Topic: Guns

[Coyote Slim]

Man, I love Sykes's "44 Blues."  That bass run he plays kicks ass.

[Rivers]

I agree Slim, one of the foundation blues riffs. It strikes me as being the piano equiv of Roll & Tumble. I looked it up, Sykes recorded it in June 1929, Willie Newbern recorded R&T March 1928. Maybe the first incidence of a '20s piano guy copping a riff from a guitarist and not the other way round?

[Bunker Hill]

I agree Slim, one of the foundation blues riffs. It strikes me as being the piano equiv of Roll & Tumble.

Paul Oliver devoted an entire chapter (37 pages) to examining the lineage of "The Forty-Fours" in Screening The Blues (Cassell, 1968) where, as well as 44 and R&T, he also discusses the Vicksburg Blues element.

[dj]

Jack Kelly and his South Memphis Jug Band, "Red Ripe Tomatoes":  "I've got a 32.20, shoots just like a 45".

[Gumbo]

I have been trying to figure where I heard another reference to Gatling Gun, and it's in Charlie Poole's Shootin' Creek, where he's "Going up to Shootin' Creek, Goin' on a run. Take my razor and my Gatling Gun"

This (and Robert Johnson's reference) is surely some kind of dark humour or sexual bravado, since a Gatling Gun is a horse drawn multi-barrelled machine gun and not something you would see toted everyday!

[lindy]

Lucy Mae Blues, various performances:

My Saturday woman got a gatlin' gun,
Cut you if you stand, she will shoot you if you run.

[uncle bud]

I would guess that Gatling gun was just a way of saying big-ass gun and possibly used as a synonym for machine gun, not as a literal Gatling gun.

[lindy]

The Gatling gun has a powerful history in the Deep South, where it was considered the "ultimate weapon" during the Civil War (even though they broke down a lot). And there's a famous event in Wilmington, North Carolina in the 1890s where the white minority (3-to-1 black to white population, blacks on the city council, black police officers) "reclaimed" their city by parading a Gatling gun around town and intimidating the black community so it didn't vote in the town election.  A lot of African Americans were killed or run out of town. I forget whether the Gatling gun was actually used, but conventional guns certainly were. That story definitely would have made it into conversations among African Americans throughout the southern states, and likely the reason why Gatling guns show up in some song lyrics.

The only reason I know this stuff is because of two books: The Gun by C.J. Chivers, and A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles. Both recommended, neither has anything to do with blues music.

[JohnLeePimp]

I'ma train my baby to shoot a pistol like a man
and if she can't trip the trigger than she cannot be in my gang - Robert Lockwood Jr
(and Jazz Gillum)

Also I don't know what the song is but the lyrics go something like:
I've a greyhound and a gun, shoot you if you stand still chase you when you run

...any ideas?

[JohnLeePimp]

"I Whistled To My Shotgun, And It Crawled Down Off The Wall"
Guitar Nubbit

[Pan]

Gatling gun mentioned in this otherwise peaceful song. 

[railroad steel]

How about Floyd "dipper boy" Council in Runaway man blues- "I'm gonna get me a razor now i got a blue steel gun- cut you if you stand shoot you if you run. This cat had a real penchant for violent lyrics!

[alyoung]

How about Floyd "dipper boy" Council in Runaway man blues- "I'm gonna get me a razor now i got a blue steel gun- cut you if you stand shoot you if you run. This cat had a real penchant for violent lyrics!

It's a great line, but it ain't his ... it goes back at least to Bessie Smith and her Black Mountain Blues.

[Norfolk Slim]

Agreed.  Though I think that Bessie does the line in reverse (I certainly do when I sing it) - in keeping with the theme of contradiction throughout the song (i.e. women calling for whiskey and little birds singing bass etc): "Shoot if he stands and cut if he runs".

Which suggests to me she was having fun by reversing an older lyrical archetype.  There are doubtless some weenies about who will instantly direct us to earlier examples

[oddenda]

Lightnin' Hopkins had a song or two that would fit here - or maybe versions of the same song!

pbl