Mean Mistreater Blues

DESCRIPTION: "It seems mighty hard when you're sleeping all by yourself And the one you love she's loving someone else." "I feel so lonesome sad and blue today I had a darn good woman but my kindnesses drove her away."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1980 (USFlorida01)
KEYWORDS: love rejection sex floatingverses nonballad lover
FOUND IN: US(SE)
RECORDINGS:
Robert Dennis, "Mean Mistreater Blues" (on USFlorida01)
NOTES [154 words]: The blues form of the USFlorida track is aab.
Tampa Red "Mean Mistreater Blues" (Bluebird B5546, 1934) and Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell "Mean Mistreater Mama" (Columbia C30496, 1934) are about a man deserted by his woman ("but I don't blame you baby. I'd be the same way if I could"). That's just the opposite of the case here, where the man is the mean mistreater and has driven his woman away. However, Robert Dennis picks up the last verse from Tampa Red and Leroy Carr: "Boys ain't it lonesome sleeping all by yourself When the woman that you love is loving someone else"; while both Tampa Red and Carr & Blackwell have this verse as abab, Robert Dennis maintains his aab form.
Dennis's "my kindnesses drove her away" seems a mishearing of Tampa Red's "Seminole Blues" (Bluebird B7315, 1937): "She give me hard love even let me draw her bay (bed? bath?), She was a real good woman but unkindness drove her away." - BS
Last updated in version 4.2
File: RcMeMisB

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