Come Back Baby has something of a celebrated status as a guitar piece in the canon of revivalist country blues. Of course, it didn't quite start this way, but we'll see that blues and R&B artists alike found a lot to like in the song, and guitarists in particular seemed to gravitate towards it. In the present, the popularity of this song and the guitar arrangement that accompanies the vocal stems almost uniformly from one revivalist source, which we'll see later.
In the beginning, there was Walter Davis:
Walter Davis made a lot of records, and one can't help but wonder if he would have been surprised at the legs this one grew.
It's an 8-bar blues:
I - I7 - IV - IVm
I - V7 - IV - I
Expressed in the key of E, the key component is the descending line occurring over the first four bars: E - D - C# - C. This could also be expressed as part of a chord voicing, like so: E - E7 - A/C# - Am/C OR: E - E7 - A/C# - C. He recorded it in 1940, and it must have done well for him as he recorded a later "New Come Back Baby" (apologies if this can't be viewed outside the US):
By 1949, Lowell Fulson had recorded it in the context of an electric combo:
This is a lovely simmer of a recording, and the sparse playing on it is a wonder - well worth listening to if you've not heard it before. Fulson's guitar is tends to answer the vocal, letting the piano and drums carry the accompaniment. In general, the chordal outline of the Davis original is retained.
In 1954, we find this recording by John Lee Hooker:
Hooker's guitar is typically sparse and primitive and the accompaniment eschews the IVm chord, sticking with a IV7 chord. In a couple of instances, the 2nd guitar player plays the IV chord as a IV7b9... interesting. The break is phrased as a 12-bar blues before Hooker returns to the vocal theme. The pace and phrasing on the recording is no less amazing than the Fulson record. Such space!
A little detour into R&B - Ray Charles had a go at the song, too... this is, of course is far afield from the blues recordings we've listened to so far. In fact, it's fair to say that this is a Ray Charles song - only the initial verse is drawn from Davis, and the harmony is TOTALLY different. I've included it here because one of the verses that does not appear in the Davis original appears in later versions... interesting!
Ray's is a deep, R&B accompaniment - chords separated by "|" get two beats. I can't think of anyone that can play as slow as Ray Charles!
I - I - IV - II | IV7
I | VI7 - II | V7 - I | IV - I | V7
Moving on to 1961, we get this from Lightnin' Hopkins, and by this time, you should start to hear echoes of the arrangement that, as revivalists yourselves, you should recognize. Lightnin' plays the song out of A position - a key that the song has been associated with ever since. Similar to Fulson and Hooker, he does away with the IVm chord, returning early to the I chord:
It's all Lightnin', so of COURSE it's cool.
Which brings us to this 1963 recording from Dave Van Ronk:
This is IT. Just about EVERY revivalist recording of this song from this point forward is a cover of or riff on this arrangement. There's a lot to like about it - his movement of the I to the I7 using a moveable D shape at the 9th and 7th frets is all his own. He certainly quotes a few of Lightnin's A blues ideas, but re-introduces some of the harmonic sophistication of the Davis original, notably the flat VI chord - a stand in for the IVm chord. He also pulls the "holler like a mountain jack" verse from the Ray Charles recording! This also ends up being a mainstay in later revivalist recordings.
There's a Stefan Grossman recording featuring Jo Ann Kelly's vocals - the guitar is a direct quote of Van Ronk:
Here's a cover by Weenie contributor Waxwing John Cowan:
Orville Johnson adds some slide in standard tuning, but owes substantial credit to Van Ronk's setting:
This Eric Bibb performance is a near direct quote of Van Ronk's arrangement, but adds some nice touches:
I would NEVER have thought I could find this song played on autoharp, but Patrick Couton actually does a nice job of capturing the spirit of the Van Ronk accompaniment:
Interestingly, Guy Davis's recording actually has far less Van Ronk in it than any of the other recordings:
Well - there it is... you can certainly find more examples on youtube. I threw this topic together fairly quickly - if any of you know of any compelling antecedents of the Davis recording, I'd love to hear them. I'd also be VERY interested in covers of the Davis recording done between 1940 and 1950.
