I'M ALABAMA BOUND

Created on 19/10/2001
Latest update on 15/03/2024

Artist: Prince's Orch.
Author: Robert Hoffman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1909

Just like Arkansas, Alabama frequently represented the whole South in song and the Alabama Bound was a dance where partners held each other as close as with the Bunny Hug and other risqué dances.

Covers:

1925:

Papa Charlie Jackson [later also as Elder Greene Blues (see footnote)]

1927:

Henry Thomas [as Don't Leave Me Here and in '28 as Don't Ease Me In; situates it in the cane cutting fields along the Brazos River in Texas; in '29 as Don't You Leave Me Here]

1931:

Gene Autry [as Atlanta Bound]

1934:

Pete Harris [Lomax recording; their second discovery (after Lead Belly)]

1935:

Lead Belly [as Alabama Bound; in '40 with the Golden Gate Quartet and in '46 with Woody Guthrie & Cisco Houston]

1937:

Rich Brown [John A. Lomax recording; called this a levee camp song]

1938:

Washboard Sam [as Don't You Leave Me Here]

1939:

Jelly Roll Morton [idem, but also as I'm Alabama Bound, which he claimed as his own composition, written while playing barrelhouses in Mobile, Alabama in 1905]

1940:

Louis Jordan

1954:

Odetta [as Alabama Bound]

1956:

Lonnie Donegan [as I'm Alabammy Bound]

1957:

Ramblin' Jack Elliott [as Alabammy Bound]

1958:

Pete Seeger [as Alabama Bound]

1963:

Mississippi John Hurt [idem]

1964:

Dave Van Ronk [as Don't You Leave Me Here]

1965:

Tom Rush

1965:

Jim Kweskin Jug Band [as Don't You Leave Me Here; crediting Jelly Roll Morton]

1966:

Charlatans

1967:

Mickie Finn [as Alabamy Bound]

1967:

Tee Set [as Don't You Leave]

1971:

Doc Watson

1998:

Van Morrison-Lonnie Donegan-Chris Barber [as Alabamy Bound]

2001:

Roger McGuinn [with Pete Seeger]

2002:

Guy Davis [as Don't You Leave Me Here]

2018:

Peter Rowan

Not to be confused with Alabamy Bound (see there). Papa Harvey Hull & Long Clive Reed had a Don't You Leave Me Here tapping from Another Man Done Gone and Baby Please Don't Go. Paul Oliver's Songsters & Saints reports a Texan collector's 1908 version of Alabama Bound with lyric lines from Elder Greene, a song recorded in the 1920's by Charley Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Charlie Jackson, who cut both songs, closes the circle.

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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