Forty-Four Blues (I)

DESCRIPTION: My baby heard the 44 whistle blow like it won't blow no more. I walked all night with my 44 and found my baby with another man. I wore my 44 so long my shoulder was sore. My cabin address is 44 and the wolf is at my door every day.
AUTHOR: Roosevelt Sykes? (see Notes)
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (recording, Roosevelt Sykes)
KEYWORDS: courting infidelity love rejection sex violence train nonballad lover
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: Jeff Todd Titon, _Early Downhome Blues_, 2nd edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 114-115, "44 Blues" (1 text, 1 tune)
RECORDINGS:
Scott Dunbar, "Forty-Four" (on MuSouth05)(on USDunbarS01)
Memphis Slim, "Forty-Four Blues" (1961, on "Memphis Slim's Tribute to Big Bill Broonzy, Leroy Carr, Cow Cow Davenport, Curis Jones, Jazz Gillum," Candid CJM 8023)
Roosevelt Sykes, "44 Blues" (OKeh 8702, 1929)
Sonny Terry, "44 Whistle Blues" (OKeh 05684, 1940)
James "Son Ford" Thomas, "44 Blues" (on USMississippi01)
James Wiggins (with Blind Leroy GArnett-IHearAmericaSinging, piano), "Forty-Four Blues" (Paramount 12860, 1929)
NOTES [217 words]: From David Evans's liner notes to USMississippi01: "'44 Blues' [is] a song widely known on both sides of the Mississippi River ... popularized in a 1929 recording by blues pianist Roosevelt Sykes of Helena, Arkansas, and by other recording artists."
What is 44? Roosevelt Sykes's piano evocation of a steam locomotive goes with his verse in which the "forty-four" whistle blows. James "Son Ford" Thomas brings Syskes's train to his guitar accompaniment. The rest of their version is about the singer's 44 caliber gun, but the railroad accompaniment continues. Sykes, Thomas, Wiggins and Memphis Slim sing about 44 as the address of their cabin/shanty.
From Paul Oliver (pp. 10-5-106} "'I wrote the words myself, it was my own words, so this is how I done it. This is the way they played the blues in nineteen and twenty-six and twenty-nine,' exlained Sykes. His 1929 recording had ... verses ... which played on the differing interpretations of the phrase 'forty-fours' - the train number 44, the '44 caliber revolver and the 'little cabin' on which was the number 44, presumably a prison cell."
The Paul Oliver refence is to his "The Forty-Fours" in Paul Oliver,Screening the Blues (New York: De Capo Press, 1968). For more of his comments on the "Forty-Fours" see the notes to "Vicksburg Blues." - BS
Last updated in version 5.1
File: Rc44Bl1

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