The many versions of ‘How Long, How Long Blues’: Leroy Carr’s lyrics together for the first time online

Leroy Carr’s ‘How Long, How Long Blues’ is one of the most famous and most covered blues songs of all time. First released in 1928, the song was so popular that Carr recorded five further versions of it between 1928 and 1932. This post presents and discusses the lyrics to Carr’s biggest hit.

Singer and pianist Leroy Carr (1905-1935) was one of the most popular African American blues entertainers of the 1920s and 30s. In contrast with some of the more famous blues from this period, Carr’s performances held none of the raw, rural feeling of some of his contemporaries, such as Sleepy John Estes or Charlie Patton. Carr, and his longtime musical partner Scrapper Blackwell (guitar), were masters of the urbane and sophisticated ‘race records’ market; their records sold well throughout African American communities across the United States.

[An advert for Carr’s first ‘How Long, How Long Blues’, Chicago Defender, 8th September 1928]

Despite Carr’s relatively short career, his records have had a massive impact on blues history. Many of his songs have become standard repertoire for blues bands, such as ‘Blues Before Sunrise’, ‘Midnight Hour Blues’, and of course ‘How Long How Long Blues’ – which Muddy Waters said was the first blues song he ever learnt. Perhaps most famously, Carr’s classic ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ became the model for Robert Johnson’s ‘Love in Vain Blues’.

I could say much more about the importance of Leroy Carr’s style, but Elijah Wald has already done a great job of this on his website, and in his book Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. What I want to address in this blog is the lyrics to Carr’s ‘How Long How Long Blues’. With each successive recording, Carr substantially reworked the song’s lyrics, even while keeping the melody and the instrumental accompaniment almost exactly the same. Yet, despite the fact that ‘How Long How Long Blues’ remains a staple of blues recordings, gigs and jam sessions the world over, it’s remarkably difficult to find the lyrics to the song online; a quick google search – even including the name ‘Leroy Carr’ – mainly throws up links to Eric Clapton’s cover from his 1994 album From the Cradle. Moreover, it’s especially difficult to find the lyrics to any of Carr’s five other versions of the song!

So, for the first time online (I think!), here are the lyrics to all of Leroy Carr’s ‘How Long, How Long Blues’. As well as a brief discussion of what I find interesting about each version, I’ve also included information as to the matrix number, recording date, and the original Vocalion 78rpm issue, and if you click on the title of each version it will take you to a recording of that particular version.

[Note: as with any transcription from an old 78, it can be very difficult to hear the words Carr is singing. Similarly, there are often words at the beginning of each line that are intentionally mumbled, such as ‘Well’, ‘But’, ‘For’, ‘And’, or ‘Baby’. So please leave a comment below if you hear the lyrics differently!]

How Long, How Long Blues (IND-623-A)
Rec. June 19 1928. (Vocalion 1191)

How Long, Baby How Long
Has that evening train been gone?
How Long, How how Long, Baby How Long

Well, I asked her at the station:
Why’s my baby leavin’ town
You were disgusted, nowhere could peace be found
For how long etc

I can hear the whistle blowin,
But I cannot see no train
And it’s deep down in my heart baby, there lies an aching pain.
For how long etc

Sometimes I feel so disgustin’ and I feel so blue
That I hardly know what in this world baby just to do
For how long etc

And if I could holler, like I was a mountain train
I’d go up on the mountain and I’d call my baby back
For how long etc

And someday you gonna be sorry that you done me wrong
But it will be too late, I will be gone
For so long, so long, baby so long.

My mind gets a ramblin’, I feel so bad
Thinkin’ about the bad luck that I have had
For how long etc

This is Carr’s first recording of ‘How Long’. Note how he squeezes in a slight change to the refrain ‘how long’ in chorus six, where he sings ‘so long’ instead.

---

How Long How Long Blues – Part 2 (C-2688-A)
Rec. December 19, 1928 (Vocalion 1241)

How long, baby how long?
Must I keep my watch in pawn?
How long, how long, baby how long.

