In
the hot August days of 1933, John Lomax arrived at the sprawling camps of the
notorious Mississippi prison Parchman Farm. He brought with him his 18-year-old
son Alan and a new 315-pound battery-run acetate disc recorder in the trunk of
his Ford. He was on a mission from the Library of Congress to record the folk
songs of blacks in the south, and was touring the prison farms of several
states, considering them an excellent place to find old songs that were “the
least contaminated by white influence or by modern Negro jazz.”
As
Lomax put it, “Our purpose was to find the Negro who had had the least contact
with jazz, the radio, and with the white man… In the prison farm camps, the
conditions were practically ideal… The Negro prisoners were segregated…with no
social or other contacts with the whites… They still sang the songs they had
brought into confinement, and these songs had been entirely in the keeping of
the black man,” without white influence.
(You
can also hear him explain his purpose in his own words in this 1933 interview –
with some commentary on it here.)
Over
the course of three days, the Lomaxes set to work recording a number of songs
from the prisoners in Parchman. They weren’t looking for blues songs in
particular; most of their attention was focused on the work songs, field hollers, badman ballads,
and folk tunes sung by men with colorful nicknames like Bootmouth, Bowlegs,
Double Head, Lifetime, Scrap Iron, Tappin’ Head, and Tight Eye. But on August
9, they ventured into the sewing room in the women’s camp and recorded a few of the religious songs sung by the group of women, and a couple of blues songs
from individual singers. (None of the women were identified in their notes.)
One
of the songs was called “Prison Rider Blues,” four verses long and ending with a familiar verse:
“Oh rider rider rider, rider where have you been so long? x2
Yeah I ain't had no lovin' baby, rider since you been gone
I'm-a wake up in the mornin' baby 'n I ain't gon' say a word x2
I'm-a eat my breakfast baby over in sweet ol' Hattiesburg
Babe that big bell keeps a-ringin' and that little bell she sadly tone x2
Yeah I'm-a lonely lonely lonely now, I'm a long way from home
I know you rider gon’
miss me when I’m gone x2
You gon’ miss your
little mama baby from rollin’ in your arms”
(Until recently this recording wasn't known to be related to "I Know You Rider," but it was identified by Eric Levy, Roger Phenix & Felicity Ford.)
Lomax
later wrote that the singer was “an eighteen-year-old black girl in prison for
murder.” The song seemed unique – was it an antique unrecorded folk blues kept
alive in the prison walls? Or was the singer free-associating from familiar
folk themes, making up her own lyrics? Or had she learned the song from someone
else in prison who’d composed the song?
None
of these, as it turns out. She was simply singing the verses of a recent local
hit record – “No Special Rider Blues,” by Little Brother Montgomery:
Montgomery’s
lyrics (speculative in spots) -
Now, rider, rider,
rider, mama, where you been so long?
Now, rider, rider,
brown, Lord, where you been so long?
I ain't had no lovin',
mama, since you been gone
And I hate, hate to
hear, hear the little Katy, when she blows
Lord, I hate to hear the
little Katy when she blows
Puts me on a wonder,
mama, makes me want to go
I can't see, see no
train, can't hear no whistle blow
Lord, I can't see no
train, neither hear no whistle blow
Now it keeps me
wandering, from the wander to the door
Now, mama, I ain't got
no plumb good rider now
Lord, I ain't got no
plumb good rider now
Now, it seem like my
rider, tryin' to quit me anyhow
Now, the big bell, the
bell is ringin', and the little bell sadly tones
Lord, the big bell's
ringin', the little bell, she sadly tones
Mama, and I'm lonely,
lonely, lone, a long, long way from home
Goin' to get up, get up
in the mornin', mama, and I ain't gon' say a word
Gonna get up in the mornin',
Lord, I ain't gon' say a word
Gonna eat my breakfast
and sling to Hattiesburg
Lord, I know you, gonna
miss me when I'm gone
Lord, I know you, gonna
miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby,
from rollin' in your arms
Little Brother Montgomery was a young jazz & blues piano player based in
Mississippi during the ‘30s. He later became well-regarded after moving to
Chicago, but at the time he was probably little-known outside Mississippi. He primarily
played in jazz bands and only had a couple of records out at that point, one of
them the popular “Vicksburg Blues,” released by Paramount Records in 1930. On
the other side was “No Special Rider Blues.”
