Elmore James Records

Elmore James: Coming Home

Well now, look for me baby, you know I'm comin home.
Well now, look for me baby, because you know I'm comin home.
Well now, the reason why I left you down,
You know you'd done me wrong.

Well now, I'm comin home to you baby and I ain't gonna leave no more.
Yes, I'm comin home to you baby and I ain't gonna leave no more.
Yes, you know I done you wrong, darlin,
The last time I'm walkin out your door.

Well now, I'll tell you, baby, just before I leave this town.
Yes, I'm gonna tell you, baby, just before I leave this town.
Well, I'm comin home to you, baby,
And won't stand no pushin around.

Elmore James: Got to Move

You gotta move, you can't stay here no more
You gotta move, you can't stay here no more
You're my baby and I love you so, but,
still you gotta go, away from here
You gotta move away from here
You gotta move away from here

You're my baby and I love you so, but
still you gotta go, away from here
Well I rather be dead and in my grave,
than to have another man here and take my place
Ooh, you gotta move, yeah

You's my baby and I love you so, but,
still you gotta go, away from here
You gotta go, away from here
You gotta go, away from here

You wanna work no more
You won't cook, you won't sew
Ooh no, ooh no baby
You won't even scrub the floor
You's my baby and I love you so,
but still you gotta go, away from here

Elmore James: Rollin' And Tumblin'

I roll and I tumble, cried the whole night long
Yes I roll and I tumble, I cried the whole night long
I got up this morning, feeling that something going on wrong
Well now want you to love me baby, or please let me be
Yes love me baby, or please let me be
If you don't like my peaches please don't shake my tree
Well I want you to love me baby, and come on and say you'll be mine
I want you to love me baby, come and say you'll be mine
If you don't like my potatoes, please don't dig up my vine

Elmore James: Shake Your Money Maker

Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
and then
Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
Shake your moneymaker
and then
I got a girl who lives up on the hill
I got a girl who lives up on the hill
Says she gonna love me but I don't believe she will
You gotta shake your moneymaker
You gotta shake your moneymaker
You gotta shake your moneymaker
You gotta shake your moneymaker
You gotta shake your moneymaker
And then
I got a girl and she just won't be true
I got a girl and she just won't be true
She's locked to the bridge, she won't do a thing I tell her to do
She won't shake her moneymaker,
won't shake her moneymaker,
She wanna roll her activator,
She won't shake her moneymaker,
She won't shake her moneymaker,
She won't

King of the slide Guitar

Elmore James was destined to play the blues ... as a young man in Mississippi, he would play "slide guitar" with an instrument made of a lard can and broom handle. As a teenager, he performed in local juke joints with legends Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf. Forming his first band in the late-1930s, James toured with Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) until the beginning of World War II. The guitarist spent three years with the Navy, stationed in Guam.

Discharged from the military, James landed in Memphis, often playing clubs with his cousin, guitarist Homesick James. A popular live performer, James achieved his unique tone by rebuilding his amplifiers for a louder, distorted sound. James continued his relationship with Williamson, frequently appearing as a guest on the harmonica player's popular King Biscuit Time radio program on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas.

Dust My Broom
James didn't show much interest in a recording career when fate stepped in and took control. Accompanying Williamson to a session in 1951, James performed what would become his signature song, "Dust My Broom," while Lillian McMurray of Trumpet Records was secretly recording the singer. Trumpet released the song and it became a hit, rising into the Top 10 on the R&B charts.

During the 1950s, James and his band the Broomdusters, made a splash on the Chicago blues scene. In demand as both a live performer and a recording artist, James would record singles for a number of labels, including Fire, Chess, and Meteor. Elmore James songs like "Madison Blues" and "The Sky Is Crying" would become blues standards. James would continue to move back and forth between Chicago and Mississippi until his untimely death from a heart attack in 1963.

Recommended Albums: The Sky Is Crying: The History of Elmore James features material James recorded circa 1951-1961 and includes guest performances from Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Joe Turner, and Willie Dixon.