I going to the pawn shop
Put my watch in pawn
I don’t want it to tell me
That you have been gone
But so long, so long, baby so long.

I’ve had some trouble up lately
I got locked up in jail
I sat and called you, baby
To come and go my bail
For how long, etc

I’m going down to Georgia
And up to Tennessee
Don’t look me over baby
That’s the last you’ll see of me
But so long, so long, baby so long

The last time I tried to love you
You were so very cold
I thought that I was standing
Holding the North Pole
For how long, etc

I can look and see the green grass
Growing on the hill
But I ain’t see the greenback
On a dollar bill
For so long etc

I haven’t any money
For a ticket on the train
But I would ride the rods baby
To be with you again
For how long etc

In this version, Carr incorporates the ‘so long’ refrain into the rest of the song, alternating it with the regular ‘how long’ version. Interestingly, too the lines about ‘the green grass’ and the ‘greenback’, which are common in modern versions of ‘How Long’, seem to stem from this version of the song. I also like how this version incorporates a number of comedy lines, such as ‘holding the North Pole’, that don’t fit modern performances of this song. Although we now hear ‘How Long Blues’ as heartfelt and quite mournful, it is clear that Carr also intended the song to be heard as jokey and satirical.

---

How Long How Long Blues – Part 3 (C-2689-A)
Rec. December 19, 1928 (Vocalion 1279)

How long, babe how long
Must I sing my lonesome song
How long, how long, baby how long?

I have been waiting
But the mail man leaves no mail
I’m just drifting
Like a ship without a sail
For how long etc

Sometimes I think you love me
And I feel so glad
But you stay away baby
And then I feel so bad
For how long etc

I guess some day you’ll find me baby
Six feet under the ground
And you’ll always be cross you’ve quit me
For I’ll have my face turned down
For how long etc

You went and left me baby
And I do the best I can
But if you had to quit me
Why steal some other woman’s man?
For how long etc

Last night I heard a hound dog babe
And I felt so blue
Cause I dreamt he was in the graveyard
Looking down at you
For how long etc

Sometimes I get to dreaming
That you’re coming back
And I go down to the station
Stand gazin’ up the track
For how long etc

[Final chorus is a piano and guitar instrumental]

In this version, Carr appears to continue to inject some satire into the proceedings, by referring to the popularity of his own record at the start: ‘how long…must I sing my lonesome song?’ Also interesting in this version is that there are far more explicit references to death. In the first version, Carr sings about his love coming back ‘too late’, by which time he ‘will be gone’; this might not necessarily imply death, just that Carr has moved on (to a new place or a new lover). In this version, however, Carr sings specifically about being ‘six feet under ground’, but about his lover being dead and buried, too. I find the final sung chorus very evocative, too, as Carr’s description of going ‘down to the station [to] stand gazin’ up the track’ is far more weighty than simply saying that he ‘couldn’t see no train’, which are the lyrics we’re more used to hearing. Finally, this version is also notable because it is the first to incorporate an instrumental chorus.

---

The New How Long How Long Blues (C-4031-A)
Rec. August 12, 1929 (Vocalion 1435)

How long, baby how long
Do you think I’ll let you do me wrong?
How long etc

If you don’t want me baby
Why don’t you tell me so
I know you love someone else baby
And you can go
For so long etc

And I will tell you
Tell you to your face
That when you’re gone baby
Someone else will take your place
For so long etc

No I ain’t going to cry
Ain’t going to waste no tears
For if you go away baby
I hope you stay a thousand years
For that long, yes that long, baby that long

You are a dirty mistreater
And you ain’t no good
And I wouldn’t [drive?] you back again [inaudible]
Even if it was good
For how long etc

Don’t start that jive baby
Just you leave me alone
Or you’ll be [setting?] up daisies [inaudible]
Round some cold headstone
For so long etc

So go on baby
And just let me be
If I never see you anymore
That’ll be too soon for me
For so long etc

I struggled with hearing several words in this version, so please do let me know if you hear something that I haven’t. In Carr’s ‘New How Long Blues’, he alters the melody of the final phrase – perhaps this is what makes it ‘new’! The refrain alternates a lot more here, from ‘how long’ to ‘so long’ (as we’ve seen earlier), but also to ‘that long’ in chorus four, which is another example of Carr’s use of humour. Like the previous version there is a reference to death in chorus six, only now it might be read as more threatening. Is Carr saying that he will kill his lover for messing him around, or is this another reference to dying from a broken heart? (That is, Carr’s lover will have to arrange the flowers around his grave after he has died.)

