No, I'm far from Philadelphia now, as W.C. Fields liked to boast.

I should correct, and amplify on, my earlier post, and try to give a history of the song as best I know it, in response to some of the guesses (a few of which are wide of the mark) and questions above.

I got the song in the mid-1950s from the Lomaxes' 1934 American Ballads and Folk Songs (not Our Singing Country as I first remembered). It's on p. 196. Apparently I was the first to pick it up and sing it, though it had lain around unnoticed in that well-known collection for twenty years.

Peace's guess is right on the money. The Lomax headnote says "An eighteen-year-old black girl, in prison for murder, sang the tune and the first stanza of these blues." The Lomaxes added a number of "floating verses" from other, uncredited sources, and named it "Woman Blue."

So I resurrected and debuted the song. I followed the tune given in Lomax, roughly but not exactly, changed the song from a woman's to a man's viewpoint, dropped two verses, and was its first arranger, voice and guitar in a heavy drag downbeat, sort of an early folk-rock sound.

I sang it a lot in folk circles around Philadelphia, in concerts, around Boston, mostly at the legendary Old Joe Clarke's, and in Dartmouth Outing Club hiker/climber/skier circles, which took me around New York State and New England circa 1957-60. I also sang it in the west, in Wyoming/Tetons "Teton Tea Parties" and on the West Coast, especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles, late summer-early fall '59. Then I went in the Army (sorta like prison) and everything went on hold.

As previously stated, Tossi Aaron learned the song from me in Philadelphia around 1959. She sang it on her Prestige LP. The song traveled around for years among a few East and West Coast folksingers but was not sung by very many people (most white kids took a while to crash the blues).

No well-known singer recorded it until the Kingston Trio. They presumably got it from some West Coast singer who heard me in '59 -- it's possible they heard it from Tossi Aaron's LP, but that LP didn't get much West Coast circulation as far as I know. I never knew Dave Guard personally but he could perhaps have heard me in a West Coast hoot or concert, or else got it from someone who did. The Trio may well have been the Seldom Scene's source, as they drew from all sorts of music stylists.

The next breakout singer to record it was James Taylor in, I think, 1967. He picked it up during his teen years, probably at the hoots on Martha's Vineyard. It may have come from the Trio LP, Tossi's LP, or from some hiker or beach bum who got it from me via New England hoot circles.

Janis Joplin got the song almost simultaneously, perhaps from James, or vice versa. Her source could, I think, have been someone on the West Coast who'd heard it from me, or could have been James. Janis, blues freak that she was, was presumably Jerry Garcia and the Dead's source, perhaps via Jorma Kaukkonen who was the real blues fanatic in that crowd.

Later versions, like the Byrds, Martin-Neil, Rowan & Rice and so on, all derive from those early ones. There is, I think I can state categorically, no other source or root for this song apart from Lomax and me. I have never heard any other song that could be credibly a version of it.

Don't be misled by the Google associations. The song has nothing to do with C.C/Easy Rider or any of the other Rider songs; it is distinct and quite different.

Neither Blind Lemon Jefferson nor Leadbelly recorded the song in any form I know of, and I've heard virtually everything by both men. However, a Lomax verse I didn't use, "Did you ever wake up and find your rider gone?" is heard in various 1920s recordings, and "Sun goin' to shine in my back door some day / Wind's gonna rise up, blow my blues away" is of course universal from c. 1920 on.

The rest of the verses sound like good solid traditional blues but are unique to this song. However, because they were supplied by the Lomaxes, I think we have to worry, as with much Lomax material, that they may have been tinkered with by Alan Lomax, who did more rewriting than he admitted. They're great verses, though, and make the song what it is.

The unnamed Lomax source (doesn't that frost ya? couldn't they have given her name? or did they think that would have endangered her in prison?) is the originator of the core song. Wish we knew her name so we could credit her.

Probably I shoulda copyrighted it. (Everybody else since has.) But in those days a lot of us believed traditional songs were free as the air and should not be locked down. The music industry, obviously, disagreed.

You could, if you wish, credit it Traditional, arr. Bob Coltman.

I'm proud to be the guy who, after Lomax, started the song on its musical rounds. All credit to the Lomaxes for putting it together, and to Tossi, who knew a good song when she heard one.

Bob