The
unknown singer must have heard the record as a teenager and liked it enough to
keep singing the song in prison. (The theme of loneliness and missing your
lover would have carried extra weight in Parchman.) She sings four of the verses
quite faithfully (the first one & last three), with just minor word changes, like adding an extra “rider” in
the last verse. Ironically, Lomax probably had no idea he was recording not an
ancient folk song, but a brand-new “modern Negro jazz” song. (He was sometimes
blissfully unaware that the prisoners had learned some of their traditional
“folk” tunes from popular records and the radio.) He was looking for “long-term
prisoners who have been confined for years and who have not yet been influenced
by jazz and the radio [and] still sing the distinctive old-time Negro
melodies.” Yet here, by some fluke, he recorded a teenage girl singing a recent
release by a jazz player that he probably could have found in the local record
shops.
“No
Special Rider Blues” isn’t the most lyrically original song. The title isn’t specifically
repeated in the record, though Montgomery sings it in later versions; but the
phrase “I ain’t got no special rider here” is found in a couple other songs. (“Rider”
in old blues songs always means “lover” or “partner,” usually of a fickle
nature.) Like many blues records of the time, it was partly patched together
from “floating verses” shared with other songs. For instance, the first verse comes
from “Corrine, Corrina,” first recorded by Bo Carter & Charlie McCoy in
1928 (and much copied thereafter).
"Corrina Corrina, where you been so long
There ain't been no lovin' since you been gone"
But it's also related to Frank Stokes' 1928 "How Long Blues":
"How long, how long
I ain't had no lovin' since my baby gone"
But
the rest of the song strikes its own course, evoking other blues themes without
quite quoting any recorded songs. In the last verse, “you’re gonna miss me when
I’m gone” is a common enough theme in song; but the closest comparison I’ve
found is in Big Bill Broonzy’s “Mistreatin’ Mamma” (1932), the second verse:
“You gonna call me some
morning mama, lord and I’ll be gone
You’re gonna miss your
baby from rolling in your arms”
Or
there’s Frank Stokes’ “It Won’t Be Long Now” (1928), first & fourth verses:
“One of these mornings, mama and it won't be long
'Fore you miss your good man rolling in your arms...
You’ll miss your babe
from rolling in your arms
If you don’t come see
me, count the days I’m gone”
Interestingly,
despite the popular “Vicksburg Blues” being on the same record, “No Special
Rider Blues” doesn’t seem to have inspired any covers by other blues artists.
(Skip James’ 1931 “Special Rider Blues” is a totally different song.) So the
song has more or less languished unnoticed in obscurity – although Chuck Leavell recorded a cover recently, he omitted the last verse! But the Lomax
recording, meanwhile, was taking on a new life of its own.
Lomax
didn’t release his field recordings at the time (this would remain impossible
until the 1940s). Instead, he used them to compile a songbook, American Ballads & Folk Songs,
printed in 1934. You might think he would simply transcribe the songs
faithfully, to preserve the authentic folk traditions, but this was not his
style. Instead he often reshaped them into fanciful creations of his own. As
one scholar writes, “The Lomaxes were notorious for lumping fragments together
and rewriting them to create unidiomatic messes.” The Jail House Bound CD liner notes admit, “As was often true of his
songbooks, John Lomax altered the sequence of stanzas, changed words, or even
compiled a version from several sources…[writing,] ‘We have brought together
what seems the best stanzas, or even lines, from widely separated sources.’”
