Topic: is there a lovely blues song called "still waters run deep"?

[John Schott]

Hi,
I think this is my first post on this venerable forum!

For years I had cassettes that I taped off the radio of blues shows on Seattle radio in the 1970s-80s. One song that haunts my memory I have been unable to track down. I think it was piano/vocal, an older man with a plaintive kind of voice, singing "Still waters, still waters, I wanna know, they run deep." The song was, I believe, derived from "Sitting on Top of the World". What made the track so charming to me was the way the singer inserted the "I wanna know" between the two parts of the proverb. It was someone rediscovered", I imagine. Maybe a little like the voice of Sleepy John Estes. I had a memory that it might be Champion Jack Dupree, but I can't come up with anything.
    (It is not, by the way, the Brook Benton or Four Tops song by this title).

As I sit here and type, it occurs to me it will probably take WC all of forty minutes to come up with the answer!

John

[Lignite]

I think you may be thinking of By The Water by New Orleans singer Ford "Snooks" Eaglin. Give a listen to this and see if it is the one;

[Johnm]

I'd like to hear you sing that one, Lightnin'.  You could sing that great!
All best,
Johnm

[Lignite]

Thanks for the compliment, John. I actually used to try to do this one about 20 years ago when I still used to play sometimes with a band. I never could quite pull off the cool gut scream he does towards the end and it always bugged me! There's a tape of it somewhere I'll have to dig up and listen to again.

[John Schott]

Hallelujah! Thanks, yes it is Snooks! In a first draft of the post I wrote, I mentioned Snooks, and then deleted it, because... I don't know, it just seemed sort of improbable. And I looked through the discography and couldn't find a song titled Still Waters - which, after all, don't you think should be the title of the song???

At any rate, what a sweet song!

Thanks again!