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 Parchman Farm Blues), but the opening line and the melody are Mose's. Brendan claimed 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)