“Prison
Rider Blues” was renamed “Woman Blue” in the book. (Not to be confused with
“When a Woman Blue” in Carl Sandburg’s 1927 book American Songbag, a totally different song, though ironically a
verse from that was also sung separately at Parchman.) Lomax provides a little
introduction stating that he got “the tune and the first stanza of these blues”
from the singer. But only the last verse she sang is actually included. It’s
possible someone tipped off Lomax that her song was on a commercial record; or perhaps
she sang other songs that weren’t recorded. In any case, the rest of “Woman
Blue” is a lengthy farrago of random verses with no known source – some known
from other blues songs, some not.
Just
as one example, this added verse –
“I knows my baby, he's
boun' to love me some
He throws his arms
aroun' me like a circle 'roun' de sun”
–
isn’t too common, but is found in a few other songs, including Billiken Johnson’s
obscure 1927 “Interurban Blues”:
“I know my baby is bound
to love me some
She throws her arms
around me like the circle round the sun”
One line may be most familiar from its use in the Memphis Jug Band's 1928 "Stealin'" (later covered by the Dead):
"Put your arms around me like a circle round the sun"
Bob Coltman writes: “Lomax's added-on verses seem mostly without antecedents I know
of, except for "Sun's gonna shine" and a couple [others]… My guess is
that the Lomaxes, who collected scads of blues verses and fragments in addition
to distinct songs, put unusual or unique verses here that hadn't fit anywhere
else. They commonly did this kind of assembly work in "floating
verse" songs, which is how we get our canonical versions of…various field
hollers and blues.”
You
can find the full text of Lomax’s “Woman Blue” on the Grateful Dead Lyric &
Song Finder (ten verses in all), but here I’ll just post the verses eventually
picked up by the Dead:
I know you, rider, gonna
miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss yo' li'l
mama, baby, f'um rollin' in yo' arms
An' I laid right down
and tried to take my res'
But my min' kep'
ramblin' like the wil' geese in de Wes'
De sun gwine shine in my
back do' some day
De win' gwine rise,
baby, an' blow my blues away
The
“sun’s gonna shine” verse can indeed be found in lots of other blues songs. That particular line seems to have floated around in various contexts - for instance, here in "Trouble in Mind," first recorded 1924:
"Trouble in mind, I'm blue, but I won't be blue always
The sun gonna shine in my back door someday"
Or in William Harris' 1928 "Bullfrog Blues," standing by itself in the last verse:
But in more typical blues examples: Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1927 “Deceitful Brownskin Blues,” fifth verse:
“Well the sun gonna
shine in my back door someday
I’ll have one more
drink, gonna blow these blues away”
Furry
Lewis’ 1927 “Sweet Papa Moan,” third verse:
“Sun gon’ shine in my
back door someday
Cause the wind gonna
blow all my blues away”
Tommy
Johnson’s 1928 “Maggie Campbell Blues,” second verse:
“Sun gon’ shine in my
back door someday
And the wind gon’
change, gon’ blow my blues away”
Sleepy John Estes’ 1929 “Diving Duck Blues,” fifth verse:
“Now the sun’s gon’
shine in my back door someday
Now the wind gonna rise,
gonna blow my blues away”
Scrapper
Blackwell’s 1931 “Back Door Blues,” second verse:
“Now the sun’s gonna
shine in my back door someday
I wish I had somebody to
drive my blues away”
(And
many more!)
The
wild geese also fly through a number of blues songs – for instance, Texas
Alexander’s 1928 “West Texas Blues,” third verse:
“I laid down last night,
tried to take my rest
Then my mind kept
ramblin’ like the wild geese in the west”
Ramblin’
Thomas’ 1928 “Ramblin’ Mind Blues”:
“Well I laid down last
night, tried to take my rest
And my mind got to
ramblin’ like the wild geese in the west”
The
Mississippi Sheiks’ 1931 “Your Good Man Caught the Train And Gone,” fifth
verse:
“I laid down last night,
I tried to take my rest
My mind begin to ramble
like wild geese in the west”
Skip
James’ 1931 “Devil Got My Woman”:
“I laid down last night,
tried to take my rest
My mind got to ramblin’
like a wild geese from the west”
(Etc,
etc!)
