It’s the middle of April and only one post to show for it. Well, that may be true, but there are reasons. I just got done carving out a section of the site devoted to:

The Mississippi Sheiks - their songs and lyrics

It’s not quite complete, since I’ll be adding more details over time, and adding additional material.

See? I wasn’t just ignoring the place!

This is a song that never made it onto the old version of this site. I put it together as part of a ‘cover’ project at Weenie Campbell. The idea was to take Ma Rainey’s “Don’t Fish In My Sea” and adapt it for the guitar. Any kind of adaptation was fair game - any aspect of the original song could be retained, altered or discarded altogether. The project only garnered one other contribution - an excellent Blind Blake-inspired version. My contribution was unabashedly aped from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s approach to blues in C.

A lot of folks find this aspect of Lemon’s recorded output a bit tiresome. I understand the complaint, but the guy was phenomenally creative within the constraints of the form - every tune involves some new twist or lick. In putting together my accompaniment, it was very difficult to arrive at something that both sounded smooth and spontaneous. I’m not sure that I even partially succeeded, but I certainly did learn a lot in trying.

One thing I’d definitely do differently if I were to do it again would be to not attempt to change the gender of the singer in adapting the lyrics - there are so few examples (“Ramrod Blues” by the Mississippi Sheiks is a notable example) of a male blues singer working from a female point of view that I think it’d be very interesting to try it.

dont-fish-in-my-sea.mp3