"Mississippi Blues" by William Brown

Friends:

We're back with a transcription of a 1940s blues number this month. William Brown's "Mississippi Blues" was recorded by Alan Lomax at the Sadie Beck plantation (Arkansas) in 1942. Other than this, little is known about William Brown. What seems to be accepted today, is this William Brown is different than the Willie Brown of Mississippi who was known as an early pioneer of the Delta blues and collaborator with other well-known players like Son House and Charlie Patton. 

"Mississippi Blues" is a popular favorite among enthusiasts of the genre, I challenge you to count how many times it's been covered on YouTube. This is usually an automatic no-go for me, as I like to try to find some of the less-known and less-covered songs out there, but as I listened to the recording and started making notes one thing struck me - I could not find any examples of others performing the piece the way I was hearing William Brown perform the piece. I suppose we should be used to this scenario, folk/blues being primarily a tradition passed down aurally, others learning by rote, it would make sense that a piece of music evolves and takes on new norms. I think it's time we roll back the clock and do an honest job at examining what exactly William Brown may have been doing in his recording.

This month I'm again submitting two scores for you to consider. First, a normalized one that shows the introduction, a single version of the verse that represents the most sensible and least varied of the repetitions, the three instrumental breaks each with some minor variations, and the last verse with the ending. Most will probably want to look at this as a friendly starting place. The second transcription is of William Brown's recording in it's entirety, with all of the subtle variations barring a few minor corrections for what are thought to be unintentional notes.

What I can assume of the original recording is he is playing in standard tuning and is using a capo at the third fret. The guitar sounds like it could be a resonator, especially compared to other instruments recorded during the same session, but I can't be sure. This would be interesting to know for sure as most are 12 frets to the body and would make playing the instrumental breaks up at the body joint a bit more difficult, especially the D7 configuration, which may be part of the reason he seems to frequently miss something when going to that chord.

It will be hard to make a strong case for how many fingers he is using in the right hand, but it has to be at least three given several chord voicings that skip strings. I suggest using the ring finger in the verse to assist with the first string, I tried playing the whole passage using only thumb, index, and middle, and had a hard time envisioning how he would have made that work given what can be heard in the audio.

You'll notice two major differences from how the rest of the world plays the piece, the melodic motif that begins the piece is played starting in 5th position, not back at the nut, and the subsequent E7 that follows the melodic descent is played in 3rd position. I provide justification for these positions in the lesson video based on what can be heard in the original recording.

I hope everyone enjoys learning this, whether it is your first look or a refreshed look back at an old classic.

YouTube lesson for patrons here https://youtu.be/KGAomhiHNwc

All of the recordings from the Sadie Beck plantation, July 1942 (click the text)

Both the normalized and full score are attached below. Enjoy!