Elmore James: One Way Out

Ain't but one way out baby,
Lord, I just can't go out the door
Ain't but one way out baby,
and Lord I just can't go out the door
'Cause there's a man down there,
might be your man I don't know
Lord, you got me trapped woman,
up on the second floor
If I get by this time,
I won't be trapped no more
So raise our window baby,
I can ease out soft and slow
And Lord, your neighbors, no they won't be,
talking that stuff that they don't know
Lord, I'm foolish to be here in the first place
I know some man gonna walk in and take my place
Ain't no way in the world,
I'm going out that front door
'Cause there's a man down there,
might be your man I don't know
'Cause there's a man down there,
might be your man I don't know
'Cause there's a man down there,
Lord, it just might happen to be your man
Lord, it just a might be your man
Lord, it just a might be your man
Oh baby, I just don't know

Elmore James: Everyday I have the blues

Everyday, everyday I have the blues
Everyday, everyday, everyday I have the blues
Speaking of bad luck and trouble, now, it's you I hate
to lose

Nobody love me, nobody seem to care
Baby, nobody love me, nobody seem to care
Speaking of bad luck and trouble, now, you know I've
had my share

Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday,
everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday I have the
blues

I'm gonna pack my suitcase and, move on down the line
I'm gonna pack my suitcase and, move on down the line
Because there ain't nobody worried, and ain't nobody
crying

Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday,
everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday I have the
blues
Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday,
everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday I have the
blues

Elmore James: the Sky is Crying

by Barbara Flaska

Sometime in 1928 in Canton, Mississippi, ten-year-old Elmore James began playing his first instrument, a homemade guitar called a "diddly-bow" that he had made himself from an old broom handle and lard can. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing in local juke joints with his distant cousin Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and the man who would become his major influence, Robert Johnson. These facts alone are enough to make any sane person want to invent a time-travel machine.

The next best thing to hearing such music live is revisiting James's historic blues recordings. This retrospective offers the music James set down between 1959 and 1963, among the very last recordings he made shortly before his death. Because Elmore James was recognized as a musician of immense stature in the blues world while he breathed, over 400 blues lions crowded into his wake. Elmore James's fierce, passionate guitar work and his strong, distressed singing were what he had. Put them together and this was his two-fisted approach to a personal, highly emotional expression. In his art, he never held back and gave every song his all.

Elmore James was really pushed around by large forces, and as a result his life and music career sometimes changed direction as a reflection of his circumstances. World War II erupted and James postponed his career to enter service as did other bluesmen. While Howling Wolf served in Washington state with the Army Signal Corps, Elmore James spent three years stationed in Guam with the Navy.

Upon discharge, James picked up where he had left off. He reformed his band, played as a guest on radio shows, and soon found his way into the post-World War II migration up to Chicago. In 1951, he recorded "Dust My Broom" which became a major R&B hit for him. A lot has been written about James's signature guitar work in this piece, because this one song made an indelible mark on electric urban blues. When James took Robert Johnson's "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and revised it to "Dust My Broom", James played large with his own signature. The chops he came up with for this song, a way of sliding that also hammers out a stomping rhythm, were amplified and have made their way into nearly every rock and blues guitarist's bag of tricks. This one song by Elmore James has had an enduring influence on electric guitarists; it became even more popular because not only, after hearing James, did guitarists want to play the song but, because of the structure, they could. If his music was the magnet, then this song was like his lucky lodestone, and James went on to record slightly different versions of it for a few labels. Throughout his career, James recorded it about 100 times. Some companies couldn't be bothered to get his name straight. A few times he was credited as either "Elmer" or "Elmo".

This CD should be in every blues collection as essential Elmore James. In particular, the release collects the incendiary sessions that James released on Fire, one of the labels owned by N.Y. entrepreneur Bobby Robinson. Robinson also sold records out of his Happy House record store (with attached shoe-shine parlor), located just one block from the Apollo Theater. Even though this is not the original 1951 recording, it's fitting that "Dust My Broom" is placed first on this disc. In 1959, Robinson was searching up talent in Chicago for his record company when he saw a cardboard sign on a club announcing "Elmore James Here Tonight". Robinson went in to ask if this were the Elmore James and even asked James to play "Dust My Broom" to prove his identity.

The song was a good luck charm again for James, because Robinson wanted to record him. The following day, James and his band met to rehearse in a band member's apartment. Robinson remembered that the landlady was cooking in the back while outside the rain was pouring down in buckets. Robinson was there when James spontaneously wrote "The Sky Is Crying". Robinson was so impressed that he called around for a studio and the song was recorded that very night. Placed as the second song here, "The Sky Is Crying" climbed the R&B charts and James was back in the running.

