AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts Thursday afternoon 37
allegorical figures. Another, perhaps less obvious, association is redemption: Here the technique
seems to be associated with mercy, perhaps even as a mimetic reference to “above,”
whence mercy derives.
A greater variety of text associations is found in sacred music than in opera, which, together
with its earlier appearance in sacred music, would seem to reflect the development of violons
en basse as a topic—the more it was used, the more its topical associations narrowed around
familiar images of the pastoral: innocence, youth, and the purity of nature.
JAzz MigrAtions
Kim h. Kowalke, eastman school of Music, university of rochester, chair
CATFISH BLUES FROM JIM JACKSON TO JIMI HENDRIX:
TRANSMISSION AND TRANSFORMATION OF A DELTA
BLUES ON COMMERCIAL RECORDINGS
Charles Gower Price
West Chester University
Like many folk blues song types, “Catfish Blues” has a rich genealogy on commercial recordings
from Jim Jackson’s earliest use of the initial lyric stanza in his “Kansas City Blues,
Part 3” in 1928 until the eventual recorded performances and various transformations of the
song by Jimi Hendrix during the late 1960s. The distinctive tune and tonic-chord guitar riff
later associated with the lyric was first recorded by Robert Petway in 1941 and later in the same
year as “Deep Blue Sea Blues” by his sometimes partner and longtime Delta companion Tommy
McClennan. Recollections by Delta bluesmen Big Bill Broonzy and David Honeyboy
Edwards suggest that the song was in McClennan’s repertory for some time before the recordings
were made. Just as the lyric stanza probably originated in the southern folk repertory long
before vaudeville songster Jackson appropriated it, the melody and tonic-chord riff or some
semblance of it could easily have been in existence in the Mississippi Delta before McClennan
developed his version of the song. There are clear family resemblances to blues recorded earlier
by McClennan’s mentor from the Delta, Charlie Patton, as well as by others.
The raw deep blues shouting of Delta bluesmen like Patton, Petway, and McClennan and
their physically aggressive guitar technique are central elements in the styles of the triumvirate
of post-war electric bluesmen, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters. The
seminal 1948 recording of “Boogie Chillin” by Hooker is an electrified tonic-chord guitar riff,
and Wolf’s 1951 “Crying at Daybreak” (rerecorded in 1956 as “Smokestack Lightnin”) moves
the tonic-riff to an ensemble. Arguably the single most influential electric blues recording of
the post-war period, “Rollin’ Stone” by Muddy Waters, was made with Waters’ electric guitar
accompaniment in 1950. It is a remake of “Catfish Blues” that draws from both Petway’s and
McClennan’s recordings and possibly other versions Waters may have heard performed earlier
in the Delta. In 1951 Waters recorded a second version of the song as “Still a Fool” with
a second electric guitar and bass drum accompaniment—one of his finest efforts on record.
Waters’ two recordings are Hendrix’s principal sources, although he may have heard other versions
of the song, such as the 1961 recording by Texas bluesman Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins.
Building on the pioneering work of blues researchers Paul Oliver, Jeff Todd Titon, David
Evans, and others, this paper demonstrates through textual and sonic analysis the