Chris Bouchillon 1926’s “Talking Blues” is credited as creating the “talking blues” song format, which would later be adopted and popularized by numerous folk and country artists, including Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash.
In April, 1926 the Bouchillon brothers went to the Atlanta studios and recorded two songs under the name "The Greenville Trio," neither of which were ever to be issued. But to wrap up the session, they did two other numbers under Chris's name, "Talking Blues" and "Hannah." Chris did the vocalizing, Uris played guitar, and on "Hannah," Charley played the fiddle.
The recording director at the session, Frank B. Walker, later recalled: "I thought the singing was the worst thing I had heard, but... I liked the way he talked.... He had a little thing called a 'blues thing' and he tried to sing it. I said, 'Don't sing it, just talk it.'"
Here are the lyrics of "Talking Blues" by Chris Bouchillon:
If you want to get to heaven, let me tell you how to do [it]:
Grease your feet with a little mutton stew.
Stand right out of the devil's hands,
And slide right over in the promised land.
Go easy. Make it easy. Go greasy.
Standin' in the corner by the mantelpiece,
Up in the corner by a bucket of grease,
I greased my feet with a little axle grease,
Went slippin' up an' down that mantelpiece,
Huntin' matches, Cigarette stubs, Chewin' tobacco.
Make up the bed, gal; make 'em up nice.
Ol' preacher Johnson gonna be here tonight.
He's a chicken eater. Loves cake. Loves the sisters too.
Standin' on the corner, standin' like a man,
Standin' on the corner with a bucket in my hand.
Standin' on the corner with a bucket in my hand,
Waitin' for a sop by the white folks' hand,
'Lasses, Sweet'nin' 'taters, Cold biscuits.
Down in the wildwoods sittin' on a log,
My finger on the trigger and my eye on a hog.
I pulled the trigger and the gun said "blip."
Jumped on that hog with all my grip.
Did you scrape him? Eatin' hog-eye. Love chit'lin's.
Behind the hen-house the other night,
It was awful dark an' I had no light.
I scrambled 'round; I got a hold of a goose.
The white folks say you gotta turn him a-loose.
Jumped gulleys. Rode bushes. Dodged bullets too.
Behind the hen-house on my knees,
I thought I heard a chicken sneeze.
It was only a rooster sayin' his prayers
And a-givin' out the hymns to the hens upstairs,
Just a-preachin', Hens a-singin', Rooster's prayin'.
They put me in the jailhouse on my knees.
All they give me was a pan of peas.
The peas was red and the meat was fat.
I got stuck on the jailhouse just for that.
Got frazzy(?). Impotent. Wanted to fight.
There ain't no use me a-workin' so hard.
I got a woman in the white folks' yard.
When she'd kill a chicken she'd save me the feet.
She thinks I'm a-workin' but I'm loafin' in the street,
Havin' a good time, Talkin' about her, To other women.
There ain't no use me a-workin' so hard.
I got a woman in the white folks' yard.
When she'd kill a chicken she'd save me the head.
She thinks I'm a-workin' but I'm lyin' in the bed,
Sleepin', Havin' a good time, Dreamin' about 'er.
Many of the lines Bouchillon sang/spoke were already well-known in the South as song lyrics.
A few of the verses were also present in another black spiritual: "Poor Mourner"/"You Shall Be Free"
The first verse of Chris Bouchillon's "Talking Blues" was published by E.C. Perrow in 1913 in the article Songs And Rhymes From The South in vol 26 of The Journal of American Folk-Lore.
The first verse was also published in 1925 on page 225 of On The Trail Of Negro Folk Songs, a book with traditional Negro folk songs collected by Dorothy Scarborough.
That first verse was also published in 1928 on page 135 of American Negro Folk Songs collected by Newman Ivey White.
The 5th verse of Chris Bouchillon's "Talking Blues" was published in 1911 by Howard Odum as song # 86 in his Negro Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry on page 370 in Vol 24, No 94 of The Journal Of American Folk-Lore.
Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes (Concluded) on JSTOR
The 5th verse was also published in 1928 on page 139 of American Negro Folk Songs collected by Newman Ivey White, and is at least as old as 1884.
The verses 9 and 10 in Chris Bouchillon's version were also well-known in the South.
