The Further You Drive Me Away (The Matchbox Blues Blues, Pt. 2 of 2)

BACK TO PART ONE

• Larry Hensely - Matchbox Blues (1934)(mp3) (via)
• Leadbelly - Matchbox Blues (2/5/1935)(mp3) (buy)
• Joe Shelton - Match Box Blues (12-18-1935)(mp3) (thanks, Chris)
• Big Bill Broonzy - Matchbox Blues (12-12-1936)(mp3) (buy)
• Black Ivory King - Match Box Blues (1937) (mp3) (buy)
• Roy Newman and His Boys - Matchbox Blues (1939) (mp3) (buy)
• Roy Shaffer - The Matchbox Blues (6/26/1939) (mp3) (buy)
• Sam Price - Match Box Blues (1941)(mp3) (buy)
• Shelton Brothers - Matchbox Blues (1947)(mp3) (thanks to Lee from Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else)

What seems to be the first full cover of the Jefferson tune on disc, a 1934 solo track by Larry Hensley - a sometime coal miner from Corbin, Kentucky whose main gig was with his mayor's old-time string band - could raise concerns over the change in musical transmission between the oral tradition and an era with permanent records.  Hensley recreates Jefferson's Okeh single, nearly note-for note line-for-line (lyrically, "brown across town" becomes "girl uptown," the last stanza is dropped).  An excellent performance, but it didn't add anything to the musical conversation... other than a target demographic.  The fidelity could have been a tribute, or an exercise, or an attempt at usurpation:  As a white man, his Vocalion record would go out as part of the label's hillbilly music catalog while Jefferson's would get stuck under "race music."  Hensley's take would "in some circles establish authorship credit."

The tune had hardly hit a dead end.  Jefferson's protégé and partner, Leadbelly, recorded a version in 1935 that interjected a shrill, barked narrative between single, thrice-repeated lines.  "Sitting down here wondering would a matchbox hold my clothes" was the only sentence his and Jefferson's songs had in common; a nearly identical track Ledbetter recorded just two weeks before his "Matchbox Blues" cover was called "Packin' Trunk Blues."

One year later, Mississippi-born Chicago Blues founding father Big Bill Broonzy - again, keeping only that single "matchbox" line - would deepen the song's sound, adding a band (pianist Black Bob and bassist Bill Settles) and vocal fills between the lines.  Dave "Black Ivory King" Alexander's career resulted in only four recordings, one a 1937 solo piano version of "Matchbox Blues;" it too only uses the one line.

Roy Newman and His Boys - a white western swing band from Texas - used only the famous stanza in their easy, smooth 1939 adaptation.  Their "Matchbox" lyrics also include a pair of lines which had appeared in Bessie Smith's 1927 "Back-Water Blues" ("It rained five days, clouds turned dark at night/You know there's trouble taking place in the lower lands at night) and a stanza that can be found in Jefferson's 1926 "That Black Snake Moan" ("Mmmmm... What's the matter now?  You told me late last night I didn't need no mama no how.").

The same year, using the same stanza, Roy Shaffer did a solo guitar country take whose speed and its emphasis on rocking between bass notes either directly influenced or presaged Perkins'  rockabilly song.  Besides the "matchbox" phrases, there's a stanza ("When you see me coming, baby raise your windows high/But when you see me leaving, baby hang your head and cry") that might come from "Bully of the Town," a bluegrass song with roots in the late 19th century.  The Appalachian-focused collection on which this track now appears lists the song credit as "Traditional, arr. Roy Shaffer;" its booklet notes, "We know little or nothing of Shaffer.  He recorded one session for Bluebird and another for Decca before disappearing back into the obscurity from which he'd barely arisen."

Sam "Sammy" Price was a Texas-born, New York-based jazz pianist.  He kept a band - his "Texas Bluesicians" - while holding down positions as a staff musician and music supervisor for Decca.  This "Matchbox" is a sore thumb, here; it abandons the 2x+1 stanza structure after six lines, is heavy on the horns, neither its sophistication nor its slang seem genuine.  I'm not sure who sings on this track; whoever it is, they sure don't sound Texan.

The Shelton Brothers - Bob Attlesey and Joe Attlesey (Shelton was their mother's maiden name) - recorded "Match Box Blues" at least three times.  Twice during a prolific stretch in the 1930's, when they dropped over 150 sides for Decca:  An August 20th, 1935 session with Joe on lead vocal/mandolin, Bob on guitar/backing vocal and Curley Fox on fiddle (this went unissued) - and a December 18, 1935 recording  with Joe singing and playing guitar and Fox fiddling (issued as a Joe Shelton record).  I'd love to compare/contrast those recordings with the 1947 King Records version, but I can't find the first two anywhere.  This later version is Western swing, with electric guitar, bass, and piano; lyrically, it's almost an exact duplicate of Big Bill Broonzy's 1936 recording.

