By: Billy Vera
What constitutes a “great” blues song? Since the melodies can vary depending on the singer’s personal choices, blues songwriting is primarily about the lyrics.

Most knowledgeable fans would agree that, among blues songwriters, there are two who tower above all others: Willie Dixon and Percy Mayfield, each of whom worked in a different arena, Dixon in the lexicon of the displaced 20^th Century Southern Negro, recently up from the country, finding his way in the big city, and Mayfield, the more urbane hipster, his couplets filled with metaphors that reflect a more savvy, streetwise author.

Wllie Dixon/ Koko Taylor & Howlin’ Wolf – Wang Dang Doodle

Dixon’s greatest blues could fill a book of their own. One tune that celebrates the joys of partying on the weekend is “Wang Dang Doodle,” as recorded by Koko Taylor and Howlin’ Wolf.

Tell Automatic Slim, tell razor-totin’ Jim
Tell butcher knife totin’ Annie, tell fast talkin’ Fannie
We gonna pitch a ball, down at the union hall
We gonna romp and stomp at midnight
We gonna fuss and fight till daylight
We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long

Percy Mayfield/Ray Charles – Two Years Of Torture

Percy Mayfield, on the other hand, has more musical variety in his work. Indeed, his best-known songs, “Please Send Me Someone To Love” and “Hit The Road, Jack,” stray from the usual blues form, the former written in the blues ballad idiom while the latter is a novelty he wrote for a planned stage musical that never came to pass.

He did, however, come up with at least two of the great straight blues of all time. 

In “Two Years Of Torture,” he writes:
I had a real fine woman, fine as she could be
But the syndicators and back-biters
Stole that little girl away from me

And,

Two years of being without her
Seven hundred and thirty days
But I still remember her little brown body
And sweet little baby ways
Two years of torture and my heart’s in misery
But I’m doomed as a lover until she comes back to me

As a staff songwriter for Ray Charles, he said that he had to write with Ray’s real life in mind, “…’cause, you see, Ray had a habit at the time,” he said, referring to the star’s well-known heroin addiction. One example, in “But On The Other Hand, Baby.”

You know I’m hooked for you mama
That’s why you sling your weight around

Joe Turner/Billie Holiday – Fine and Mellow

Sometimes, it only takes one single line to make a blues song great. Joe Turner once told me he wrote the song, “Fine and Mellow” as a gift for his friend Billie Holiday. The tune’s moment of greatness comes in verse two:
He wears high-drape pants, stripes are really yellow
But when he starts in to love me
He’s so fine and mellow

Contemporaneous colloquialisms can make a blues song stick in the mind. A line like the above grabbed many a 1939 juke box listener where he or she lived.

It was said that Big Joe could sing one song for an hour straight, never repeating verse after verse from his vast memory bank of lines from the blues canon, but does that constitute writing a blues song? I think not.

Joe Turner – Roll ‘Em Pete

Although, two of these in particular, “Roll ‘Em Pete” and “Cherry Red,” became standards over the years. Whether the words came from Turner’s mind or from his memory bank is immaterial. They exist, now and forever, in the way he put them together, whether sung by himself, or Joe Williams or whomever.

She got eyes like diamonds, teeth shine like Klondike gold
Every time she kiss me, she sends my mellow soul
You so beautiful but you got to die one day
All I want’s a little lovin’ before you pass away

Or,

I never loved a woman, and I hope I never will
‘Cause a lovin’ proposition might get somebody killed
Now you can take me baby, put me in your big brass bed
I want you to rock me baby till my face turns cherry red

One of Joe’s biggest hit records was one that Jesse Stone compiled in just such a manner, “Shake, Rattle And Roll,”

Well you wear those dresses, sun comes shinin’ through
I can’t believe my eyes all that mess belongs to you

And,

I’m like a one-eyed cat, peepin’ in a seafood store
Well I can look at you and tell you ain’t no child no more

T-Bone Walker

Let’s take a look at T-Bone Walker’s much-covered classic, “Call It Stormy Monday.” In his song, he cleverly takes the days of the week, describing each one’s singular properties. When he reaches the end of the work week, he is compelled to shout when he delivers the line, 

The eagle flies on Friday and Saturday I go out to play
Sunday I go to church and I kneel down and pray
Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy on me

If a song’s greatness can be measured by its ubiquity, then “Stormy Monday” is indeed great. 