Chris is talking about "white folks" in the third person here repeatedly because he is representing a character who is black. Talking rhythmically was an important part of black and white entertainment long before some of it became widely known as "rap".
Chris Bouchillon's record was issued in February 1927, and quickly became one of the year's biggest hits: it would eventually sell over 90,000 copies in the next three years. It defined, at least for the record industry, a new type of genre: "the talking blues"
(o) Chris Bouchillon (1926) (as "Talking Blues")
Recorded November 4, 1926 in Atlanta, GA
Released on Colummbia 15120
Listen here:
17 months later Chris Bouchillon made a new recording of his Talking Blues, but a new set of, mostly his own, lyrics.
HERE ARE THE COMPLETE LINERNOTES: FW05232.pdf
(o) Chris Bouchillon (1928) (as "New Talking Blues")
Recorded April 16, 1928 in Atlanta, GA
Released on Columbia 15262
Listen here:
3 months later Herschel Brown covered the new Bouchillon-version.
(c) Herschel Brown (1928) (as "New Talking Blues")
Recorded July 30, 1928 in Atlanta, GA
Released on Okeh 45247
Listen here:
(c) Harmon Canada (1929) (as "The Talkin' Blues")
Recorded August 9, 1929 in Richmond, IND
Released on Gennett 6972 and Supertone 9554
Re-released on Champion 15808 and 45173 (as by Joe Smith)
4 more "talking blues" versions from the 1930's:
Curly Fox, "Curly's New Talking Blues" (Decca 5185, 1936)
Jesse Rodgers, "Jesse's Talking Blues" (Bluebird B-6143, 1935)
Roy Shaffer, "Talking Blues" (Bluebird B-8234, 1939)
Around 1940 Woody Guthrie picked up the “talking blues” song format.
He may have been familiar with Chris Bouchillon's record or maybe he tuned into the Grand Ole Opry one day and heard Robert Lunn, "The Talking Blues Man", who popularized the genre in the 1930's.
Woody, though, gave the talking blues a characteristic twist, exchanging the joke-book cracks for political satire, leaving a signpost to be followed in the 1960's by his admirer, Bob Dylan.
Here below a few of the various versions Woody cut in the 1940's
(c) Woody Guthrie (1940) (as "Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues")
Recorded April 26, 1940 in New York
Released on Victor 26619 as part of Victor album P27 "Dust Bowl Ballads vol 1"
Listen here:
But a month earlier, Guthrie had already recorded this song under the supervision of Alan Lomax for the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress in Washington.
(c) Woody Guthrie (1940) (as "Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues")
Recorded March 21, 1940 in Washington D.C.
Listen here:
After this Woody used the same “talking blues” song format for "Washington Talkin' Blues" and "Talking Columbia", two out of many songs written for the Bonneville Power Administration, the power company in charge of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, built to provide electricity among farmers in the whole Pacific Northwest region
(c) Woody Guthrie (1941) (as "Washington Talkin' Blues")
Recorded May 1941
Listen here:
(c) Woody Guthrie (1941) (as "Talking Columbia")
Recorded May 1941.
Listen here:
On March 10, 1947 on CBS radio, Woody Guthrie also sang "Talkin' Blues" (almost identical to the original "Talking Blues" by Chris Bouchillon)
Listen here:
In May 1941 The Almanac Singers, with Woody Guthrie as a member, also recorded their version of the "talking blues" as a political protest song style. In the same month they also performed that song "Talking Union" at Madison Square Garden for 20.000 striking transport workers.
(c) The Almanac Singers (1941) (as "Talking Union")
Recorded May 1941 in Central Park West, New York City
Released in July 1941 on Keynote album # 106 (consisting of three 78 RPM records)
Listen here:
When Earl Robinson opened the first People's Songs office on the West Coast, Vern Partlow became one of its earliest members. After interviewing scientists on the consequences of a nuclear war, Partlow wrote "Old Man Atom". Earl Robinson suggested the "talking blues" song format as a musical setting.
Laced with irony, the song circulated among other singer-songwriters after its appearance as "Talking Atomic Blues" in the January 1947 People's Songs Bulletin.
(o) Vern Partlow (1940's) (as "Talking Atomic Blues")
Probably a demo recorded in the 1940's, which ended up on the next CD Box
Listen here:
(c) Pete Seeger (1948) (as "Talking Atom")
Recorded early 1948 for Irwin Silber and Brownie McGhee's Encore label.