It
was quite common for verses to float around from one blues song to another; but
this usually doesn’t mean the songs are related. As Bob Coltman writes: “We
ought to be wary of linking blues that are quite separate just because they
happen to share a line or a verse. Just listen to…the prolific bluesmen of the
1920s and you will hear scads of verses shared and traded in and out of songs
that are otherwise quite distinct -- not to mention the great blueswomen…who
did the same. Blues verses were a vast pool from which singers recomposed to
create individual songs… Antecedent versions of blues are not like antecedent
versions of other kinds of songs. They're not like Barbara Allan or John Henry.
[Most] blues were assembled on the spot out of often disconnected
"floating verses" that may or may not fall into a coherent story.”
In
a way, this is what Lomax did with “Woman Blue,” discarding the partial song he
recorded in Parchman Farm and recasting it as more of a love song with compiled
verses from here & there, toning down the existential despair. And so the
song remained for over two decades, one of many lyrics in a book that was
thought to document a dying tradition, the last gasp of black musical folklore.
Little did Lomax guess that two decades later, young musicians in the ‘folk
revival’ would be looking at his book with greater interest for obscure old
songs they could sing.
Folksinger
Bob Coltman remembers: "I got the song in the mid-1950s from the Lomaxes'
1934 American Ballads and Folk Songs…
It's on p. 196. Apparently I was the first to pick it up and sing it, though it
had lain around unnoticed in that well-known collection for twenty years… The
Lomax headnote says "An eighteen-year-old black girl, in prison for
murder, sang the tune and the first stanza of these blues." The Lomaxes
added a number of "floating verses" from other, uncredited sources,
and named it "Woman Blue."
So
I resurrected and debuted the song. I followed the tune given in Lomax, roughly
but not exactly, changed the song from a woman's to a man's viewpoint, dropped
two verses, and was its first arranger, voice and guitar in a heavy drag
downbeat, sort of an early folk-rock sound.
I
sang it a lot in folk circles around Philadelphia, in concerts, around Boston…[and]
around New York State and New England circa 1957-60. I also sang it in the
west, in Wyoming…and on the West Coast, especially in San Francisco and Los
Angeles, late summer-early fall '59. Then I went in the Army (sorta like
prison) and everything went on hold.
Tossi
Aaron learned the song from me in Philadelphia around 1959. She sang it on her
Prestige LP. The song traveled around for years among a few East and West Coast
folksingers but was not sung by very many people (most white kids took a while
to crash the blues).”
Coltman
never recorded his version, but you can find his lyrics here – he mostly left
the Lomax song intact and unchanged, respecting the ‘folk tradition’ perhaps a
bit more than Lomax did! But his account illustrates an integral part of the
folk (and blues) process: rather than making a record, he instead traveled far
and wide across the country, playing the song to scattered gatherings of
folkies, some of whom picked up the song from him and started playing it on
their own. To those unfamiliar with the Lomax book, the song would have
appeared to come out of nowhere, an antique traditional.