UPDATE:  The 1935 Joe Shelton recording is even closer to Broonzy's version - or vice versa.  Broonzy's version wasn't recorded until a year later (12-12-36).  It would be interesting to know where the Sheltons got their lyrics... Though my inclination to think they based their "Match Box Blues" on an already existing performing version of the song, the same one Broonzy used, as opposed to making influential modifications themselves that Broonzy also later adopted, plays into the standard fallacy that black musicians always innovated, white musicians always copied.  (Which goes against the whole jist of my jab, here.)

Big Bill Broonzy:

Standing here wondering : would a matchbox hold my clothes
When I leave this town I don't need no suitcase I know
Hey Pretty mama : tell me what's the matter now
Well you trying to quit your daddy but good God you don't know how
I'm gonna cross Red River : i'm sure going to leave this town
Because the gal that I'm loving : she done tore my featherbed down
Bulldog in the alley : jumping up against the chain
And I've got a brownskinned woman : that's doin me just the same
If my train don't run : I've got a doggone mule to ride
I don't have to catch him : ‘cause he's already tied 

Shelton Brothers (1947):

I'm standing here thinking : would a matchbox hold my clothes
When I leave this town I won't need no suitcase I know
Hey Pretty mama : tell me what's your troubles now
You're trying to quit me honey : but good gal you don't know how
(solo)
I'm going ‘cross Red River : i'm going to leave this town
Because the woman I love : has tore my playhouse down
There's a bulldog in the alley : jumping against his chain
I've got a highbrow woman : that's doin me just the same
I woke up this morning : between midnight and day
I grabbed that pillow : where my good gal used to lay
If my train don't run : I've got a doggone mule to ride
I don't have to catch him : because he's already tied 

There's an extra verse, and some of the (Oh, my!) racier elements have been softened ("God" has become "gal," a featherbed's now a playhouse, the "brownskinned" woman is now "highbrow").

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You throw all of the above in a bucket, do you get this?:

• Carl Perkins -Matchbox (1-23-1957)(mp3) (buy)
• Carl Perkins -Matchbox (1957 alt. take)(mp3) (buy)

(The other take is eighteen whole seconds longer.  Simply unacceptable.)

If you listen to that assemblage - and we'll get to that again, with credits and whatnot - there's a definite jump when you hit this track.  And not because it's plugged-in, now; because it's wired.  This is December of 1956, this is Carl Perkins and his brothers Jay (rhythm guitar) and Clayton (bass) and drummer W.S. Holland.  Sitting in on piano, there's Jerry Lee Lewis.  And here's that Les Paul Gibson and that weird Ray Butts amp and that thing those four Sun studio walls do.

Supposedly, it was Perkins' father who suggested the song - which would handily put the kibosh on the I-learned-black-music-from-black-people-white-music-from-white-people... unless the old man knew the words from Davis or Hensley or Newman or Shaffer or any one of the three Shelton Brothers recordings or whoall else.  A lot of things happened between 1924 and whenever those lines got between Buck Perkins' ears.  The Internet don't know everything.

So there's only two Blind Lemon Jefferson's lines - if they were Blind Lemon Jefferson's lines - in "Matchbox."  But those two lines are also 60% of the song.  Because just like that riff rocks back and forth, the words keep coming back.  It's not a proper chorus, but the reprisals work the same way, it's a lyrical hook.  Song used to wander off to wherever - appropriately, maybe - but now it's been restructured, reigned in.

Only two of the rest of the lines are Perkins'!  (At least, I can't find them anywhere else.)  "I'm an old poor boy, just a long way from home/Guess I'll never be happy, everything I do is wrong."  That's amazing pop song stuff, blunt and unforgiving - Everything I do is wrong?! - for a track that's consciously dropped its "Blues."  The last bit of the song keeps more with the spirit of the sound:  It's an incongruous come-on.  But that's been swiped, too:  The "little dog" line was in use at least as far back as 1941; it's in Sonny Boy Williamson's "Broken Hearted Blues." 

Only two of the lines are Perkins', but maybe the whole song is.

Because now you've got two standards that get covered and covered and covered again.

