Week 36: Lonesome Road Blues



Sam Collins

The Man

Sam Collins was a very early blues singer and guitarist and a pioneer of playing the guitar with a slide. His repertoire is quite diverse, almost as diverse as the names recording companies used on his releases, and it is likely he considered himself a ‘songster’ rather than a blues player. Very little is known about his life, and the only ‘image’ that has been verified as Sam is a cartoon used to advertise “Black Patti” recording company – a company that folded within a year of its inception.

Sam Collins was born on August 11, 1887, in Louisiana to Sam Sr. and Sophie Collins. Early in life, his family moved across the border to McComb, Mississippi. It is unknown when Sam started playing guitar, and it is unknown who taught or influenced him. What we do know is that by 1920 he was a well known local performer in the Mississippi/Louisiana border region using the name “Salty Dog Sam”.

A mystery of the blues, at least for a time, was a guitarist who recorded 8 tracks in 1934 who went by the name of ‘King Solomon Hill’ and came from McComb. It was thought for a while that Sam Collins was King Solomon Hill, but now it is likely that Hill was another Louisiana native who grew up in McComb by the name of Joe Holmes.

Holmes’ wife recalls that by 1924, Sam was playing slide guitar using a knife and had formed a friendship and musical act with King Solomon. The very first recording of a slide guitar was by a man from Kentucky named Sylvester Weaver and recorded in 1923, making it extremely likely that Sam was already playing this style before hearing it on a record and a half decade before guys like Son House started playing that way.

It’s likely he travelled with Hill between the small towns near the border area playing in barrelhouses and he probably met and performed with Ramblin’ Thomas and his brother Jesse Thomas in Louisiana. Sam and Hill would accompany each other, playing vaudeville tunes, hokum, ballads and blues – one singing in a falsetto style, the other playing slide.

It’s unknown how Sam came to the attention of recording companies – McComb is a good 80 miles south of the Mississippi Delta region – but on August 23, 1927, Sam was recorded in Richmond, Indianapolis, by Gennett Records. He recorded 5 tracks that session, 4 released as double sided 78’s, and the other released on a double bill 78. One track, “Jail House Blues”, was a moderate success and it lead to further sessions in September and December the same year, also in Richmond.

The September sessions saw Sam record the first recorded version of the track “Midnight Special Blues” that would be made famous by Lead Belly and later Creedence Clearwater Recycled. In the December sessions, Sam recorded 10 solo tracks, including one titled “Lonesome Lane Blues” that is very, very likely an early version of “Lonesome Road Blues”, but Gennett never issued any of them. In the same sessions he was recorded as an accompanist – playing slide – on 4 tracks for an unknown singer named John D. Fox.

Over the next few years a number of these tracks were issued by Gennett on subsidiary labels with the name of the performer changed to avoid paying royalties. Sam’s recordings were released under the names Jim Foster, Jelly Roll Hunter, Big Boy Woods and Bunny Carter.

In 1931, Sam entered studios in New York and recorded a further 20 tracks for the American Recording Corporation, though only 6 were issued at the time and all under the name “Salty Dog Sam” – including “Lonesome Road Blues”. In 1974 one of these unissued tracks “My Road is Rough and Rocky” appeared on a compilation of Mississippi Delta music, despite Sam’s music not being Delta blues. The other 13 tracks have never surfaced.

Almost nothing is known of Sam’s life after the 1931 session, though he did move to Chicago in the late 1930’s but failed to find an audience for his country styled blues. He died of a heart attack in Chicago on October 20, 1949. He is buried in Worth, Illinois.



The Song

Lonesome Road Blues is a great example of the blues evolving out of rag time, and one of the only known examples of the music being played outside of the Delta in Mississippi. It is an 8 bar progression, with more in common with rag time tunes than later blues, though you can hear the blues in Sam’s playing.

It is played in a low standard tuning – D to D rather than the standard E to E tuning, tune each string down by a whole tone. The key to this piece is the high note, usually the B string, played in conjunction with the bass note on beat 1 of every bar. This note is then held and it rings out across the following beats. It is absolutely essential to get this ringing note right in each bar – it is the key to this tune. You can pretty much just form the chord, hit the high note and bass on beat one, then just alternate the bass on the other three beats without playing any other note and create a very decent sounding rendition.

