Topic: songs that could last forever

[unezrider]

hey everyone,
last night i was listening to the grayson county railspliters' 'ain't that trouble in mind' song (from 'the stuff that dreams are made of' collection). & i found myself lost in the song & - BAM, it was over! has anyone else had that feeling of being completely lost in a song, to where they could play that melody for another 40 minutes, & you know you'd love every second of it?
this is something i haven't thought about in awhile, but it seems i have a new song on my list of songs that could last forever

not a complete list, but here's a few others..
uncle dave macon & his fruit jar drinkers 'sail away ladies'
blind willie johnson's 'dark was the night - cold was the ground'
robert wilkins 'that's no way to get along'
eck robertson 'sally gooden'

anyway... hope to hear i'm not alone on this one!
chris

[banjochris]

In a Gadda Da Vida. That lasts forever.

[Slack]

In a Gadda Da Vida. That lasts forever.

LOL!   

(I'm not sure an 18 yr old will get the joke however.)

But I'll throw in "Magic Carpet Ride" anyway...

[Rivers]

I'm a 3 minute guy myself which is one reason I love 78 recordings. There was a period in my youth where, for one band in particular, the song lasted the whole side of an LP, faded out and continued on the other side. I would make a cup of tea at half-time, flip the record and put the cans back on.

[Johnm]

Hi unezrider,
I would put the following in your category:
   * Uncle Bunt Stephens--"Sail Away Ladies"
   * Burnett & Rutherford--"All Night Long"
   * Charlie Patton--"Green River"
   * John Hurt--"If You Don't Want Me"
   * Shirley Griffith--"Shaggy Hound Blues"
There are many others, too.
All best,
Johnm

[uncle bud]

Curiously, with regard to Wilkins' "That's No Way to Get Along" that unezrider cites in the original post, when Wilkins was rediscovered and recast the song on record as "The Prodigal Son" it lasted a good 10 minutes as I recall and is a total groove tune.

JohnM, agreed about Green River. I have played that tune for verse after verse after verse, just hypnotizing myself.

[dj]

According to interviews with the old timers, a lot of songs that we think of as 3 minute gems went on and on when they were played in jukes to accompany dancing and gambling.

Thinking on this topic, the one song that immediately leaps to mind is "How Long How Long" by Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell.  I'd love to hear a 15 minute version with Leroy and Scrapper throwing in a few solos here and there.  Also just about anything by Ed Bell.  That half bar pickup he tends to do at the end of one verse leading into the next just kind of sucks me in and makes me want the song to keep going.  And I'll second Johnm on John Hurt's "If You don't Want Me".     

It's not a blues, but I have to make mention of "I Dream A Highway" by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.  It lasts for over 14 minutes, and when it's done I always wish there were more.   

[dave stott]

let's see now --- here's a few that come to mind...

Hot Tuna's version of Keep your Lamps Trimmed and Burning

Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant - recorded = 18 1/2 minutes, live is always much longer

Anything done by the Greatfull Dead

Big Bill Broonzy's, Hey, Hey


Dave

[Peghead Howell]

Yes,,, I can recall a few that sent me to another dimension,, (a couple years ago)

1. Bob Dylan   Desolation Row
2. Canned Heat  Boogie Chillin
3. The Stones  (Her majesty's request) the whole album!!

This was before the "Early Blues Bug" had sunk it's teeth into me, and left me hooked for life

[unezrider]

'hello friend',
a couple of you mentioned some long songs that - for whatever reason, don't seem long. i'll agree w/ the gillian welch 'i dream a highway' (beautiful, beautiful song) & dylan's 'desolation row'.  & it is getting near thanksgiving... so it is time for alice's restaurant, of course. i hear arlo's on his 'solo reunion tour: together at last' ( i love that!)
but i had forgotten a song for the songs that could go on forever -
eliabeth cotten's 'honey babe your papa cares for you'
personally i prefere songs that are under 5 minutes, myself - but certain songs just grab you. & like andrew mentioned about 'green river' - certain songs i will sit & play through & through for 15 - 20 minuets at a time. ( a lot of open D songs, for some reason..)
chris

[Johnm]