• Jerry Lee Lewis - Matchbox (2-16-1957)(mp3) (buy)
• Jerry Lee Lewis - Matchbox (Live at the Star Club)(1964) (mp3) (buy)
• Billy Wayne & The Rockin' Bandits - Matchbox (1958)(mp3) (buy)
• The Swing Rayes - Matchbox (19??)(mp3) (buy)

Lewis released his own - and when Jerry Lee sings a song it's always Jerry Lee's - version of "Matchbox" that same year.  He swaps out come-ons; the little dog's out.  "If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree/I got news for you baby, I'll leave you here in misery."  (The peaches line is, of course, not new at all.  It was used in Frank Stokes' 1927 recording of "Mr. Crump Don't Like It," William Harris's 1928 "Hot Time Blues," Joe Linthecome's 1929 "Pretty Mama Blues."  And so on.)  Lewis' Sun single's less rockabilly, more influence.  There's more hillbilly cockwalk, there's a richer, bluesier boogie, there's "Oh yeah, ooo-wee" choral fills that recall Broonzy.

Also, Jerry Lee takes care of business in a minute forty-four.  1:44!

I've included a live version from Lewis' must-have 1964 live record (because if you can, you do).  He includes both puppies and peaches; Perkins' subsequent versions messed with the lyrics, similarly.

The song wasn't a massive hit, but kids who'd thrown together rock bands latched on to the song, learned it word-for-word.  The Billy Wayne (Rollison) & The Rockin' Bandits track's from a local 1958 radio broadcast (Peckerwood!).  The Swing Rayes version is included on this site, which lists (scroll down) a bunch of rockabilly "Matchbox" covers by acts obscure and not.  (It's included here because it rocks.)  Most of those are, unfortunately, undated, and more unfortunately, uniform.  That might speak to the song's solidity, its genre, the level of artistry of the bands; some of that might just be what happens when people learn music from records.  The history of "Matchbox" isn't as varied and listenable as the history of "Match Box Blues."

More historical, maybe.  Because Carl Perkins' records went places Blind Lemon Jefferson's didn't:

[Paul McCartney and Carl Perkins, 1995]

• Terry Wayne - Matchbox (1957)(mp3) (buy)
• The Beatles - Matchbox Blues(Live at BBC, 7/10/1963)(mp3) (buy)

The music jumped the pond immediately - witness Brit Terry Wayne's shrill cover from 1957.  But it would take seven years to jump back.

Paul McCartney made the assertion that "If there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles."  George Harrison, in tribute to an idol, briefly used the stage name "Carl Harrison."  The Beatles covered at least five of Perkins' songs ("Honey Don't," "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," "Lend Me Your Comb," "Glad All Over").  They started playing "Matchbox" circa-1961, Pete Best on vocals.  John Lennon can be heard (barely) singing it on the 1962 bootlegs of the band's Hamburg performances.  Ringo Starr took the mic for both the band's 1963 BBC performance and the June, 1964 recording session.  The studio version was issued as single b/w "Slow Down" (which reached the #17 spot in the U.S.); it appeared on the UK-only Long Tall Sally EP and the cobbled-together US LP Something New (and, eventually, the Past Masters Vol. 1 CD).

The four must have heard both Perkins' and Lewis' recordings - they used both "puppy" and "peaches."  Amusingly, they used misheard lyrics:  "I'm sitting here watching," Starr sings, "A matchbox hole in my clothes."

Perkins didn't correct them, even though he was there during the recording.

He'd never had a second "Shoes"-sized hit for Sam Phillips, had followed Johnny Cash to Columbia, hadn't hit there either.  Rock and Roll was withering away, stateside.  Perkins' brother Jay died of cancer in 1958.  Carl had mostly crawled into a bottle when a pair of overseas tours in 1964 gave him a wake-up and a hero's welcome.  He kept writing - had hits for Johnny Cash ("Daddy Sang Bass") on through to The Judds (1989's "Let Me Tell You About Love," which has the awesome line "The world'd be in a dreadful fix if it wasn't for the love between cats and chicks").  He joined Cash's band, frequented his TV show.  Was there whenever anyone needed to make a trip back to the well.

• Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash with Carl Perkins - Matchbox (1969)(mp3)
• The Silver Wilburys (Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Taj Mahal, John Fogerty, Jesse Ed Davis) - Matchbox (2/1987)(mp3)

Not stunning performances, and the latter bootleg's cut off... but c'mon.  Most of the Cash/Dylan Nashville Skyline recordings have a sloppy congeniality.  In fact, the best thing about that recording is Perkins' solo.  The so-called 1987 "Silver Wilburys" performance is heavy on the impromptu.  Which is good, right?  Also, with Taj involved, this may be the only version of either song up here that has black people and white people playing together.  (More:  The sound and video are shaky, but Perkins joined Dylan on the song in 1994.)