---

New How Long How Long Blues – Part 2 (C-7221-A)
Rec. January 16, 1931 (Vocalion 1585)

I think I’ll drop
My baby a line
And let her know
About these hard luck times
For how long etc

I wonder how long
Will these hard times stay
I’ll be so glad
When they go away
For how long etc

And it’s tight up the country
It’s tight in town
I can hardly make it
No matter where I am
For how long etc

Women walk the streets
Wear no boot and shoe
And if a woman can’t make it
What can a poor man do?
For how long etc.

I used to get a dollar
Before I could catch my breath
Now I can’t get a dime
I talked myself to death
For how long etc

Now all of my things
Are all locked up in pawn
How long will these hard luck times hang on?
Well how long etc

I used to have money
Everyday that passed
Now these hard luck times
Got me on my “yes yes yes…”
For how long etc

In this version, Carr does not start with the usual refrain of ‘how long’; instead he deliberates over contacting his absent lover – the only time he does so in any of the ‘How Long Blues’. There’s also a sense in this version that a significant amount of time has passed since the first ‘How Long Blues’: not only does Carr specifically discuss the passing of time in several choruses, but also his choruses are more reflective and observant of the world around him. As with earlier versions, too, there’s an element of humour when Carr censors himself in the final verse!!

---

How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone (11494-a)
Rec. March 15, 1932 (Vocalion 1716)

Mr. Engineer-Man
Turn your train around
My baby’s on there
And she’s southern-bound
For how long, has that evening train been gone?

She left me standing
Throwing up my hands
Said she was moving
Back to [an?]other man
How long, has that evening train been gone?

[Chorus of guitar and piano]

Now here I stand
All blue and sad
Thinking how much I loved her
Ain’t that too bad?
How long, has that evening train been gone?

If I had known
She was gonna leave me that way
My poor broken heart
Would have to pay
How long, has that evening train been gone?

[Chorus of guitar and piano]

Well she’s gone
There’s nothing for me to say
But maybe she will come
Back to me someday
Well how long, has that evening train been gone?

This final version of ‘How Long Blues’ is very interesting, not only because Carr introduces the song without the normal ‘how long’ refrain, but also because he dispenses with it entirely at the end of each chorus – preferring instead ‘how long has that evening train been gone?’ Guitarist Scrapper Blackwell takes a slightly more prominent role here too, in the two instrumental choruses. What is more perplexing, though, is that Carr seems to talk about his lover as though she is actually on the train, having recently departed, even though it is clear in other versions of the song that he has been alone for some time. Does this mean that she has recently come back, only to leave again? I’m also interested in the fact that Carr says his baby is ‘southbound’, as this has significant implications for where he (and in turn his audience) are positioned both literally and metaphorically. While narratives of the blues’s development often highlight the movement northwards by African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century, here it is clear that Carr and his soon-to-be ex lover are somewhere northern already, and that she is going ‘back down south’. This is a further reminder that, as Guthrie Ramsey has argued, the act of travelling south was just as culturally important in midcentury black America as travelling north was; indeed, large numbers of the population did so frequently. Muddy Waters, who settled in Chicago in 1943, had already made several temporary visits to the city before moving permanently, each time returning to Memphis or the Mississippi Delta.

So there you have it – all the lyrics to all of Leroy Carr’s ‘How Long Blues’. There are many layers to these lyrics, and I think that spending some time thinking about what they might mean, and what the successive versions of the song might mean when compared to one another, is very important. We’re very used to this idea that the blues – particularly the ‘country blues’ – is made up of ‘stock phrases’, drawn on by early performers in the spur of the moment. Yet it is clear from Carr’s recordings that he wanted to develop certain themes in particular, and I think that audiences would have listened to later versions of ‘How Long Blues’ with the earlier versions in mind. That Carr had this sort of interaction between himself and his audiences in mind is, I argue, what distinguishes him as such a professional – and is perhaps part of the reason for his success and influence.