James was onstage again with his group "The Broomdusters" and holding his own in the clubs on the circuit. This disc captures some of the material that must have electrified the audiences back then: Elmore James accompanied by Johnnie Jones on piano, the sound enhanced even more by the bleating tenor saxophone of J.T. Brown and occasionally expanded by a second low-down sax on a spine-chilling cover of "Anna Lee". The great Sammy Myers on harmonica adds a lift to "Look On Yonder Wall", the original inspiration for the later crossover version by the Butterfield Band. Yet, it's his slow blues masterpieces "Bleeding Heart" and "It Hurts Me Too" that best illustrate Elmore James. Easy to imagine people becoming overwhelmed by this music, if not shouting, then banging their heads on the table tops, or stunned into momentary immobility before being shot into the stratosphere.

What is ultimately so great about Elmore James is that there really is no defining his greatness, and thousands have tried. What might help is settling down for a good long listen to this CD. Taken with Whose Muddy Shoes, this is an Elmore James must-have.

Elmore James: It hurts me too

You said you was hurtin, you almost lost your mind.
Now, the man you love, he hurt you all the time.
But, when things go wrong, oh, wrong with you,
It hurts me too.

You'll love him more when you should love him less.
Why lick up behind him and take his mess?
But, when things go wrong, whoa, wrong with you,
It hurts me too.

He love another woman, yes, I love you,
But, you love him and stick to him like glue.
When things go wrong, oh, wrong with you,
It hurts me too.

Now, he better leave you or you better put him down.
No, I won't stand to see you pushed around.
But, when things go wrong, oh, wrong with you,
It hurts me too.

Dust My Broom: Elmore James

On November 23, 1936 Robert Johnson was in San Antonio Texas for his debut recordings. The first song he did was "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" in two versions, his second song was "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and his third was "Sweet Home Chicago." Though Johnson is usually credited with writing all three songs, there are clear antecedents for each. As far as "Broom" is concerned you would need to look back just over 4 years to a 1932 session in Atlanta Georgia by Aaron Sparks and his brother Milton (real names Aaron and Marion Gant) - as with Johnson, it was their first time in the studio. For the Victor label they cut one of their own compositions "I Believe I'll Make A Change"; it was issued using the pseudonym Pinetop and Lindberg on Victor 78 record. Aaron played piano and Milton played spoons and provided vocals. Leroy Carr and Josh White both did versions of the song in 1934 before Johnson did his interpretation.

Around 1948, Elmore James met up with Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup and Sonny Boy Williamson (who was the second artist using that name, his real name was Aleck "Rice Miller" Ford). Together they played gigs in Arkansas. In 1949, Crudup did a version of "Dust My Broom" and it seems likely that this is how Elmore got to know the song.

Elmore James' recording of "Dust My Broom" is discussed in Steve Franz' book Amazing Secret History of Elmore James. All the versions Elmore did are given in Steve's book. His first go was on August 5th, 1951 for Lillian McMurry's Trumpet label when he was in the studio recording some tracks with Sonny Boy Williamson. Urban legend has it that Elmore was tricked into recording the song by McMurry, though Franz' research gives a somewhat different account of the events that date - Lillian was adamant that Elmore was complicit in the recording. In any case, it was the first title issued with him as leader and it came out on a Trumpet 78 on the flip side of Bobo Thomas' "Catfish Blues." Fortunately for Elmore, Ms. McMurry knew nothing of the earlier versions of "Broom" by Johnson and Crudup because her policy was not to record unoriginal material. By some quirk of fate, Crudup went on to issue a record on Trumpet in 1952 using the not-dissimilar name, Elmer James.

The "Dust My Broom" motif was central to Elmore James recorded output, not only did he return to it on several occasions, the theme was well mined in his other songs. As well as that Trumpet side, James did a version in January 1952 that came out on Modern, in January 1953 for Checker as well as a version in the summer of 1955 for Flair. However, the more commonly known versions are the ones he did for Bobby Robinson in November 1959 and twice in February 1963 shortly before his death. Robinson, a New York record store owner, founded the Fire and Fury stable of imprints. He also knew how to record loud, a skill that allowed Elmore's fierce playing to come to the fore. These later versions by Elmore are very different from the earlier ones, his slide guitar is front and center compared with ensemble playing of harp or sax on the previous attempts.

Artists who have covered this song include Robert Jr. Lockwood, John Littlejohn, Hound Dog Taylor, Homesick James and Frank Zappa.

On September 10, 1934 Kokomo Arnold was in the studio in Chicago. He cut "Sagefield Woman Blues" at the session, which contains (probably) the first mention of the phrase "Dust My Broom" in the lyrics. (Thanks, Gary - Thetford, England, for all above. Gary is host of the Bluesman radio show. Check out his website at http://www.garybluesman.co.uk)