Topic: Rare Sam Chatmon LP

[Blues Vintage]

Are the tracks on this LP Sam Chatmon's Advice the same that are on the Flyright compilation CD?

Sam Chatmon's Advice



 - St. Louis Blues
 - Hollandale Blues
 - Open That Book
 - Screwdriver
 - Fishing Blues
 - Ashtray Taxi
 - Vicksburg Blues
 - 'P' Stands For 'Push'

 - Let The Good Times Roll
 - I've Got Good Whiskey
 - Dough Roller Blues
 - Sugar Blues
 - Good Eating Meat
 - God Don't Like Ugly
 - That's Alright
 - Pussy Cat
 - I Hate That Train

Sam Chatmon 1970-1974



 - Hollandale Blues
 - God Don't Like Ugly
 - Prowlin' Groundhog
 - Ashtray Taxi
 - I Got The Whiskey
 - I Can't Use You No More
 - Chatmon Family Rag (instr)
 - Cold Blooded Murder
 - St. Louis Blues
 - That's Alright
 - She's My Baby
 - Old Screwdriver
 - Go Back Old Devil
 - Good Eatin' Meat
 - P Stands For Push
 - Frankie Jean
 - Crawling King Snake
 - All Night Long
 - Trouble In Mind
 - Shake 'Em All Down
 - Sittin' on Top Of The World
 - My Little Woman

[jostber]

You might find more information on this in the Sam Chatmon discography:

Illustrated Sam Chatmon discography

http://www.wirz.de/music/chatmon.htm

[jmorton]

There's a documentary film posted as "Legendary Country Blues 1" on YouTube which appears to be pinched from a Grossman/Vestapol release. 

At 1:14 Sam Chatmon plays Fishing Blues with an intro about "Evil Jackson", and says that he wrote it.  I see an entry in that German discography called "Any Fish Will Bite If You Got Good Bait" is on an unissued Okeh from 1930, as well as the Fishing Blues on the 1979 Rounder Sam Chatmon's Advice.  The Henry Thomas recording is from 1928 I believe.  Was Sam a liar?

[dj]

Was Sam a liar?

Well, we're all liars sometimes.     And I don't know how old you are, jmorton, but one thing I've learned as I've gotten older is that what happened 40 years ago is pretty darned hazy.  If someone had been following me around with a camera in my late teens and early 20s and showed me the film now, my first reaction would probably be "No, that's not how it happened at all." 

But I think the key here is the understanding of what it meant to write a song.  According to David Evans in Big Road Blues, back before recording, copyright, and publishing meant making money, in a folk community, you'd "learn" a song from someone by learning one or more key verses and a few basic points of an accompaniment, then you'd "write it by adding more verses and completing what to you was a satisfactory accompaniment.  So what a Mississippi folk musician in 1920 thought of as writing a song we'd think of today as arranging.

We discussed the whole topic of authorship in early blues somewhere in this forum quite a few years ago, but I'll be darned if I can find it now.

[Lastfirstface]

His 'Fishing Blues' has a lot to it that's not in the Henry Thomas version, that's for sure.

[jmorton]

I apologize for using that wording.  I didn't intend to denigrate Sam, a great player and a pillar of a rich tradition in American music.  Credit disputes are everywhere in the history of recording and publishing, and I don't see this issue as a black mark.  dj, I am plenty old, and I can't even remember what I know about hazy memory!

I was digging into Fishing Blues after recalling that about 15 yrs. ago I heard Tony Marcus play what he said was Fishing Blues from Sam Chatmon.  I remember it as very different, creative, nothing like what you always hear.  The video from 1979 didn't really ring a bell, but I was tantalized by the thought that it might have been Sam's tune.  I figured this forum is where somebody's going to know what's up

[Blues Vintage]

Bluesmen are known to brag a little. Chatmon claimed he could pick in all twelve keys. "I can pick in E flat just as good as I can in B flat". Could possibly be true but he said in the same interview that his brother Bo could only pick in G or E. That's a lie.

Back to the original thread topic, I found out the following (from the wirz site);

Sam Chatmon's Advice - recorded 1979, San Diego
Flyright Compilation - recorded 1970-1974 San Diego, Sweets Mill

[jmorton]

back to Fishing Blues for a moment, sorry to stray from topic ...
I was just in touch with Tony Marcus, who says he did learn his version from Sam.  He cleared up everything by pointing out that a lead sheet for Fishing Blues is in the Anderson collection, the enormous archive of older popular tunes that is going around.

The sheet says, "Fishing - Words and Music Chris. Smith, 1921".  It has the Jackson verse that Sam sings, but he's not evil.  So neither Sam nor Henry Thomas wrote it, and Sam's is more complete.  (Wikipedia gives credit to Thomas - everybody's a liar!)