One final thing bugs me, however. It is clear that none of Carr’s original recordings match the lyrics most of us now know for ‘How Long Blues’. Sure, many of the same phrases and choruses are there, but the transcriptions above show that the version of ‘How Long Blues’ performed today is in fact a ‘collage’ made up of Carr’s multiple versions. So who recorded the first ‘modern’ version of ‘How Long Blues’; that is, the particular selection of these choruses in that order? By the 1950s, performances by Big Joe Turner (1956) and Lonnie Donegan (1956) follow the ‘modern’ order we know well, yet earlier versions such as Jimmy Rushing’s (1939), or Jimmy and Mama Yancey’s (1943) are very different.

Further Reading

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hiphop (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

Elijah Wald, ‘Leroy Carr: The Bluesman Who Behaved Too Well’

Elijah Wald, Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (New York: Amistad, 2004).

Stefan Wirz, ‘Illustrated Leroy Carr Discography’

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

What if the ‘Godfather of British Blues’ was actually a woman?

The ‘godfather’ is a familiar honourific in popular music. Tap in ‘the godfather of soul’ into google, and we can be pretty sure whose picture is going to appear – James Brown. ‘Godfather of funk?’ That’s George Clinton. ‘Godfather of house?’ – Frankie Knuckles. In some genres, the jury seems to be out on this question; the title ‘godfather of punk’ has been variously attributed to Joey Ramone, Pete Townshend, and Iggy Pop.

Who holds this title is always a matter of consensus or debate, but it’s clear in every case what qualities these musicians have in order for the title of ‘godfather’ to be conferred upon them. They’ve been around since the start of the genre, and put in years – if not decades – of hard graft. James Brown is a case in point: he’s also known as the ‘hardest working man in show business.’ As a result, his influence extends beyond those he worked directly with, informing the activities of generations of subsequent performers and listeners.

In this post, I want to explore some further implications of the ‘godfather’ title, particularly with regard to the way it makes us think about the history of musical genres. First, the ‘godfather’ title is often used to identify the musician as one of the first people to play in that style. Calling James Brown the ‘King of Soul’ makes him sound like ‘the best’ or ‘most successful’ soul musician amongst many others. Yet calling him the ‘godfather‘ means that he was there at the beginning, setting the standard for others to follow.

This use of the ‘godfather’ title is particularly common when talking about British Blues. The holder of the title ‘Godfather of British Blues’, judging by a search through google pages and twitter hashtags, seems to be John Mayall, but both Eric Clapton and Alexis Korner get a look in too. This seems well deserved; each was a highly influential figure on the British popular music scene of the 1960s, not only turning generations of young British listeners onto the sounds of American blues, but also acting as mentors for countless other British pop and rock musicians.

Too often in the case of British Blues, however, we think that these ‘godfather’ musicians were the first people to start listening to and performing the blues in Britain. This simply isn’t true. Many British jazz musicians of the 1940s and 50s were interested in the blues, such as Chris Barber, George Melly, Sandy Brown, George Shearing, Tony Short, Vic Lewis, Cyril Blake, Humphrey Lyttelton, Harry Parry and many others. Indeed, Alexis Korner, who is best known for his performing activities in the 60s, was actually a founding member of the ‘Blues and Skiffle Club’ at the Round House pub on London’s Wardour Street in 1955. Earlier than that, too, Chris Barber recalls playing blues numbers in a trio with Korner and Trinidadian bassist Brylo Ford in 1949.

In fact, the further you dig into the jazz scene of 1940s and 50s Britain, the more blues you find. Blues performance was often marked out as a specific segment of a jazz concert; a smaller collection of musicians from the main band would accompany a singer. This programme from a 1951 concert in Leicester is indicative. New Orleans-style jazz repertoire is interspersed with more bluesy numbers, performed by smaller groups. Both Cy Laurie and Mick Mulligan’s groups feature a guest singer for blues numbers. George Melly is even advertised as ‘Britain’s Great Blues Singer.’