The
Mudcat thread has some lengthy discussion about who learned the song from
Coltman and when; and Harry Tuft (a fellow folksinger) has a somewhat different
account in which he’s the one who spread the song to various players, and John
Phillips added a new chord arrangement. Rather than try to untangle all the threads
here, I’ll just list the most well-known recorded versions up to the time the Grateful
Dead started playing it:
Joan
Baez, I Know You Rider 1960 (unreleased) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbVtL_SNLa4
Tossi
Aaron, I Know You Rider 1961 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBiiH2fqE24
Judy
Henske, I Know You Rider 1963 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngfuZ7Lyid0
Kingston
Trio, Rider 1963 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoM69rZEaIk
Big 3, Rider 1963 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7so5tECqKMY
Serendipity
Singers, Rider 1964 - https://youtu.be/cEsX8krviM4?t=1481
Vince
Martin & Fred Neil, I Know You Rider 1964 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUOwVmf65o8
Gale
Garnett, I Know You Rider 1964 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5etHTC-3jo
Alice
Stuart, Woman Blue 1964 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlY4BFIkfI
Judy
Roderick, Woman Blue 1965 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwIl-7KykuQ
Warlocks,
I Know You Rider 1965 (demo) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-SEVBYNXak
Byrds,
I Know My Rider 1966 (unreleased) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQFNLFnErFE
Janis
Joplin & Big Brother, I Know You Rider 1966 (live) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUZrvG2X--M
“I
Know You Rider” had a hesitant start on record – Joan Baez didn't release her 1960 recording, so Tossi Aaron was the first to release the song the next year. Many other folk artists like Bonnie Dobson & Judy Collins were evidently playing it at the time, but
without making any recordings, though a couple of very obscure 1962 versions were released. Then the dam burst in 1963, as Judy Henske & then
the Kingston Trio popularized the song on record, and a flood of folkie
versions followed.
A
couple things to note: the song was always shortened for records, with
different artists picking different verses to sing out of the mass that Coltman
handed down. (If he hadn’t spoken up, we might think that they’d all
independently drawn the song from the Lomax book, so different are their
selections.) Some of them also felt free to make up new verses of their own,
for better or worse.
Judy
Henske:
“It takes a red-headed
man make a long-time woman feel bad
It makes me remember ‘bout
that long slow rollin’ I had”
The
Kingston Trio soften this to:
“It takes a hard-hearted
woman make a long-time man feel bad
Cause it makes him
remember the long hard road that he’s had”
And
add:
“Well I ain’t got a
nickel, no I ain’t got a lousy dime
But I got a long way to
go ‘fore the end of my time”
The
Big 3:
“Well dawn’s coming
early, night’s gonna fade away
Ever see your rider
coming baby, ‘bout the break of day”
But
they also reinstate an otherwise never-played Lomax verse:
“Well did you ever wake
up and find your rider gone?
Well put you on a wonder
and wish you’d never been born”
Martin
& Neil, in perhaps the bluesiest Sonny Terry-style version:
“Early one mornin’,
rider and it won’t be long
You gonna call my name
now baby, sweet lovin’ daddy gonna be long gone”
Garnett
also includes that verse, and adds the unique:
“I’m going to the river,
take ‘long my rocking chair
If the blues don’t
overtake me, gonna rock away from here”
Half
of Alice Stuart’s version is newly-written:
“If you’re ever gonna
love me, daddy now’s the time to start
You ain’t done nothing
yet babe, but just break a sweet woman’s heart
I’ve got good loving
baby, you take it if you think you can
I tell you I’ve got the
best baby, if you’ll just be my man” (etc.)
The
Byrds, surprisingly, add an unrelated but authentic old ‘20s blues verse:
“When you see me coming,
better hoist your window high
When you see me leaving,
you better hang down your head and cry”
And
they also include the almost-never played “circle round the sun” Lomax verse
mentioned earlier (later picked up by James Taylor in his version) –
“Well I know my rider,
she’s bound to love me some
She used to throw her
arms around me like a circle around the sun”
Janis
Joplin:
“Don’t the moon look
lonesome when it’s shining down through the trees?
Don’t my man look fine
when he’s running, running after me?”
(This
was taken from Dylan, but he in turn based it on an authentic couplet found in
numerous old blues songs: “Don’t the moon look pretty shining down through the trees / I can see my baby but she can’t
see me.” Joplin also includes the “circle round the sun” verse, though it’s
hard to understand with all her wailing.)
