Req: Bourgeois Blues (Ry Cooder version)

Subject: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: J.Galt
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 04:35 PM

I have exhausted my fingers searching for this.....can someone help we with the words/tab/music to 'Bourgeois Blues'. I heard it played recently by someone on the slide guitar but did not catch the artists name.

Subject: RE: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: puzzled
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 05:32 PM

Here's the way i hear it. Lomax and Leadbelly wrote it, I think. you should probably check the DT

Well listen here people, listen to me Don't you ever try to buy a house in Washington DC Cause it's a bourgeois town living in a bourgeois town I got the bourgeois blues going to spread the news around

Me and my best girlfriend were standing on the steps I heard a white man say don't want no black folks up here He was a bourgeois man living in a bourgeois town I got the bourgeois blues going to spread the news around

Land of the brave and the home of the free I ain't going to be mistreated by no bourgeoisie. living in a bourgeois town living in a bourgeois town I got the bourgeois blues going to spread the news around

The color of your skin don't make no difference to me Well, just don't try to thrown down nothing that's bourgeoisie living in a bourgeois town living in a bourgeois town I going to bourgeois town going to spread the news around

Subject: RE: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: puzzled
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 05:45 PM

Check Out Roger's excellent explanation on how to use this forum in the thread called "Delta Blues lyrics sought"

Subject: RE: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: J. Galt
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 06:11 PM

Help was appreicated, I was not aware of the 'threads' archive and it's use......

Subject: RE: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 06:45 PM

J. Galt,

Welcome aboard the Mudcat. As you can see, your request was an 'easy one.' If you didn't get to search the forum, one thread says everything I know about the song. Click here if you haven't already found the thread.

The song brings back some memories for me. As a very young folkie, some friends and I bought tickets to see Joan Baez. She was performing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. about 50 miles away. About 6 of us piled into someone's father's station wagon (he had to drive) for our first real "folk" concert. Well, Joan had an opening act. His name was Pete Seeger. I had barely heard of him, buy Joan was trying to expose her audience to the "real Mc Coy". It had not been so long before that Pete had been blacklisted because he was a "Commie sympathizer."

Well, if you are Pete Seeger, an old friend of Lead Belly's, and you are singing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., well you'd just have to sing this song. I think Pete was along for the incident in D.C. that provoked Huddie to write the song. An additional irony is that Constitution Hall was a "bourgeois hall" run by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They were infamous for allegedly refusing to allow a famous black woman to sing in their hall. Some 'Catter will refresh my memory with the name of this famous woman.

Thanks for the memory J. Galt. Hope you stick around.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: Steve N.
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 07:46 PM

In case you haven't already gotten all you need on this, there is a wonderful version done by Ry Cooder (I think it's on his "Into the Purple Valley" album, but I'm not sure). As usual with Ry, it sounds like this is the way Leadbelly would have done it! And by the way, some of the verse lyrics are more forthright, if offensive, than those found above, leading me to believe they are what Leadbelly truly had to say.

Subject: RE: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: Ronn
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 08:23 PM

Paul Black (of Paul Black & the Flip Kings) is a slide player who records for the House Of Blues label. He frequently performs this song in his shows; it might be on his CD.

The singer barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the DAR was Marian Anderson. This was during the Roosevelt administration. Ms Anderson instead performed at the Washington Monument and dedicated her first song (America The Beautiful) to Eleanor Roosevelt, who publicly broke with the DAR over the issue.

Subject: RE: Re:Bourgeois Blues
From: J.Galt
Date: 18 Feb 99 - 09:07 PM

I want to thank all that replied. Ry Cooder's version was the one I heard. I've just got back from the 'Warehouse' with my copy of 'Chicken Skin Music'and trying to determine the tuning..........thanks again from a first timer. I think I'll stick around, great archives and Threads!

Subject: RE: Bourgeois Blues - Leadbelly
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Apr 02 - 05:44 PM

A Ry Cooder version with chords at Blues

---

BOURGEOIS BLUES
(Huddie Ledbetter/Alan Lomax)
(G7) - (C7) - (G) - (D7)

(G7) Me and my wife went all over town
And everywhere we went people turned us down
Lord, in a (C7) bourgeois town
It’s a (G) bourgeois town
I got the (D7) bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all a- (G) round

Home of the brave, land of the free
I don’t wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say “I don’t want no niggers up there”
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow
Lord, it’s a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

I tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC
‘Cause it’s a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Subject: RE: Bourgeois Blues - Leadbelly
From: Long Firm Freddie
Date: 14 Apr 02 - 05:25 AM

Bourgeois Blues is in Folk Blues, a compilation by Jerry Silverman copyright 1958, the copy I have being a 1968 reprint by Oak Publications of the Macmillan Company hard copy version of 1958.

The version in Folk Blues is virtually the same as that on the Ry Cooder link that Dicho supplied.

Jerry Silverman writes: "A visit by Martha and Huddie Ledbetter to Washington, D.C., in the 1940's resulted in this song, the mood of which was later ehoed by Ted Poston writing in the New York Post (April 17, 1956): "I can't take it anymore", you say, recalling a near fist-fight with a white bus driver that morning and a donnybrook that night with a Negro cab driver who preferred white customers in Washington. "Maybe New York spoiled me", you admit, "but I'm tired of Jim Crow restaurants, Jim Crow hotels and the whole Jim Crow town" (That was wartime Washington.)" (Quote credited to NY Post, 1956).

I've got the sheet music if someone would be prepared to suffer death by Freddie's appalling scanning techniques...

LFF

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bourgeois Blues (Leadbelly)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 04:38 PM

Since Ry Cooder did this on Chicken Skin Music - I play it in my own home, but i don't suppose I've played it in public for about 15 years or so. I'm not sure I have the moral right to sing it -its a fabulous song. But the exclusion of these terms from every day life is definitely a turn for the better.