Today's deep-south exploration goes to the Piedmont blues style of the man born in Thomson, Georgia, whose ragtime-like picking style and voice is so clearly a huge influence on Bob Dylan, Jack White and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. William Samuel McTier (1898-1959) had a very appealing, slightly warbly, nasal twang to this tenor voice, had a magical ability to make his guitar sing out with true warmth, mimicking the sound of train movement and bells ringing. Like several others featured in this sequence, he had sight problems, born blind in one eye, and losing sight in the other as a child. His lyrics are full of dark humour, quirky adventure, and of course as in these two numbers, recorded in 1928 and 1929, full of the trials of poverty in the Depression era - scrabbling around for food, accommodation, and the ups and downs of love. Statsboro in Georgia became his adopted home, and became an umbrella term for all the feelings that the blues covered. Others who have mimicked his style include Marc Bolan and Devandra Banhart.
Wake up mama, turn your lamp down low
Wake up mama, turn your lamp down low
Have you got the nerve to drive Papa McTell from your door?
My mother died and left me reckless, my daddy died and left me wild, wild, wild
Mother died and left me reckless, Daddy died and left me wild, wild, wild
No, I'm not good lookin' but I'm some sweet woman's angel child.
She's a mighty mean woman, to do me this a-way
She's a mighty mean woman, to do me this a-way
When I leave this town, pretty mama, I'm going away to stay.
I once loved a woman, better than any I'd ever seen
I once loved a woman, better than any I'd ever seen
Treat me like I was a king and she was a dog-gone queen.
Sister, tell your Brother, Brother tell your Auntie, now Auntie, tell your Uncle, Uncle tell my Cousin, now Cousin tell my friend
Goin' up the country, Mama, don't you want to go?
May take me a fair brown, may take one or two more.
Big Eighty left Savannah, Lord, and did not stop
You ought to saw that coloured fireman when he got them boiler hot
You can reach over in the corner, Mama, and hand me my travelin' shoes
You know by that, I've got them Statesboro blues.
Mama, Sister got 'em, Auntie got 'em
Brother got 'em, friends got 'em, I got 'em
Woke up this morning, we had them Statesboro blues
I looked over in the corner, Grandma and Grandpa had 'em too.
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