Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 140 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
This song was first published by Sandburg in his 1927 American Songbag. I've have not been able to ascertain when Sandburg collected the song but he did notate the circumstances: "Three musketeers, regular army men en route to a fort in Texas, learned this in jail in Oklahoma. They "blued" it in unison, with harmonics, with a chromatic harmonica. They made a Santa Fe smoking car melodious. ... A European/American man's rearrangement of a African/American wail such as one recorded in a publication of the Texas Folk Lore Society." Unfortunately, this deep blues tune was put to music by a classical composer and I couldn't make head nor tails of the music.
The Traditional Ballad Index lists only one other songbook in which the song was collected and no recordings. Fred and Irwin Silber's Folksinger's Wordbook (1973) was the only other source. This book gives no source information at all about the song but does have additional lyrics, no tune but guitar chords.
Finding a recording similar to the Sandburg lyric turned out to be simple. Two recordings were found. Odetta recorded it on her first LP Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, recorded in 1956. She added verses but it is unclear whether the added lyrics were her addition or ones she collected, although she was given writing credit for the entire song.
By the way, the other recording was a few years later by jazz piano player on an album entitled, Folk Songs from Far Out.
Day 140 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
This song was first published by Sandburg in his 1927 American Songbag. I've have not been able to ascertain when Sandburg collected the song but he did notate the circumstances: "Three musketeers, regular army men en route to a fort in Texas, learned this in jail in Oklahoma. They "blued" it in unison, with harmonics, with a chromatic harmonica. They made a Santa Fe smoking car melodious. ... A European/American man's rearrangement of a African/American wail such as one recorded in a publication of the Texas Folk Lore Society." Unfortunately, this deep blues tune was put to music by a classical composer and I couldn't make head nor tails of the music.
The Traditional Ballad Index lists only one other songbook in which the song was collected and no recordings. Fred and Irwin Silber's Folksinger's Wordbook (1973) was the only other source. This book gives no source information at all about the song but does have additional lyrics, no tune but guitar chords.
Finding a recording similar to the Sandburg lyric turned out to be simple. Two recordings were found. Odetta recorded it on her first LP Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, recorded in 1956. She added verses but it is unclear whether the added lyrics were her addition or ones she collected, although she was given writing credit for the entire song.
By the way, the other recording was a few years later by jazz piano player on an album entitled, Folk Songs from Far Out.
