2:37
single, 1955
Written by McCracklin and Saul Bihari
This is a bumping jump blues about a fellow whose lady has been treating him bad. Instead of blustering or threatening, as in so many songs of this era, he vows instead to tattle to her mother. There's an answering chorus in the lyrics: "Gonna tell your mama how you've been treatin' poor me / (Don't do that, she might get mad)." Alas, the lighthearted moment passes, and we get to the requisite threatening: "If you done me wrong, well then you're six feet in the ground / (Don't do that, I might get mad)." One line here jumped out at me because it evokes, in both words and in phrasing, J.B. Lenoir's "Mama Talk to Your Daughter," from the same year: "Gonna talk to her daughter." I wonder if one inspired the other?
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