Lieber & Stoller/Wilbert Harrison – Kansas City

Judged by the same measure, “Kansas City,” composed by a pair of Jewish teenagers from Los Angeles would qualify as well. The boys were Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who would soon become rich and famous for songs like “Charlie Brown,” “Yakety Yak,” “Is That All There Is,” “Jailhouse Rock” and 25 other tunes recorded by Elvis Presley.

In their early career, the duo wrote countless blues, blues by the pound, usually at the behest of record producer Ralph Bass or bandleader Johnny Otis. The most famous version of their song was by one Wilbert Harrison, who worked as a one-man band, sitting behind his drums and playing any number of instruments at the same time.

The song’s most memorable line:
They got some crazy little women there
And I’m gonna get me one

Lieber & Stoller/Big Mama Thorton – Hound Dog

Leiber and Stoller’s other major contribution to the blues canon is a song commissioned by Johnny Otis for Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton. They named it “Hound Dog.” Again, Leiber’s earthy lyrics:
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog
Been snoopin’ ‘round my door
You can wag your tail
But I ain’t gonna feed you no more

It becomes, thanks to a misunderstanding by a Las Vegas lounge act named Freddie Bell & the Bellboys and later copied by Elvis, 

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog
Just cryin’ all the time
You ain’t never caught a rabbit
And you ain’t no friend of mine

Justly proud of the way he envisioned his words, Leiber was infuriated by the change in his masterpiece, but his fury didn’t stop him from cashing the check.

Roy Alfred /Ray Charles – I’ve Got News For You

Another great blues song was written by Roy Alfred, a lyricist best known for novelties like “The Hucklebuck” and “Rock And Roll Waltz,” as well as the lovely doo-wop ballad, “Wisdom Of A Fool.”  His contribution to the blues was one he wrote for Woody Herman in 1947, “I’ve Got News For You,” and revived in 1961 by Ray Charles. 

The song became a genre standard with great lines like:
You said before we met
That your life was awful tame
When I took you to a night club 
The whole band knew your name
Somehow your story don’t ring true little girl
I got news for you

Memphis Slim/B.B. King – Everyday I Have The Blues

John “Peter” Chatman aka Memphis Slim had a knack for writing great blues tunes. He first recorded in 1940 for OKeh, then for Bluebird under the aegis of music publisher Lester Melrose, who gave him his stage name. His best songs include “Messin’ Around,” “Mother Earth,” “The Comeback” and his most famous of all, “Everyday I Have The Blues,” first recorded by himself in 1947 under the title “Nobody Loves Me.”

The song became a hit several times, first by Lowell Fulson in 1950, then Joe Williams in 1952, B.B. King in 1955 and, one year later, again by Williams, this time with Count Basie. The latter version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1992.

Mercy Dee Walton /Buddy Guy – One Room Country Shack

Mercy Dee Walton seems to have had an interest in architecture, as revealed in his two songs of note, “Lonesome Cabin Blues” and “One Room Country Shack.” Here is the song as performed by Buddy Guy with Otis Spann.

Sitting here a thousand miles from nowhere
In this one room country little shack
My only worldly possession
Is a raggedy old little eleven foot cotton sack

Or,

I’m gonna leave here in the mornin’
I’m about to go out of my mind
I’m gonna find me some kind of a companion
Even if she’s dumb, deaf, crippled and blind

If Percy deals in the coin of urban ghetto poetry, then Mercy Dee’s poetry is that of the rural field hand, the cotton sack he sings of is the one he must fill with cotton balls in the hot, blinding sun.

Charlie Singleton/Teddy McRae/Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson – Person To Person

Big Joe Turner’s “Cherry Red,” referenced above, is an eight-bar blues, as opposed to the more common I-IV-V twelve bar variety. Along those same lines is “Person To Person,” composed by Charlie Singleton and saxophonist Teddy McRae and first recorded by Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and later revived by Little Willie John, Lou Rawls and others.

Person To Person contains some of Singleton’s finest lyrics:
Ain’t no use to telephone me, I can’t hug no telephone
All the time you telephonin’, you could be comin’ home

Ain’t no use to send no letter, I can’t hug no paper tight
Ain’t no use to send no message, it can’t talk to me at night

Ain’t no use to send your brother, I won’t talk to no one else
Ain’t no use to send your mother, you just got to come yourself

Little girl I have suffered each day since you’ve been gone
I need you person to person
Bring your big fine foxy self on home

• Billy Vera, Singer-songwriter and historian billyvera.com

Classic Blues Songs
Recording & Lyrics

1920s Jazz