As far as I can see, the ‘blues singer’ label is not uncommon at this time. Adverts in Jazz Music magazine in 1955, for example, invited readers to Bath’s ‘Club Dixie’ to hear Joe Brickell’s Jazzmen ‘every Tuesday night,’ featuring the well-known clarinettist Terry Lightfoot, and the ‘blues singer’ Pam Coster. Later that year in the same magazine, an advert alerted readers to Manchester’s Rainy City Jazzband performing at the Wheatsheaf Hotel. Again, it made sure to highlight the appearance of ‘Blues singer-guitarist Chris Holroyd.’ Indeed, it seems that many jazz bands contained one or more musicians capable of singing the blues as a matter of principle.

So why are we not more familiar with any of these earlier British blues performers? Why does one of them not hold the title of ‘godfather of British blues?’ The answer has to do with a shift in the relationship between blues and jazz in the 1960s. As blues-influenced pop music became more popular both in the UK and the USA, its performers and audiences came to relate less to the jazz scene through which earlier listeners had first encountered the blues. It’s partly a matter of generation: to audiences growing up in the 1960s, ‘traditional jazz’ was often what your parents listened to. Consequently, younger British blues fans legitimised their own tastes by distinguishing them from their parents’ – even if in many cases both older and younger generations shared an awareness of the blues’s cultural value. This transition is revealed in the liner notes to the 1962 LP R&B from the Marquee by Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated. Although the Marquee Club was swiftly becoming the go-to venue to hear British blues, the liner notes describe Korner’s band as ‘One of the most exciting innovations on the British jazz scene.’ Furthermore, the liner notes also make it clear that the Marquee Club is owned and managed by the National Jazz Federation.

Since the early 1960s, British ‘traditional’ jazz has come to be seen as the hackneyed cousin of the more authentic, hard-hitting British blues scene, even though ‘traditional jazz’ provided British audiences with their first taste of the blues over a decade earlier. The musicians we know today as ‘godfathers’ of British blues (Clapton, Mayall, members of the Rolling Stones, etc.) had yet to pick up their first instruments – let alone be old enough to go to a jazz club – when the likes of George Melly were performing as ‘British blues singers.’ While their influence on popular music is unarguable, this does not mean they were the first British blues musicians.

So who, from the earlier crop of British jazz musicians, might be awarded the accolade of being the ‘godfather of British blues?’ Several critics have identified trombonist and bandleader Chris Barber for this prize, and of course there is Alexis Korner, who was active both before, during and after the 1960s. Yet our appreciation of Barber and Korner has so far been quite selective. They are appreciated solely for having ‘set the stage’ for the 1960s: Barber for inviting American blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee to perform with him in the 1950s, and Korner for his late-1950s activities, mentoring teen-aged musicians of the later ‘British blues boom’.

Recognising a 1950s musician purely for their influence on the 1960s does not tell us what their contemporary listeners thought of them. Many attendees at Chris Barber’s concerts with Muddy Waters in 1958, for example, came to hear Barber’s band just as much as they came to hear Waters. As blues scholar Roberta Schwartz has pointed out, the success of Waters’s 1958 tour – playing in large theatres all across England – was due in no small part to the fact that Barber’s band was the only jazz band capable of attracting such a large, nationwide audience.

Perhaps calling Chris Barber the ‘godfather of British blues’ is appropriate, as long as we qualify that this is just as much because his own band played the blues (from as early as 1949) as it is about the African American musicians he toured with in the late 1950s. Yet, even here, I’m not sure we’ve got it quite right. The reason here is to do with a further implication of the ‘godfather’ title, one that is perhaps more damaging than the first.