To close, I sort of backed into a way of playing this song, mainly as a singing exercise... there's no arrangement, per se - just a way that I like to play. Maybe you'll like it:
In the beginning, there was Walter Davis:
Walter Davis made a lot of records, and one can't help but wonder if he would have been surprised at the legs this one grew.
It's an 8-bar blues:
I - I7 - IV - IVm
I - V7 - IV - I
Expressed in the key of E, the key component is the descending line occurring over the first four bars: E - D - C# - C. This could also be expressed as part of a chord voicing, like so: E - E7 - A/C# - Am/C OR: E - E7 - A/C# - C. He recorded it in 1940, and it must have done well for him as he recorded a later "New Come Back Baby" (apologies if this can't be viewed outside the US):
By 1949, Lowell Fulson had recorded it in the context of an electric combo:
This is a lovely simmer of a recording, and the sparse playing on it is a wonder - well worth listening to if you've not heard it before. Fulson's guitar is tends to answer the vocal, letting the piano and drums carry the accompaniment. In general, the chordal outline of the Davis original is retained.
In 1954, we find this recording by John Lee Hooker:
Hooker's guitar is typically sparse and primitive and the accompaniment eschews the IVm chord, sticking with a IV7 chord. In a couple of instances, the 2nd guitar player plays the IV chord as a IV7b9... interesting. The break is phrased as a 12-bar blues before Hooker returns to the vocal theme. The pace and phrasing on the recording is no less amazing than the Fulson record. Such space!
A little detour into R&B - Ray Charles had a go at the song, too... this is, of course is far afield from the blues recordings we've listened to so far. In fact, it's fair to say that this is a Ray Charles song - only the initial verse is drawn from Davis, and the harmony is TOTALLY different. I've included it here because one of the verses that does not appear in the Davis original appears in later versions... interesting!
Ray's is a deep, R&B accompaniment - chords separated by "|" get two beats. I can't think of anyone that can play as slow as Ray Charles!
I - I - IV - II | IV7
I | VI7 - II | V7 - I | IV - I | V7
Moving on to 1961, we get this from Lightnin' Hopkins, and by this time, you should start to hear echoes of the arrangement that, as revivalists yourselves, you should recognize. Lightnin' plays the song out of A position - a key that the song has been associated with ever since. Similar to Fulson and Hooker, he does away with the IVm chord, returning early to the I chord:
It's all Lightnin', so of COURSE it's cool.
Which brings us to this 1963 recording from Dave Van Ronk:
This is IT. Just about EVERY revivalist recording of this song from this point forward is a cover of or riff on this arrangement. There's a lot to like about it - his movement of the I to the I7 using a moveable D shape at the 9th and 7th frets is all his own. He certainly quotes a few of Lightnin's A blues ideas, but re-introduces some of the harmonic sophistication of the Davis original, notably the flat VI chord - a stand in for the IVm chord. He also pulls the "holler like a mountain jack" verse from the Ray Charles recording! This also ends up being a mainstay in later revivalist recordings.
There's a Stefan Grossman recording featuring Jo Ann Kelly's vocals - the guitar is a direct quote of Van Ronk:
Here's a cover by Weenie contributor Waxwing John Cowan:
Orville Johnson adds some slide in standard tuning, but owes substantial credit to Van Ronk's setting:
This Eric Bibb performance is a near direct quote of Van Ronk's arrangement, but adds some nice touches:
I would NEVER have thought I could find this song played on autoharp, but Patrick Couton actually does a nice job of capturing the spirit of the Van Ronk accompaniment:
Interestingly, Guy Davis's recording actually has far less Van Ronk in it than any of the other recordings:
Well - there it is... you can certainly find more examples on youtube. I threw this topic together fairly quickly - if any of you know of any compelling antecedents of the Davis recording, I'd love to hear them. I'd also be VERY interested in covers of the Davis recording done between 1940 and 1950.
To close, I sort of backed into a way of playing this song, mainly as a singing exercise... there's no arrangement, per se - just a way that I like to play. Maybe you'll like it: