I&#8217;ve been playing Lemon Jefferson&#8217;s &#8220;Bad Luck Blues&#8221; for at least thirty years, and recorded it on my <a href=\"https:\/\/elijahwald.bandcamp.com\/album\/street-corner-cowboys\"><em>Street Corner Cowboys<\/em> CD<\/a>, but it <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3901\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=250%2C314&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"314\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?w=250&amp;ssl=1 250w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=239%2C300&amp;ssl=1 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/>wasn&#8217;t until maybe seven years ago that I figured out the opening lick. The clue was a bass note he doesn&#8217;t play &#8212; the dog that didn&#8217;t bark in the night &#8212; which tipped me off that he wasn&#8217;t just holding C chord, but was jumping it up a couple of frets.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a cool trick, and I would have posted this much sooner, but delayed for a couple of reasons. One was that I used the basic arrangement for another post, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/keep-it-clean\/\">Keep It Clean<\/a>,&#8221; and didn&#8217;t want to repeat it, but I was also dogged by a memory from the CD recording session.<\/p>\n<p>I recorded the CD in a couple of days, in my parents&#8217; living room, with three of my favorite musicians: Washtub Robbie Phillips on one-string bass, Matt Leavenworth on fiddle and mandolin, and Paul Geremia on harmonica. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-5356 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Geremia-harmonica.jpg?resize=168%2C185&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"168\" height=\"185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Geremia-harmonica.jpg?w=315&amp;ssl=1 315w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Geremia-harmonica.jpg?resize=272%2C300&amp;ssl=1 272w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 168px) 100vw, 168px\" \/>Geremia is one of my longtime heroes, and I was thrilled to have him there, and he seemed to enjoy the session and played some terrific harmonica on another Lemon Jefferson song, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-horse-blues\/\">Black Horse Blues<\/a>&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and then I played this one for them, so they could work out their parts, and Paul said, &#8220;Why do you play it so square? You do all that African stuff &#8212; why not play it more like that?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What could I say? He was Paul Geremia, and undoubtedly could play Jefferson&#8217;s version better than I will ever play it, and I would have done pretty much anything he suggested. Plus, it was the end of the session, we were all tired, and it made sense to shake things up a little. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cdcoverf-e1725191329674.jpg?resize=263%2C264&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"263\" height=\"264\" \/>So I played a version of &#8220;Bad Luck Blues&#8221; that is a sort of half-assed rumba, and everyone found parts, and we recorded it, and I have no regrets&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;but I never played it that way again, and when I fool around with that version, it just doesn&#8217;t excite me. So I went back to the four-square Jefferson arrangement, and began playing it again, and instead of trying to get into the heartache of the lyrics, I double down on the humor of the spoken asides, which seem to be kind of kidding the seriousness.<\/p>\n<p>And, on that subject, about my shirt: it&#8217;s one of my crazier cowboy shirts, with a kind of harlequin pattern set off by a southwestern pattern, complete with saguaro cacti, which fits Jefferson&#8217;s Texas connection&#8230; and you can&#8217;t really see it in the video, but I&#8217;ve worn both elbows ragged, which fits the opening and closing verse about not having &#8220;sufficient clothes.&#8221; (And, for the Dylan fans out there: he copped that phrase for a verse of &#8220;He Was a Friend of Mine,&#8221; singing &#8220;Never had no money, for sufficient clothes&#8221; &#8212; one of many Dylan borrowings from old-time blues singers.)<\/p>\n<p>And, speaking of the lyrics&#8230; while I was preparing for the CD recording session, it struck me that I don&#8217;t say &#8220;I ain&#8217;t got,&#8221; except when I&#8217;m kidding around with accents. I&#8217;m a school-educated white guy from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I say &#8220;I don&#8217;t have&#8230;&#8221; which has exactly the same number of syllables. So where Jefferson sang &#8220;I ain&#8217;t got sufficient clothes,&#8221; I started singing &#8220;I don&#8217;t have sufficient clothes,&#8221; and for a while it felt weird &#8212; which in itself should have been a sign, because it shouldn&#8217;t feel weirder to talk like myself than like a Black Texan in 1927&#8230; and that was the beginning of an ongoing project to try to lose the various fake accents I&#8217;d picked up from old records, and try to sing in my own voice, like Jefferson and the other people I admired sang in their own voices. That&#8217;s still a work in progress, but by now it feels normal to sing &#8220;don&#8217;t have&#8221; in this song, and would feel weird to sing &#8220;ain&#8217;t got.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And, finally&#8230; after posting this, someone queried me on YouTube, asking why I sing a completely different melody than Jefferson sang. The answer, for better or worse, is that this project is about the songs I have in my head, and I hadn&#8217;t realized that over the years I had lost his melody and found another. I&#8217;ve just gone back and listened to his version, which is lovely and very different from what I remembered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been playing Lemon Jefferson&#8217;s &#8220;Bad Luck Blues&#8221; for at least thirty years, and recorded it on my Street Corner Cowboys CD, but it wasn&#8217;t until maybe seven years ago that I figured out the opening lick. The clue was a bass note he doesn&#8217;t play &#8212; the dog that didn&#8217;t bark in the night &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bad-luck-blues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bad Luck Blues (Lemon Jefferson)<\/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_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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Bad Luck Blues (Lemon Jefferson) - 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As a result, I've never performed it in public, but always enjoyed playing\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\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":901,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/keep-it-clean\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":1},"title":"Keep It Clean (Dave Van Ronk &#038; others)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A song that, like much preaching, cloaks base desires in misleading admonishments. From Dave Van Ronk, via Charley Jordan, Lemon Jefferson, and others...","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"No Dirty Names","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/No-Dirty-Names.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4022,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-horse-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":2},"title":"Black Horse Blues (Lemon Jefferson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 20, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I always appreciated Blind Lemon Jefferson's records, but didn't attempt to learn his guitar style until shortly before recording my CD, Street Corner Cowboys -- and then went through a crash course and ended up recording two of his songs, playing a bunch of others, and eventually teaching his style\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\/09\/lemon-jefferson-300x282.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4543,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/one-dime-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":3},"title":"One Dime Blues (Lemon Jefferson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 18, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I love Lemon Jefferson's singing and playing, and for a while immersed myself in his guitar style, but he was such a distinctive and quirky player\u00a0 that most of my efforts just sounded like half-assed imitations of what he happened to play on a given day. I've kept playing 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\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson-239x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":911,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cocaine-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":4},"title":"Cocaine Blues (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"First of all, I must state with pride and pleasure that the first time I ever tried cocaine was courtesy of Dave Van Ronk. It was in my parents' living room, late at night, after a fair amount of whiskey had been drunk, and he had it in a twist\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\/04\/van-ronk-folksinger-e1491663832129.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1824,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bad-dream-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":5},"title":"Bad Dream Blues (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Though Dave Van Ronk was not principally known as a songwriter, he wrote some damn good songs. But before he got into songwriting in more ambitious ways, he recorded a handful of blues songs for which he took author credit. He didn't consider these fully original compositions, since they had\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"blues project","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/blues-project-300x300.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\/5350","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=5350"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5395,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions\/5395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}