Not only does ‘godfather’ title imply that its holder was one of the first musicians of influence, it also provides a model for successive musicians. In the case of British blues, all the candidates for ‘godfather’ are male. In my research, however, I’ve found that there seem to be just as many – if not more – female British blues musicians before the 1960s as there are male. Fans who know their early British blues might have heard of Alexis Korner, George Melly, or even Cyril Davies, but very few are aware of Ottilie Patterson, Beryl Bryden, Neva Raphaello, Doreen Villiers, Rita Marlowe, Pauline Hinchcliffe, Pam Coster, or Joan Roberts.

This imbalance between reality (who was performing) and history (who we judge to have been the most important performers) is again to do with the blues’s changing meanings in the 1960s. In the process of reducing the genre’s connection to the British jazz scene, 1960s audiences also began to prefer the sounds of male guitarists, in particular those we now call ‘delta blues’ musicians. Bluesmen such as Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Son House came to be regarded as the most authentic and most influential African American musicians, meaning that British fans began to model their playing after them. Because we now hear these 1930s and 40s male guitar players as the most influential, it’s tempting to create a lineage of important blues musicians in later decades consisting of more male guitar players.

In contrast, British blues performers and listeners before the 1960s heard female blues vocalists such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Ida Cox from the 1920s and 30s as the best examples of the genre. This is due to the fact that many important jazz musicians, (e.g. Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson) had accompanied these singers on record. Moreover, contemporary jazz critics such as Max Jones and Iain Lang recommended recordings by Smith, Rainey and Cox alongside those of New Orleans-style jazz in their reviews.

In view of 1940s and 50s listeners’ preferences for female blues singers, perhaps the candidate for ‘godfather of British blues’ should be female. One name that springs to mind is that of Ottilie Patterson, vocalist with Chris Barber’s band from 1955 until the mid-60s, when health problems forced her to retire from performance. Patterson was born in Comber, Northern Ireland in 1932, and began performing with Barber’s band after sitting in with them during a gig in London during the summer of 1954. By the new year, she was with the band full-time, with her renditions of ‘classic’ blues repertoire such as ‘Careless Love,’ ‘Reckless Blues’ and ‘St. Louis Blues’ attracting rave reviews. Critic Gerald Lascelles reported that ‘more than any other British singer has she got to the heart of the blues idiom,’ while another reviewer declared her to be ‘the nearest thing to a real blues singer to emerge this side of the Atlantic.’

It is also arguable that the Barber band’s success was down to Patterson’s presence. Barber identifies the period 1955-61 as the height of the band’s popularity, selling out venues such as the 3,000 seat Newcastle City Hall five times in one year, and attributes this to Patterson’s own popularity with audiences. He recalls in is autobiography ‘we were not like…other jazz musicians. Once Ottilie was singing with us full time from January 1955, we became very different from other traditional bands because we started to play the blues regularly.’ In turn, when Patterson’s health problems caused her withdrawal from the band in the early 60s, Barber recalls that ‘promoters…would ask “will Ottilie be there?”…It wasn’t so much a question of whether the band was good, or not so good, it was just that promoters did not want us without Ottilie Patterson.’

I think the best way to tie up this post is to leave you with some examples of Patterson’s work. Her 1956 EP Blues (Decca DFE 6303) is widely available second-hand on ebay (perhaps another measure of its contemporary popularity!), and many tracks featuring her can be heard on YouTube – for example, here, and here. My own favourite example of Patterson’s work is a video of a live performance in 1955 at the Wood Green Jazz Club, at the Fishmonger’s Arms in North London. You can watch that on Vimeo here.

Now, you might not think this sounds like ‘real’ blues. But, then again, who gets to decide what types of blues are more ‘real’ than others?

Finally, we should be cautious of the implications of titles such as ‘godfather’ in popular music history. While I don’t want to suggest that any of the musicians it is currently conferred upon are undeserving of praise, I think we also need to recognise that the ‘godfather’ title often obscures the importance of the musicians that came before, and the presence of those who do not fit the image of the title holder. Each generation has its own godfathers – and godmothers too.

Further Reading

Barber, Chris, with Alyn Shipton, Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2014).

Brunning, Bob, Blues: The British Connection (Poole: Blandford Press, 1986).

Schwartz, Roberta Freund, How Britain Got The Blues (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007).

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.