Hi dj,
I know what you mean about wishing you could hear Leroy and Scrapper do "How Long" for fifteen or twenty minutes.  Have you ever heard the version Tampa Red recorded for Prestige in the '60s?  I think it is on "Don't Jive Me".  He sings it a great long time and does so many verses I've never heard elsewhere.  Instrumentally, it is very restrained, but it is some especially pretty "old guy" singing.
All best,
Johnm

[dj]

Hi, John,

No, I've never heard Tampa Red's version of "How Long".  I wish now I'd bought more of those Prestige LPs all those years ago.  I'm not necessarily a fan of "old guys" singing the blues, as I think that a lot the early blues repertoire was music for young hipsters.  But I liked the Tampa Red Prestige tracks that were on the Juke a lot.  Age and hard times tempered some of the superficiality that I think the younger Tampa Red sometimes had a little too much of.  (Not that I dislike the younger Tampa Red, mind you.  I just think that, at least vocally, he aged particularly well.)   

[Stuart]

I wish now I'd bought more of those Prestige LPs all those years ago. 

Don't we all! It appears that one has been re-issued on CD:

http://www.concordmusicgroup.com/albums/OBCCD-516-2/

[mr mando]

Don't we all! It appears that one has been re-issued on CD:

This is not the album Johnm is talking about. There were two Tampa Red LPs on Prestige/Bluesville: "Don't Jive Me" an "Don't Tampa With the Blues". "How Long" is on "Don't Jive Me". Your link is for "Don't Tampa With the Blues".

[GhostRider]

Howdy:

The CB tune I like to groove on for a long time (especially if I can attract a harp player) is Terry-McGee "Walk On".

In the Rock vein, "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"

Alex

[Stuart]

Don't we all! It appears that one has been re-issued on CD:

This is not the album Johnm is talking about. There were two Tampa Red LPs on Prestige/Bluesville: "Don't Jive Me" an "Don't Tampa With the Blues". "How Long" is on "Don't Jive Me". Your link is for "Don't Tampa With the Blues".

Where's my proofreader when I need one??!!--by "that one" I meant "that one of the LPs from the 1960s..." Sorry for the ambiguity--I should have caught it, since I specifically looked for "How Long" in the track listing.

Fantasy (now Concord) was pretty good about re-issuing from the Prestige/Bluesville catalog, but obviously Tampa Red didn't get full coverage, but let's keep our fingers crossed.

[mississippijohnhurt1928]

Tommy Johnson's "Maggie Campbell Blues".

It's purty long for a pre-war country blues record, and I get lost in it every time I hear it.

[tenderfoot84]

i had a read of david evans big road blues recently. it includes an interview with rube lacey in the 60s where he said that he ALWAYS played Ham hound crave the same way, and fortunately it fit the record time. i thought this was interesting because

1/ it seems like a song you could groove on til eternity, throwing breaks in wherever you like.

2/ it seems pretty damn lucky it fit the record.

3/ he mentions that he changed mississippi jailhouse groan up all the time. made it longer, shorter!! and changed the verses whenever he felt like it.

a note on point 3. he actually says, when asked whether he felt 'constrained by the 3minute time duration' - i'm paraphrasing here - that he was actually very glad of it. he often played to earn his crust when he didn't fancy playing and he thought to himself when he was told to do three minutes: i can do that that. it's not too long. i don't need to worry about running out of verses.

this seems like a candid interview with one of the best of the best, who was apparently sharp as a tack in the sixties. he also states that he learned at least one of the two from another player (unrecorded - i forget the name).

it's interesting that i, and probably others, often thought of / think of old blues songs as meaning a lot more than they may have. i guess a lot of the time we hear performances a lot of the time rather than songs and how we differentiate between the two is purely subjective. the sheer power of a tune like mississippi jailhouse groan just grabs you by the balls and you think, i wish i could have heard him do that live in the 10s or 20s, just grooving on it for 10-15 minutes.

rube lacey implied in the 60s that he did.

then you flip over and think the same about ham hound crave.

rube lacey stated in the 60s that he did not.

weird.

and that's why we love this music.