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"Matchbox Blues" wasn't eclipsed by "Matchbox."  The former continues as a blues staple, the latter a rockabilly one.  The same year Perkins released his song, Cousin Leroy (Rozier?) released "Will a Matchbox Hold My Clothes?" which - I can't find more than 30 seconds of it online - might have been the first electric blues cover of the Jefferson song.  Since then it's been handled by Joel Hopkins, Albert King, John Lee Hooker, The Hopkins Brothers (Lightning, Joel, and John Henry), J.T. Adams and Shirley Griffith, Yank Rachell, Big Joe Turner.  Many more.  The rockabilly number's spent time with everyone from Ronnie Hawkins to Lemmy from Motorhead.  And Sleepy Labeef!  Never forget Sleepy Labeef.

The "matchbox" line continued to get dropped in prominent places.  In 1958, Ike Turner (RIP) and his Kings of Rhythm recorded several takes of an original song they called both "Matchbox" and "I'm Gonna Forget About You" which featured the line (wait for it) "I got my clothes in a matchbox, I'm gonna forget about you."  And then there's Sam Cooke, who dropped the line - as a quote, perhaps? - at the end of 1962's "Somebody Have Mercy."

• Sam Cooke - Somebody Have Mercy(1962) (mp3) (buy)

Once more, from the top!

• Various Artists - Match Box Variations (1924-1964)(mp3)

[In order:  Ma Rainey (Blues, GA), Blind Lemon Jefferson (Blues, TX), Will Weldon (Blues, AR), Willie Baker (Blues, GA), Jimmie Davis (Country Blues, LA), Larry Hensley (Hillbilly Blues, KY), Leadbelly (Blues, TX), Big Bill Broonzy (Blues, MS/Chicago), Black Ivory King (Blues, TX), Roy Newman (Western Swing, TX), Roy Shaffer (Hillbilly Blues, VA?), Sam Price (Jazz/Blues, NY/TX), Shelton Brothers (Western Swing, TX), Carl Perkins (Rockabilly, TN), Jerry Lee Lewis (Rock, LA), Terry Wayne (Rock, UK), The Beatles (Rock, UK), Sam Cooke (Soul, Chicago)]

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Hey, you sick of that song, yet?  Because I want to get us back to where we started: The set of the Johnny Cash Show, November 5th, 1970.  Because more happened than made it on the broadcast (or even YouTube!).

The Dominos performance of "It's Too Late" made the air, but the applause leading into the Clapton-Cash dialogue exchange followed a searing version of "Got to Get Better in a Little While," which didn't.  The version of "Matchbox" we all saw, fifteen pages ago, was the band's third go at it.  And luckily someone sneaked out a tape of the whole thing.

• Derek & The Dominos, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins - Matchbox (Take 1)(1971)(mp3)
• Derek & The Dominos, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins - Matchbox (Take 2)(1971)(mp3)
• Derek & The Dominos, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins - Matchbox (Take 3)(1971)(mp3)

The first take has sound problems (though they obviously never fixed the problem with Perkins' mic).  The second take is really just a victory lap.  It's all good, but the highlight's the between-song banter:  Johnny Cash says "Let's rock, children" and - with mic open to the studio audience - "Who's on speed?"

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One last bit of "Matchbox"-related trivia.  This started with some all-star jams; what must have been the very first rock and roll all-star jam took place the day Perkins and his band were rehearsing the song:  December 4th, 1956.  Lewis was practicing with Perkins, Cash was hanging out and looking on, recent Sun graduate Elvis Presley walked in.  Sam Phillips called the press.

Cash didn't stay long - he left before someone figured out they should start rolling tape - but the other three sat around jamming and gabbing.  There are too many snippets and false starts to make it a great listen, musically, but it's priceless fly-on-the-wall stuff.  Worth a listen just to hear Elvis do his impersonation of Jackie Wilson's version of "Don't Be Cruel."

A lot of what the boys jammed at was church music, and this entry's been missing that ingredient.  So sit back and hear the boogietonk have a go at the gospel:

• The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins) - I Shall Not Be Moved (mp3) (buy)

That's it!  I promise!

Next week:  How Bessie Smith's "Don't Belong Here Blues" clearly presaged early Radiohead.  Also:  An exhaustive lyrical history of the word "The."

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This entire entry has been an illustration of what happens when I go to post a YouTube link.

tags: matchbox  tldnr  

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