Banty Rooster - A rooster that would crow at the sound of a stranger.  Charley Patton talked of putting a banty rooster in his back door thus alerting him to his woman’s other lover who might be approaching the back door.

Barrelhouse – A colloquial term, originating around the late 1800s, used specifically to refer to a bar that served liquor (especially whiskey) straight from the barrel, but more widely understood to mean any rough and rowdy drinking establishment. “Barrelhouse piano” is a distinct style that arose out of such establishments and is characterized by the highly percussive and loud style that was necessary to encourage dancing in such venues.

Black Cat Bone – From Hoodoo mythology, a mystical charm that is an actual bone from a black cat that has been ritually blessed. Carried for good luck in an individual’s “mojo bag,” the charm is alleged to attract money and ward off evil. The term is referred to in many blues songs, including Muddy Water’s classic “Hoochie Coochie Man.”

Canned Heat – Slang term for Sterno, a commercial jellied alcohol used to heat food, typically placed beneath metal pans on a banquet or buffet line.  Canned heat was used by alcoholics as a substitute for liquor during Prohibition despite the health risks – See “jake leg” below.  Blacks were especially hard hit.   Early Mississippi Delta bluesman Tommy Johnson had a reputation for drinking anything he could find and wrote his song “Canned Heat Blues” about the elixir.  The 1960s blues-rock band Canned Heat took their name from the Tommy Johnson song.

Chitlin’ Circuit - Slang term used to describe a group of blues and soul-oriented nightclubs located in the Southeast (and, to a lesser extent, the Southwest) United States. Catering to an African-American audience, clubs on the “chitlin’ circuit” would provide a string of convenient bookings for touring artists during the 1950s, ’60s, and into the ’70s when the circuit largely deteriorated into a few remaining nightclubs. Blues-rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix was a famous veteran of the chitlin’ circuit, performing behind artists like Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. Bluesmen B.B. King and Buddy Guy made their livings on the circuit until they enjoyed a larger measure of fame and success by crossing over to white audiences. The New Era Club in Nashville, Tennessee is an example of one of the circuit’s most popular venues.

Diddley Bow - A humble, makeshift string instrument constructed from objects at hand.

Git-Fiddle – A name for a guitar.  Also used as a name for a bass guitar in which a bow is played over the bass guitar–typically on non-electric double basses.

Hoochie Coochie Man – A slang term referring to both a type of suggestive dance, as well a class of conjurer or folk doctor in the voodoo tradition. In the Willie Dixon song “Hoochie Coochie Man,” made famous by Muddy Waters, the latter is the definition being used. However, the sexual suggestiveness of the song itself has led to an expanded definition, in which the hoochie coochie man is someone with sexual prowess and appeal as powerful as the magic of a voodoo conjurer.

“I woke up this mornin’…” - Classic lyrical introduction of many early Delta blues songs. 

Jake Leg - A pronounced weakening of the arms and legs, sometimes resulting in paralysis.  The disorder was linked to the abuse of a patent medicine, an alcohol-based extract of Jamaica giner.  “Jake leg” figures in a number of blues songs–see “Jake Liquor Blues by Ishmon Bracey.  See also “Canned Heat” above.

Jelly Roll - A sexual metaphor referring to the female genitalia.

Juke Joint - A bar or club in the rural South, also known as a “jook,” that offered its patrons live music, food, gambling, dance, and alcohol. Primarily used in reference to African-American social clubs often set up in ramshackle buildings, or in an individual homes as a place for laborers to relax and socialize at the end of the week.  Similar white establishments became known as “honk-a-tonks” or later, just honky-tonks, and emphasized music and dancing more than the social aspects of the juke joint. (Also called “juke-joint”).

Killing Floor – Literally, the location in a slaughterhouse where animals are killed prior to processing. Figuratively, it is a fairly common blues motif, denoting a state of high distress or hopelessness (see Skip James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues,” and Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor”).

Mississippi saxaphone – a harmonica.

