Drivers Bios Nec Vl260m. Blind Willie McTell. Words and music Bob Dylan (the melody loosely based on “St James Infirmary Blues”) Recorded during the Infidels sessions (1991), but not. Blind Willie McTell. Words and music Bob Dylan (the melody loosely based on “St James Infirmary Blues”) Recorded during the Infidels sessions (1991), but not.

By David Hamburger There are really two “Statesboro Blues” (blueses?). There’s the song as originally conceived and recorded by Blind Willie McTell in the 1920s in the prewar solo style, with a bright, syncopated but rhythmically tight and danceable guitar part typical of Southeastern guitarists like Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller. Then there’s the version created by the original lineup of the Allman Brothers Band from fragments of the McTell lyric, a sizzling shuffle groove and ’s definitive and compelling signature slide theme. Somewhere in between – but definitely leaning towards and allegedly inspiring much of the Allmans version – lies the Taj Mahal version from just a few years before the Allmans’. Free Download How To Change Startup Programs Without Msconfig Programs. Like most people presently walking the planet, I grew up thinking of “Statesboro Blues” as an Allman Brothers song. Maybe even the Allman Brothers song, the first thing that came roaring out of the speakers when someone gave me a hand-me-down LP of The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East that only had sides one and four and said, “here, you might like this.” Like it – good gravy.

I didn’t know what was on sides two and three, nor did I even really care what was on side four – I just wanted to hear those first three songs on side one over, and over, and over again. And once someone in college showed me all the things I was doing wrong with the slide, and I made the connection between that and the beginning of “Statesboro Blues,” forget it. Musedo T 30 Clip Tuner Manually.

The Allmans were particularly good at giving credit where credit was due – I don’t think they cited Blind Willie McTell on Fillmore East, not out loud, anyway, but they carefully I.D.’d the writers of their next two tunes, Elmore James and T-Bone Walker. Still, when I finally heard how Willie McTell, the original composer of “Statesboro Blues,” played this fragment of my musical bedrock, it was pretty bewildering. To paraphrase Mike Bloomfield, here’s one guy, sitting alone with a guitar – how’s he going to do it? Where are the drums going to come from? Because Blind Willie McTell of course recorded “Statesboro Blues” as a solo singer/guitarist, and really, that’s how most people before and after the Allman Brothers have done it, too – everyone from Dave Van Ronk, the Holy Modal Rounders and John Hammond to Roy Book Binder, Dave Bromberg and Rory Block.

Of course, that last sentence reads like a laundry list of great Folk Revival artists, all of whom were interested in country blues long before the late 1960s and the arrival of Duane, Gregg and company. But the fact that “Statesboro Blues” can carry on this twin identity is a testimony to both the sturdiness of the original song and to the overwhelming originality and ingenuity of the Allmans’ subsequent transformation of it. In a way, it’s not unlike what Cream accomplished with their drastic restatement of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” – when you hear John Mayer’s recent version of that song, do you think “wow, he’s doing that old Robert Johnson song with a band!” or “wow, cool harmony vocals, and I can’t believe he took just one chorus on that Cream tune!”? So let’s roll tape.