Stuart
& Roderick, aware of Lomax’s book, went back to the “Woman Blue” title to
fit their more melancholy versions. But you can tell who the hardcore folk
collectors are when they add older verses from Lomax or from other ‘20s blues
songs! (I've added an appendix listing the lyrics of various '60s versions here: I Know You Rider Lyric Variations)
It’s a surprise in general how different most of these versions are from
each other in lyrics and style; they cover quite a wide range from tender
sadness to rollicking boisterousness, from weeping women to hollering men, the
song suiting any style well. And that was before the rock bands got hold of it!
Lomax could hardly have imagined the eventual fate of his “Woman Blue,” but he
might have appreciated its infiltration into a younger generation of modern
white listeners.
When
the Warlocks picked “I Know You Rider” as one of their first songs to adapt in
1965, they fit right into this progression. It was Jerry Garcia’s
idea to cover the song, and he’d likely heard more versions of it in person
than on record. (Weir, hearing Tossi Aaron for the first time 40 years later,
commented: “I never heard these recordings, but they were typical of the
current versions of these songs at the time… I heard folkies doing these songs
this way back in the early ‘60s… Jerry could have picked up his versions from
these or any of a number of other similar versions.”)
Eric Levy writes, "There were countless people performing the song, which spread like wildfire. So our attempts to isolate where Jerry may have learned it--a Joan Baez performance, Tossi Aaron's album--now seem misguided. Jody Stecher says the song was literally everywhere in the early-to-mid '60s. You were guaranteed to hear it any time you went to a folk club or coffee shop or even a party. In Stecher's words, asking where Jerry learned it is like asking where he learned 'Three Blind Mice.'"
Garcia himself said (in an interview for "The History of Rock 'n Roll"): "It's an old folk song. It used to be like a standby, really, in the coffeehouses and stuff like that. I never performed it as a bluegrass person...I never was a folkie very much, you know, I just wasn't that good, you know - I mostly played in bands with other people. But I always liked that song, no matter who did it, you know? And there was like all these folk versions of it...that were really modern versions of it. I always liked the song, so...of the ones that I could remember, the arrangements, the versions of it melodically, as far as the chord structure and so forth, that was the one that I sort of culled from my own memory. I don't remember where I learned it. I don't remember who taught it to me or why I even chose it, except it's just a nice song. And I thought it would be ideal to do with an electric band."
According to Phil Lesh, Garcia had played it before the Warlocks formed - at Phil's first practice with them, "I asked to start with 'I Know You Rider,' a traditional song I'd loved when I heard Jerry do it as a folkie."
Like
the other artists who’d taken up “Rider,” Garcia trimmed it down to pop-song
record length (the early studio demos toss out almost all the verses), and selected
the verses he liked most, so the Dead’s version isn't an exact lyrical match to any
earlier recording. Though Garcia may have heard some of the records, they weren’t
a strong influence on him, except perhaps for the chords – the Warlocks were
probably the first band to play an electric version. It’s also striking that in
the verses Garcia picked, the romantic element of the song (emphasized in most
of the earlier records) is almost completely excluded and it becomes more a
portrait of a desperate soul, closer in spirit to the original desolate feel of
“No Special Rider Blues.”
The Dead also continued the tradition of adding "floating verses" to the song. When
the Dead played “Rider” in ’66 (and acoustically in 1970), they included an
extra verse not found in earlier versions:
“I’d rather drink muddy
water, sleep in a hollow log
Than stay here in
Frisco, be treated like a dog.”
This
shares a few words to a verse in the Lomax text (and Baez’s version), but it’s not
really very close with a quite different meaning, so I don’t think that’s the
source:
“I'm goin' to de river,
set down on a log
If I can't be yo' woman,
sho gonna be yo' dog”
It’s
possible Garcia heard other folkies in San Francisco singing the “muddy water”
verse in the song. It was a widespread verse in blues & folk songs,
stretching back to the ‘20s – for instance, Freddie Spruell’s 1926 “Muddy Water
Blues,” second verse:
“I’d rather drink muddy
water, rather sleep in a real hollow log
Before I’d stay with
you, let you treat me like your driving dog”
Or
Jimmie Rodgers’ 1927 “T For Texas,” last verse:
“Rather drink muddy
water, sleep in a hollow log
Than to be in Atlanta,
treated like a dirty dog”
And
countless songs thereafter.
