Artist: Mose Allison
Author: Mose Allison
Label: Prestige
Year: 1957
He's from Tippo, MS, just a few miles east of this state prison farm; Mose picked cotton back home, so he's counting delta blues among his main influences. But as a white man he never knew the prison farm he sings about from the inside. Bukka White on the contrary (see his Parchman Farm Blues).
Covers:
Manfred Mann [BBC session]
Wilde Flowers [crediting Bukka White]
Johnny Winter [single with his group The Traits, reissued on debut album First Winter]
Brendan Croker & The Serious Offenders [during their Belgian prison tour; crediting Bukka White]
Brendan Croker uses three verses from Bukka White's 1940 version (see there), but the opening line and the melody are Mose's. Brendan claims he didn't know this version, worse: never could stand Mose Allison.
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)