Influences
This was the first song that Johnson recorded, and it was carefully crafted in imitation of recent hit records. It was composed as if in answer to "Cruel Hearted Woman Blues" by Bumble Bee Slim (Amos Easton), which in turn was based on "Mean Mistreater Mama" by Leroy Carr accompanied by Scrapper Blackwell. Johnson uses the Carr melody and conveys something of Carr's style in his relaxed singing. His guitar accompaniment echoes Carr's piano phrases in the first verse, then copies Blackwell's guitar phrases in the second verse. He then adds a musical bridge in the style of another hit record, "Milk Cow Blues" by Kokomo Arnold. At the end of the bridge, he jumps into a higher register as Arnold does, but then maintains an extraordinary controlled falsetto, which may have been based on the singing of Joe Pullum. Thus Johnson showed in his very first recording that he had mastered the commercially successful urban blues style of the Thirties. However, his debut cannot be dismissed as derivative. He combined elements of the styles of others into a highly individual style of his own.
Like Bumble Bee Slim, Johnson wrote lyrics consisting mostly of conventional twelve-bar three-line verses, but varied with an eight-bar bridge. Slim's bridge merely repeated the words, but Johnson wrote a more complex sequence:
| "Cruel Hearted Woman Blues" | "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" | |
|---|---|---|
| You's a cruel-hearted woman, swear, — and you treat me like a slave …… x 2 You keep me fallin' — down on my bending knee |
I got a kind hearted woman, — do anything in this world for me …… x 2 But these evil-hearted women, — man, they will not let me be |
|
| Do you remember one mornin' — when the lights was burnin' low You give me my clothes — and drove me from your door Do you remember one mornin' — when the lights was burnin' low You give me my clothes — and drove me from your door |
There ain't but the one thing — make Mr Johnson drink I swear how you treat me Baby, — I begin to think Oh Babe — my life don't feel the same You break my heart — when you call Mister So-and-so's name |
Johnson also makes a marked change in tone. Leroy Carr's original "Mean Mistreating Mama" was resigned, even understanding:
You're a mean mistreating mama, and you don't mean me no good
And I don't blame you baby, I'd be the same way if I could
Bumble Bee Slim removed that hint of sympathy when he covered the song as "Mean Mistreatin' Woman":
You's a mean mistreatin' woman, but I love you just the same
I know you didn't want me, the day I changed your name
When he wrote new words to the tune, his mood was still resigned:
You's a cruel heated woman, swear, and you just can't realise
That's all right baby, I'll be the same when I rise
Johnson decides that his "kind-hearted woman" is, after all, hostile. But there is no resignation, only anguish:
I love my baby, my baby don't love me
And I really love that woman, can't stand to let her be
She's a kind-hearted woman, she studies evil all the time
You wells to kill me, as to have it on your mind
Like many of Johnson's songs, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" is a staple in the repertoires of many blues musicians and has been recorded by dozens of traditional and contemporary blues figures, including Muddy Waters, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Johnny Winter, George Thorogood, and Keb' Mo'. It was included on Eric Clapton's 2004 album, Me and Mr. Johnson, along with many other Johnson classics.
On Led Zeppelin's cover of Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues", singer Robert Plant quotes this song with the line "Got a kind-hearted woman/she studies evil all the time".
According to Stephen Calt, the phrase kind-hearted woman was slang for a woman who "catered to a gigolo in return for sexual fidelity".
Read more about this topic: Kind Hearted Woman Blues
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”
—Hope Edelman (20th century)
“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)