GEORGIA BLACK BOTTOM
Created on 12/01/2009Latest update on 17/12/2023
Artist: Georgia Crackers
Author: Bob Attlesey/Joe Attlesey
Label: Okeh
Year: 1927
Black Bottom was the red light district of Columbus, Georgia. Ma Rainey also sang about it (in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom). Columbus, GA was where she came from (and where she was buried).
Covers:
- 1933:
Lone Star Cowboys [as Deep Elem Blues; Deep Elem is Dallas' red light district]
- 1933:
Shelton Brothers [idem]
- 1935:
Prairie Ramblers [idem; as Blue Ridge Ramblers]
- 1935:
Shelton Brothers [idem; version that made it (crediting themselves); in '36 a Deep Elem #2 followed, in '37 a #3]
- 1936:
- 1941:
Richard O. Hamilton [Frank Warner recording]
- 1964:
- 1969:
- 1970s:
- 1981:
Grateful Dead [crediting the Delmore Brothers]
- 1997:
Red Dirt Rangers [all as Deep Elem Blues]
- 2011:
Levon Helm [Live at the Ryman; vocal: Buddy Miller]
- 2017:
North Mississippi Allstars [as Deep Ellum]
Both songs carry out the same warning: whether you walk through Deep Elem or the Black Bottom, "put your money in your shoes", warning copied by Bob Dylan in his n°1 US Murder Most Foul (2020).
