Death Letter Blues

DESCRIPTION: Singer gets a letter, telling him to come home, because the girl he loves is dead. He comes home, to find her on the "cooling board." He buries her, weeping, telling her he'll meet her on Judgement Day
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (verses floated to recording by Papa Harvey Hull). As a discrete song, 1966 (recording, Eugene "Son" House)
KEYWORDS: grief love home return burial death mourning lover
FOUND IN: US(SE)
RECORDINGS:
Eugene "Son" House, "Death Letter" (on SonHouse1)
Papa Harvey Hull, "France Blues" (Black Patti 8001/Gennett 6106/Champion 15264, 1927; on BefBlues1)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "France Blues" (verses)
NOTES [25 words]: The Hull recording ["France Blues"] incorporates the core of "Death Letter" but adds floating non-narrative verses from "Mobile Line" and elsewhere. - PJS
File: RcDLetB

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