[Rivers]

Interesting, it's been a while since I went through Big Road Blues, personally I find it heavy going. I guess Rube didn't correct the title of Ham Hound Crave to Ham & Gravy or any of the other theories? I'm glad, I've always thought Ham Hound Crave is a) more interesting and b) correct!

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I think I would add Robert Petway's version of "Catfish" to this list.  The fact that it ends with a fade sort of adds to its mystique in this regard.
All best,
Johnm

[Forgetful Jones]

I stumbled upon this old thread while searching. Here's my short list of songs that immediately popped into my head. At one point or another, I've played each of these songs on repeat for extended periods of time. I'm sure there have been others.

King Solomon Hill - My Buddy Blind Papa Lemon
Clarence Ashley - Coo Coo Bird
Otto Virgial - Little Girl in Rome
Mance Lipscomb - Freddie
Alabama Sacred Harp Singers - Sherburne

[Old Man Ned]

A couple spring to mind:

Speckled Red's Dirty Dozens - imagine he had loads more verses to this that didn't make the recording
Charley Jordan's Keep it Clean -  as he recorded a couple of versions, to me, suggests he would have gone on a long time with this tune.

[catyron]

Okay, i am going to reveal something quirky and personal about myself.

I came late to the CD field (i was heavily into computers and technology, but i preferred vinyl). On New Year's Day 1998 my daughter Althaea gave me my first CD. She knew what i liked, so she made a great selection. I had several computers capable of playing CDs, so i popped the first one into my giant Mac G4 Tower and let it rip. It was one of the Document "Too Late Too Late" collections of songs that had not made it into their previous "Complete Recordings of .." sets. On this disk was "Downtown Blues" by Frank Stokes. In it he sang, "This is 1928 and it must be a brand New Year." I knew that his birthday was January 1st, and i immediately realized that here i was playing his 1928 birthday song in 1998 , exactly 70 years later-- a song i had never heard before.

I did a quick mental assessment and realized that, given my love for Frank Stokes songs, and the fact that i had been listening to them for 30 years at that point, this one song should be replayed. So i put it on replay, and then .... i just left it on replay. I just let it repeat, endlessly. It was playing on the big computer in my office. I could listen to it all day, walk away, cook dinner, go out and garden, go to sleep, wake up -- and whenever i entered my office it was still playing, kinda like a Tibetan prayer wheel. When folks asked why i was only playing one song, i told them that i was allowing it to "catch up to the other Frank Stokes songs."  During this entire time, the only other songs i "heard" were those in my mind (i have eidetic musical recall) when i was away from my office.

After seven months of it playing continuously, and me listening to it for about eight hours a day, i met my current husband, on the Fourth of July weekend in 1998. He came to visit me. Of course he asked me why the song was set on eternal replay. I explained and he just smiled.

During the course of that weekend we fell in love and within a month he had quit his job and moved in with me. He never said one mumbling word about the fact that "Downtown Blues" by Frank Stokes was playing continuously ... but one day he asked, "Do you like any other songs? If i were to ask you to play another song you like, what would it be?"

I stopped Frank Stokes and opened up the second CD my daughter had given me, one of the Frog CDs of The Memphis Jug Band. I put on "Stealin' Stealin'" and by the second iteration he was singing the harmony parts. I had no idea that he was so musically inclined. Since he could sing harmony, i put on "K.C. Moan" by the Memphis Jug Band, and he liked that too.

So i set up a three-song rotation of those three tunes, and that ran for about a month, and then he said, "Now show me another song," so i played him the plain version and then the echoey version of "Viola Lee Blues," by Cannon's Jug Stompers, and he agreed that the echoey version was haunting. So i played him "Coffee Blues" by Mississippi John Hurt and he liked it. and then i played him "Sunflower River Blues" by John Fahey, and he liked that too. And that's when i decided to play my entire collection of vinyl and 78 records for him, which took several weeks. Within a month after that he drove us to El Cerrito and dropped a bundle on Document CDs for me at Down Home Music. That was true love. We were married on January 1st, 2000 and have been inseparable all these years.

So that is the story of my strange trip into the alternate universe where there was one song that did last =(almost)= forever, until my Prince Charming came and woke me up with a kiss and married me.