Sam Chatmon: "'Making a pallet on the floor,' it's a blues type, but it ain't a blues."
Alan Lomax: "It kind of came before the blues."
Chatmon: "Uh-huh.... The first blues I heard... [went] 'I'm going down the river to jump and drown....' ... ['Pallet'] was about the first, second thing I learned...." (August 1978)

From Sam's jaunty version:
"... Just take one pillow off your featherbed and put it under your loving daddy's head.... He done sold his cotton...."