Listen here:
Ernest Tubb wrote a version of the "talking blues", which, instead of "If You Want To Go To Heaven" starts with "If you want to get in trouble, I'll tell you how to do it.
Get a guitar, and then you're into it".
Apparently Tubb himself didn't record the song.
(c) Red Murrell (1949) (as "Ernest Tubb's Talking Blues")
Recorded August 1, 1949 in Hollywood, CA
Released on Capitol 57-40229
Listen here:
In 1958 John Greenway covered "Ernest Tubb's Talking Blues", but his version was retitled "Talking Guitar Blues".
Listen here:
In 1959 Lonnie Donegan, inspired by John Greenway's "Talking Guitar Blues", recorded 2 versions.
One for the UK market and one for the US market.
(c) Lonnie Donegan (1959) (as "Talking Guitar Blues")
Recorded 1959 October 23, 1959 Pye Studios in London, UK
Released on Pye Nixa N.15237
Listen here:
In 1947 Woody Guthrie had written "Talkin' Subway" (as a poem) after experiencing New York for the first time. Originally published in 1947 (four verses only), not recorded (in this format) by Woody Guthrie.
In 1957 Pat Foster and Dick Weissman recorded an album full of Guthrie songs titled "Documentary Talking Blues". Sung in the familiar “talking blues” song format, they were the first to record Guthrie's 1947 poem.
(c) Pat Foster and Dick Weissman (1957) (as "Talking Subway")
Listen here:
In 1958, the musician and folk music scholar John Greenway recorded an album collection called "Talking Blues" on the Folkways label. His compendium included 15 talking blues songs by Guthrie, Tom Glazer, and others, and was, according to the music historian Manfred Helfert, the "obvious source" for the many 1960s forays into the genre by Bob Dylan.
Besides the earlier mentioned "Talking Columbia", "Talking Guitar Blues" and "Old Man Atom", on this album John Greenway also included a version of the above mentioned "Talkin' Subway", supplemented with seven stanzas, obtained by Dr. Greenway from Woody personally at a later date and had never been published or recorded before.
John Greenway's 1958 version of "Talkin' Subway" was the likely inspiration for Bob Dylan's "Talkin' New York".
(c) John Greenway (1958) (as "Talkin' Subway" Blues")
Listen here:
Bob Dylan not only recorded "Talkin' New York" (1961) in the “talking blues” song format, but also
"Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues" (1962) and "Talking World War III Blues" (1963).
(c) Bob Dylan (1961) (as "Talkin' New York")
Recorded November 20, 1961 in Columbia Recording Studio in New York City
Released on his debut album
Listen here:
(c) Bob Dylan (1962) (as "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues")
Recorded April 25, 1962 in Columbia Recording Studio in New York City
Officially released in 1991 on Bootleg Series Vol 3
Listen here:
(c) Bob Dylan (1963) (as "Talking World War III Blues")
Recorded April 23, 1963 in Columbia Recording Studio in New York City
Released on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
Listen here:
(c) Peter, Paul & Mary (1963) (as "Talkin' Candy Bar Blues")
Listen here:
In 1964 Phil Ochs was the first artist to sing a protest song to refer to Vietnam by name.
For his performance Ochs also used the familiar “talking blues” song format.
(c) Phil Ochs (1964) (as "Talking Vietnam Blues")
Listen here:
And in 1968 Tom Paxton used the “talking blues” song format for his anti Vietnam war statement with a good sense of humor.
(c) Tom Paxton (1968) (as "Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues")
Listen here:
And when Johnny Cash recorded a song, that described his trip to Vietnam with his wife June Carter Cash, he chose the “talking blues” song format to describe his dissent against the Vietnam War.
(c) Johnny Cash (1971) (as "Singing In Viet Nam Talking Blues")
Recorded April 13, 1971 in Columbia Studios, Nasville, TN
US singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, one of a small group of artists labelled 'new Bob Dylans' in their early career, recorded a critically acclaimed parody/tribute song called "Talkin' New Bob Dylan" on his 1992 album 'History', to coincide with Dylan's 50th birthday.
(c) Loudon Wainwright III (1992) (as "Talkin' New Bob Dylan")
Listen here:
And here's a truck load of talking blues versions:
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