{"id":771,"date":"2016-04-08T07:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=771"},"modified":"2022-07-17T08:36:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T12:36:41","slug":"louis-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/louis-collins\/","title":{"rendered":"Louis Collins (Mississippi John Hurt)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Louis Collins\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JKCrw4f7nxw?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 learned Mississippi John Hurt&#8217;s arrangement of &#8220;Louis Collins&#8221; 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 just moving the chord up two frets. (Actually, Hurt often didn\u2019t hold full chords and played a low G bass with his C chord, so what he was moving tended to just be the paired low and high G notes, but I think of those as parts of C or G chords because I think that way.)<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-772 size-medium alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/John-Hurt-Today.jpg?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/John-Hurt-Today.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/John-Hurt-Today.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/John-Hurt-Today.jpg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>In any case, I don\u2019t know if I would have learned \u201cLouis Collins\u201d as a kid if it hadn\u2019t been in Garwood\u2019s book, so I owe him one, because it\u2019s a great song. I miss having Peter Keane\u2019s harmony on the chorus \u2014 we sang this together many times over the years, and I hear him in my head, and if you don\u2019t know his work, he\u2019s worth checking out, on Youtube or various CDs.<\/p>\n<p>As for Louis Collins, when I originally posted this entry all I knew about him was what Hurt sang. Hurt apparently heard about the murder second-hand, and Philip Ratcliffe quoted him explaining that it might have happened in Memphis, Collins \u201cwas a great man\u2026 and he was killed by two men named Bob and Louis. I got enough of the story to write the song.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However&#8230; I recently found a long article about the murder in the Yazoo, Mississippi, <em>Herald<\/em> of August 27, 1897. Apparently several fights broke out on a steamboat excursion between Yazoo City and Vicksburg. The specifics were somewhat disputed \u2013 a lot of drinking was involved \u2013 but at some point Louis Collins got in a fight with someone named <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4686\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Louis-Collins-headlines.jpg?resize=243%2C257&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Louis Collins murder headlines\" width=\"243\" height=\"257\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Louis-Collins-headlines.jpg?resize=284%2C300&amp;ssl=1 284w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Louis-Collins-headlines.jpg?w=295&amp;ssl=1 295w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 243px) 100vw, 243px\" \/>Louis Thomas over a woman, the ship\u2019s engineer pulled out a gun and tried to shoot Thomas, and Collins stabbed Thomas in the neck. Collins then attacked Robert Kent\u2014the article doesn\u2019t explain why\u2014and cut him in the hand. Kent knocked Collins down, grabbed a pistol that was lying on a lunch counter\u2014another unexplained detail\u2014and shot Collins, hitting him in the chest. Collins kept coming, Kent shot again, missing him and slightly wounding a bystander, and Collins shortly fell over and died. A witness named Miles Mitchell added that three or four men had subdued Collins and were holding him down when Kent shot him.<\/p>\n<p>As for the angels laying him away\u2026 until yesterday, we all thought John Hurt was the only source for this song, but I happened to ask the Library of Congress for a recording John Lomax made of an unidentified prisoner in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville in August 1933 singing \u201cBully of the Town&#8230;&#8221; and it turns out to have been mislabeled.\u00a0 The singer starts by singing \u201cLouis Collins was a bully in the town,\u201d and apparently Lomax was familiar with &#8220;Bully&#8221; and not with &#8220;Louis Collins,&#8221; so considered it a variant of the former song&#8230; but in fact it&#8217;s a short version of the song Hurt recorded in 1928. At first I thought the singer might have learned it from Hurt\u2019s record, but he refers to the shooter as \u201cLittle Kent,\u201d while Hurt just referred to him as \u201cBob\u2026\u201d and since the murder happened more than thirty years before either of them recorded, I\u2019m assuming they both learned it from some earlier version that had Bob Kent\u2019s full name.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to hear the Tennessee recording, here it is, for the first time ever:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Louis Collins (Bully version by unidentified singer, 1933)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mS90XCnJARU?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>I learned Mississippi John Hurt&#8217;s arrangement of &#8220;Louis Collins&#8221; 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 just moving the chord up &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/louis-collins\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Louis Collins (Mississippi John Hurt)<\/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-771","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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I often teach\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"John Hurt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/John-Hurt-300x243.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2403,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/richlands-woman\/","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":1},"title":"Richlands Woman (Mississippi John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Another collaboration between Mississippi John Hurt and William E. Myer, the team responsible for \"Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me,\" this song has a wonderful lyric backed by one of my favorite guitar arrangements. Myer was from Richlands, Virginia, and apparently had mixed views of the town's female population --\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\/Lucy-Brown-John-Hurt-246x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4111,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candy-man-john-hurt\/","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":2},"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":4495,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/monday-morning\/","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Blues (Mississippi John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Monday Morning Blues\" was a late arrival in my John Hurt repertoire. I always loved and played his music, but only began to study it carefully after I got back from Africa in the 1990s. In previous posts I've told how I became fascinated with the odd chord positions in\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\/immortal-john-hurt-e1636311222239.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5262,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/frankie-john-hurt\/","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":4},"title":"Frankie (Mississippi John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 22, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I generally stay away from open tunings, partly because I have enough trouble keeping a guitar in tune in one tuning... but a lot of my favorite guitarists liked them, and they have a deep history in southern Black culture. In previous posts I wrote and talked about the way\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\/06\/John-Hurt.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":765,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/see-see-rider\/","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":5},"title":"See See Rider (Mississippi John Hurt and others)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't remember where, when, or how I first heard Mississippi John Hurt, but like a lot of people, I fell instantly in love with his gently expressive voice and the perfect swing and precision of his guitar playing. 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":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","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=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4689,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/4689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}