The verses start on either the III or V chord, then move to the II which is very unusual for blues. Sam’s thumb alternates the bass, though due to the ‘muddy’ quality of the recording it is sometimes hard to work out exactly what he is doing. So treat the tab as an arrangement of the song rather than a note perfect transcription.

As the song progresses, Sam’s playing speeds up, and he introduces more between the beat notes played with his fingers, though they are all part of the chord shapes. So learn the chord shapes, keep the bass on the beat and improvise as you see fit.



The Lyrics

E D F F6 I'm walking down that lonesome lane C G C Hung down my head and cried I weeped and I cried under a willow tree And my fate's the deep blue sea My mama's dead, papa can't be found And my brother's on the county road Says I done been to that long plank walk And I'm on my way back home You did cause me to weep you did cause me to moan You did cause me to leave my home I cried last night and the night before And I swore not to cry no more You did cause me to weep you did cause me to moan You did cause me to leave my home I got no money and they call me no honey I have to weep and moan In eighteen hundred in that ninety nine He got killed on that streetcar line They took him down that smoky road Brought him back on that coolin' board Solo Says I been down to that water's edge That's far as I care to go Then run here mama 'n' fall in your daddy's breast These blues gonna let me rest Your fast mail train comin' round the curve It done killed my little brownie dead Her head was ground in that driver wheel And her body it have never been seen

The Intro



$5.3 $2.1.$3.0 $3.0.$2.1 $6.3 $5.0 2 | $5.3 $2.1.$3.0 $3.0.$2.1 $6.3 $5.0 2 | $5.3 $2.1.$3.0 $6.3 $2.3.$3.0 | $5.3.$2.1 $2.1.$3.0 $6.3 $5.0 2 | Nice little intro starting on C and using the C major scale to get back to C, with a side trip to the V chord. This was a common riff in early tunes – the classic vaudeville song “In the Jail House Now” by Jimmie Rodgers uses it, and was recorded 4 years before Sam recorded Lonesome Road Blues, so it’s likely Sam ‘borrowed’ it.

The Progression



He starts with an E chord is some verses, and a G in others. With the G he either uses the open B or the high G (3rd fret high E string) as the ringing note on the first beat. After this first chord, all the others are the same in every repetition – E or G, D, F, F6, C, G and C.

That ringing high note played on beat 1 and the alternating bassline is the key to the song. Nothing else matters as much as hitting that melody note in beat 1 of every bar. Concentrate on that, and you’ll have a great sounding tune!

E verses: 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14.

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$6.3.$1.3 $4.0 $6.3 $3.0 $4.0 $3.0 | $3.2.$2.3 $4.0 $3.2 $4.0 | $6.1.$2.1 $4.3 $6.1 $3.2 $4.3 $3.2 | $6.1.$2.3 $4.3 $6.1 $3.2 $4.0 | $5.3.$2.1 $4.2 $5.3 $3.0 $4.0 | $6.3.$2.0 $4.0 $6.3 $3.0 $4.0 | $5.3.$2.1.$3.0 $4.2 $6.3 $3.0 $6.3 | $5.3.$2.1.$3.0 $4.2 $3.0 $6.3 $3.0 $6.3 | Sam uses two main structures for his verses, and he gets quicker and increases the complexity of his finger picking as the song progresses. Due to the quality of the recording, it’s probably impossible to tab out exactly what he is doing, but here is the general idea.He starts with an E chord is some verses, and a G in others. With the G he either uses the open B or the high G (3rd fret high E string) as the ringing note on the first beat. After this first chord, all the others are the same in every repetition – E or G, D, F, F6, C, G and C.That ringing high note played on beat 1 and the alternating bassline is the key to the song. Nothing else matters as much as hitting that melody note in beat 1 of every bar. Concentrate on that, and you’ll have a great sounding tune!E verses: 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14.G verses: 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The first few he uses bars 7 and 8 from the E section – with the little bass run.

The Solo



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The Outro

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The outro consists of a nice little interplay between the D and C notes of the B string and D and C chords. The last two bars of C are used as a lead in, and are included below. The D note on the 3rd fret B string are bent – listen to the song and you’ll hear how much to bend them.