Lyr Req: Bound Steel Blues (Bill Shepherd)

Subject: Lyrics to 'Bound Steel Blues'
From: GUEST,jeremyhanley
Date: 26 Mar 17 - 08:48 AM

Hi Mudcats,
I'm a musician who wants to record a version of Bill Shepherd's 'Bound Steel Blues', which I have on Yazoo CD "The Music of Kentucky" vol. 2.
Can anyone help me with the lyrics; it's a very rare record apparently, and the Yazoo version is scratchy and indecipherable in parts.
Thank you

Subject: RE: Lyrics to 'Bound Steel Blues'
From: GUEST,MVS
Date: 26 Mar 17 - 12:22 PM

Mike Seeger recorded this on his "Third Farewell Reunion" album, backed by the NLCR. His reading sounds pretty dead-on to me.

He doesn't include the second verse, which is the only hard part of the song. That portion sounds a lot more worn than the rest of the surface of the only known surviving copy of the 78, as if the owner kept playing that verse over and over with a fuzzy needle. The other lyrics are conventional enough blues phrases that you know where it's going as soon as you get part of the verse, but all I can make out on that stanza is "you and I," concluding the first and second lines. The rest is just a mumble to my ear.