Posted by Steve Justman
on 10/24/2009, 8:27 am, in reply to "Weekend Videos: KT+Johnny Cash+Waylon Jennings+Wyclef Jean+More - "Delia's Gone""
As a teen in 1966 was when I found Wayon Jennings. I bought his first RCA album new at that time. I followed his career until his death in 2002. There will never be another voice who couldcome close to his. This man was indeed a singer.
--Previous Message--
: On Christmas Eve of the year 1900, according to several shadowy but semi-authenticated
: sources, a fourteen-year-old African American girl named Delia Green was murdered by
: her boyfriend, fifteen-year-old Mose Houston (or Huston), in Savannah, GA for
: reasons that time has obscured. According to the same fragmentary records, young
: Houston was convicted of the murder but in an act of clemency unusual for the South
: at the time and likely due to his age was sentenced to life in prison. He was
: paroled some decades later and vanished into obscurity.
:
: This incident may have - or may not have - been the inspiration of a song (or
: songs) that come down to us as "Delia's Gone" and that provide a fine
: example of what we call the folk process.
:
: With some songs, ethnologists and musicologists have a fairly easy time tracing
: roots and branches. There is, for example, a direct and easily hearable connection
: between the 17th century Irish lament "The Bard of Armagh" and the
: grandaddy of all American cowboy songs, "The Streets of Laredo," because
: the melodies are virtually identical; it's more of a challenge to hear the
: connection between "Bard" and the old Basin Street blues number "St.
: James Infirmary," though nearly every discussion of the latter song says it's
: so. And thus it is with hundreds of the folk songs collected and categorized by
: giants of the field like Francis James Child and the redoubtable Lomax family.
:
: Like many genuine songs that we now identify as traditional, no one knows exactly
: where or when people began to sing mournfully about the recently departed Delia. Not
: surprisingly, one version seems to have been in circulation in Atlanta and
: Charleston, SC (and please, in honor of Mike Askins, do not pronounce the
: "r" - it's "Chall-ston") around 1910, and a decade later a
: substantially different and more ambiguous arrangement pops up in New Orleans. The
: older one features lyrics similar to Johnny Cash's below - a "Tony shot his
: Delia/ On a Saturday night" - Cash changes it to first person "I");
: the Louisiana number identifies Delia as either a gambler or trusted friend whose
: death is a cause for sorrow, rather more like Dylan's, and which Waylon Jennings
: shows cross-pollinates with another New Orleans number. Some experts believe that it
: was just the natural diversification of song variants that we can see in, say,
: "The Gypsy Laddie" becoming "Black Jack Davey" and finally
: morphing into the very different "Gyspy Rover" while others maintain that
: there were two different root songs - and maybe two different but equally
: unfortunate Delias.
:
: Whatever the case, one of the really early recordings is from the Library of
: Congress recording of Blind Willie McTell (who inspired Britain's Ralph May to
: change his name to Ralph McTell, composer of "The Streets of London") from
: around 1933:
:
:
:
: Now the Kingston Trio didn't venture too frequently into blues-flavored numbers,
: though when they did (think "Leave My Woman Alone" or "This Mornin',
: This Evenin' So Soon" or "The Wanderer") they could be very
: effective. The Trio's version separates the singer from responsibility for the
: girl's death, leaving him in a pain that can only be alleviated by drinking -
: "one more round." The instrumental accompaniment here features one of the
: stronger and more emphatic contributions of KT bassist Dean Reilly - there was an
: odd comfort and symmetry in knowing now that the last time that Nick, Bob, and John
: ever played together in August 2007 in Scottsdale that they were joined by a
: vigorous and beaming 80-year-old Dean:
:
:
:
: The highest profile modern rendition of "Delia" belongs to Johnny Cash.
: There is a fine performance video of JC singing it in 1969 on his TV show, but I
: found this MTV-era video from the Americanh Recordings sessions of 1994 to be more
: satisfying - just Johnny in fine voice accompanied only by his own guitar work,
: reminding us of what a fine rhythm player he was. JC's lyrics are bloodier than the
: Trio's and give another possible meaning to "one more round." This is Cash
: at his folkiest:
:
:
:
: The above -mentioned Mike Askins mentioned how much he loved "Hee Haw" (me
: too, Mike), and Waylon Jennings' rendition of "Delia" is a reminder of how
: much good music the show featured. Jennings is clearly doing the New Orleans
: version, which is conflated with another very familiar N.O. classic:
:
:
:
: Reggae/blues/rap/all-purpose superstar Wyclef Jean gives an island flavor to Cash's
: arrangement:
:
:
:
: For a completely different take, our late friend Travis Edmondson and Bud Dashiell
: do that inimitable up-tempo Spanish-flavored guitar accompaniment that only they
: could pull off - Travis especially here with his rhythmic tapping of the sound board
: leaves you astonished - from one of Hefner's shows in the 60s:
:
:
:
: Now I happen to be in the minority around here, I think, in that I really like Bob
: Dylan's singing when, as they say in sports, he stays within himself, which he does
: very effectively in folk blues numbers like this - rather closer to Willie McTell's:
:
:
:
: This is one of those weeks when I really, really enjoy this Comparative Videos
: project - every version is a gem....
:
: Appendix
:
: ... which is why I'm separating this one from the rest - an ironic parody in really
: poor taste about a recent death called "Jacko's Gone" by one Graeme Dirt:
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