Garcia
may have been following the tradition of inserting suitable new verses into
this song; but that isn’t something he often did with other folk songs
(preferring to be lyrically faithful). My guess is he had heard someone do it
this way.
Also,
no other version of “I Know You Rider” before the Dead’s had the “I wish I was
a headlight” verse, so Garcia (or his lost source) must have plucked this from
some other song. It’s certainly an old blues verse; an early variation shows up
in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1926 “Wartime Blues,” fourth verse:
“If I could shine my
light like a headlight on some train…
I would shine my light
in Colorado Springs”
The
Lomaxes helpfully printed it in their American
Ballads book version of “Easy Rider”:
“If I was a headlight on
some western train, Lawd, Lawd,
I’d shine my light on
cool Colorado Springs”
However
I don’t know of any recordings of “Easy Rider” at the time that actually
include this verse, or several other random verses they included, so this
appears to be another of the Lomax mix-&-match patchwork songs. (Odetta
sings “Easy Rider” on a 1956 album with the verses drawn straight from Lomax’s
book – another example of a folk-song rendition taken from the page rather than
from an actual musical tradition.)
The
verse starts showing up separately in songs from other folk singers in the
early ‘60s, closer to the Dead’s wording:
Kingston
Trio, Chilly Winds 1961 (at 1:00) –
“Wish I was a headlight
on a westbound train
I’d shine my light over
cool Colorado rain”
Roger
Abrahams, Cool Colorado 1962 (an alternate title for “Blues Jumped the Rabbit”)
-
Karen
Dalton, Blues Jumped the Rabbit 1963 (at :50) -
Judy
Henske, Blues Chase Up A Rabbit 1964 (at 1:20) -
Henske’s
version of this song was the one best-known and covered by folksingers later in
the ‘60s.
Alex
Allan covers these variations at the end of his “I Know You Rider” discussion.
It seems there was probably some unknown folk singer who all but rewrote “Blues
Jumped the Rabbit” (keeping only the first verse from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1926 “Rabbit Foot Blues” recording), and the new version then spread across the
folk scene. But it’s still a mystery who or what inspired Jerry Garcia to grab
this verse for the Dead’s “I Know You Rider.” Nonetheless, it’s an excellent
fit – Lomax himself couldn’t have added a better verse to this song of loss and
longing.
Ironically,
one of the sad absences in early Dead history is their version of “Parchman
Farm” (known to be played at the Matrix on 1/7/66). Most likely they covered
Mose Allison’s popular 1958 version, however it’s possible they were doing
Bukka White’s 1940 classic. In either case, it was one of the early covers they
dropped as they found their own style.
Meanwhile,
Little Brother Montgomery was still playing “No Special Rider Blues” in the ‘60s
and later, never guessing that it had somehow inspired a whole new folk-rock
song among the white kids, thanks to one lonely young girl stuck in Parchman
Farm thirty years earlier, singing a blues from the life she missed.
*
Thanks to the earlier
writers on this topic:
The Lomax collection of Parchman Farm recordings can be browsed here:
Alex Allan's site has a more in-depth lyric comparison of different versions of "I Know You Rider."
For more on Parchman
Farm, see David Oshinsky’s book Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm & the
Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (1996).
“I had to face that here
were the people that everyone else regarded as the dregs of society, dangerous
human beings, brutalized, and from them came the music which I thought was the
finest thing I'd ever hear coming out of my country.” (Alan Lomax)
“When those jurors found
me guilty, that ol’ mean clerk he wrote it down
I could tell by that,
people, that I was Parchman bound.”
