Topic: Brand and product names in country blues

[Rivers]

Good question Prof. Hopefully someone knows something.

I've filled in more lyrics, added Will Batts' Cadillac Baby, and picked up a couple I missed first time by rereading this thread from top to bottom. Click here to see the full list, with improved graphics.

Hey Andrew were you able to confirm the Grafonola in Pink Anderson's Ain't Nobody Home But Me? I don't have the recording.

BanjoChris, can you make out the last line in Estes' Rats In My Kitchen that mentions D-Con? I hear

I'm gonna call up 42 squad cars, for protect me in my home // .... You know the rats (throwin' my groce'??), hooo (something something???) my D-Con

Wait a minute, that's the Sun Records Rats In My Kitchen. On the Testament disc Goin' To Brownsville it's called 61 and 62 Rats and the lyic is clear, but different:

I'm gonna call up my next door neighbor get him to protect me in my home // You know them rats done eat up all my groceries, boy they're goin' to work on my D-Con

I think I answered my own question.

[Bunker Hill]

Veering into post war Chicago - Pet Evaporated Milk:

J.B. Hutto Pet Cream Man    Chance 1160  Jan-Feb 1954

[Prof Scratchy]

That list is a fine piece of work, Rivers. A couple you may have missed...BVDs in Buddy Boy Hawkins' How Come You Do Me; and didn't Robert Johnson have Elgin movements in his Walkin' Blues? Or did I hear that in somebody else's vesion???

[Rivers]

Thanks Prof, props to all contributors.

More BVDs, excellent, that's #4. I don't have a copy of that Buddy Boy Hawkins song, according to B&GR its title would be How Come Mama. Could someone with the record please post the lyric.

The RJ Elgin line in Walkin' Blues (how did we miss that one?) is the fifth reference to the watch company.

[Bricktown Bob]

More BVDs, excellent, that's #4. I don't have a copy of that Buddy Boy Hawkins song, according to B&GR its title would be How Come Mama. Could someone with the record please post the lyric.

Buddy Boy Hawkins
How Come Mama Blues

Now if you try to give your womens everything they need
you have to make the winter in your BVDs

There might be a syllable or two more in the second line, but I think that's pretty much it.

[Bricktown Bob]

King Solomon Hill
Dead Gone Train (1932)

He said if you go to the Western Union, you might get a chair
(spoken: I didn't know the Western Union run no trains)
Said if you go to the Western Union, you might get a chair
You might could watch as some of your people, and your fireman be standing right there

[Bunker Hill]

And speaking of Western Union better fill in at least one of the verses to the 1941 SBW song already listed, how about the first?

Western Union Man, please stop by my house today (x2)
I'm expecting a call from Miss Lacey, I got to hear from her right away

[Rivers]

Wow, thanks, that was quick, and good work on Western Union and King Solomon Hill, B&GR has is the title as The Gone Dead Train. List is up to date with 141 entries. Click here to see the full list.

[Bricktown Bob]

B&GR has is the title as The Gone Dead Train.

And so it is, on the label and everything (reproduced in Chasin' That Devil Music).  Thanks.  In my (lame) defense, the CD companion to Chasin' That Devil Music, which is where I first acquired the song, lists it as "The Dead Gone Train," although always in the text it is "The Gone Dead Train."  Go figure.

[Rivers]

It struck me today that if we're including business owners' names we ought to run down all the folk-blues references to Joe Brown, the Georgia governor who had a sweet deal with the state's penal system suppling cheap prisoner labor to his coal mines.

I'm aware of two, Julius Daniels, 99 Year Blues, and Jesse Fuller, Beat It On Down The Line. I believe there are others out there.

[Rivers]

While we're doing businesses:

Hampton Hotel, Atlanta (presumably), Willie McTell, Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues

[mississippijohnhurt1928]

Did we mention Ishmon Bracey's reference to Palmer's Skin Success in "Saturday Blues" yet?

[Rivers]

Why not click on the list and find out Calvin? You know there's an old saying, 'give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day...'

[Stuart]

You know there's an old saying, 'give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day...'

"...And if you teach a man to fish, he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day."

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Rivers]

We're not doing trains in this thread since there are so many of them they really need a topic to themselves sometime soon. That doesn't mean we can't do bus lines... so I added two references to Greyhound, Robert Johnson's Me & The Devil Blues and Blind Boy Fuller's Bus Rider Blues. Also added another Ford that turns up in Fuller's Worn Out Engine Blues.