Mojo – From the hoodoo tradition, a cloth bag worn under the clothes as a charm, often times containing herbs, curios, animal bones and other items. Believed to convey good luck, protect the wearer from evil, or to attract money or love.  Also known as a “mojo hand” or, in Louisiana, as a “gri-gri,” the charm is referred to often in blues songs, notably by Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins, and Blind Willie McTell, among many others. Mojo also refers to male virility, another common blues subject.

Parchman Farm – Formally known as the Mississippi State Penitentiary, the Parchman Farm was opened in 1904 and, until federally mandated reform in the 1970s, was geared primarily towards the profitable production of cotton using convict labor. With little emphasis upon rehabilitation, it had a solid reputation for deplorable and brutal living and working conditions. A frequent image in blues songs from the surrounding Delta, both among musicians who did time there and those who did not, it was also a frequent destination in the mid-20th century for folklorists recording work songs and related traditions in an effort to trace the development of the blues.

Pots and Pans – Drums

Ramblin’ – Slang term used to connote both the act of leaving a place and of wandering, particularly in search of work, a home, or spiritual peace.

Wang Dang Doodle – An African-American slang term for a party, popularized by the Howlin’ Wolf version of the Willie Dixon song. Oddly enough, neither the songwriter nor the performer thought much of the song, Wolf denigrating it as a “levee camp” song. Still, “Wang Dang Doodle” has also been recorded by Koko Taylor, Ted Nugent, Savoy Brown, and the Grateful Dead, as well as by Dixon himself.

Yaller Dawg – the Yazoo Delta rail line that ran through the Delta.  Branches came to be known as the “North Dawg”, “Cannon Ball,”and “Peavine”.  When the eastbound and westbound trains crossed the north-south line, it was sometimes referred to as “The Southern Crossin’ the Dawg”

Originally, the music was simple, an impassioned vocal coupled with an acoustic guitar and oftentimes something used for a slide, such as a pocketknife, to slur the guitar notes. The early bluesmen confounded our western scales of music when slurring notes, and slurring is standard fare is most genres of music today.  Back then, the music was folksy and oftentimes was referred to as “country blues”.  The music had a spirit all its own.  Preachers began to call the blues “the devil’s music” because of the effect it had on listeners, especially the ladies in the audience.  The early bluesmen, performing in the depression-era 1930s, oftentimes succumbed to the vices of the day thus furthering the reputation of the blues as the devil’s music.            

Persistently falling cotton prices and new technology enabling farmers to pick cotton with machinery at much lower prices displaced the cotton picker thus causiong black workers to search for different work and better wages up north.  As field hands migrated north to factory jobs, the music spread beyond Memphis to Chicago and Detroit.  Electrified instruments came along after World War II, and the Delta country blues morphed into different styles with Muddy Waters leading the way in Chicago, John Lee Hooker in Detroit, and Howlin’ Wolf in West Memphis.             

 Detractors will tell you the blues is only about anguish and despair.  Its genesis might be found there, but one has only to listen to the first stanza of Muddy Waters’ ‘Mannish Boy’ and realize there is a message of hope, perhaps even joy, in this music.  To hear Muddy sing “Everythin’ gonna be alright this mornin’”, one feels that things are, fact, going to be all right.  Desegregation was under way in America in the 1950s, and the blues was beginning to become something more–it was becoming defiant, rebellious, and proud.  But a funny thing happened in the late 1950s and early 60s. That seed which had taken root in the rich, Delta soil blew across the ocean.  

Precious 45s, carried across the Atlantic, found their way to young British musicians, who had been turned onto a new style of music by Elvis Presley (a Delta native).  They began to research the roots of the music, and it led them to the Delta…it led them to the blues.  Suddenly, in the famous words of Muddy Waters, “the blues had a baby, and they named it rock ‘n’ roll.”  The early rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s co-opted the structures, guitar work, and defiant and rebellious attitude from electrified blues.  During this time, the blues temporarily went underground.  It could still be found, but it was overshadowed by its precocious offspring.            

British musicians like Alexis Korner and John Mayall could be found in local UK pubs playing Delta blues for excited British teens. Those blues inspired bands, such as The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Yardbirds, Cream, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, and later The Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin. These bands followed The Beatles over the Atlantic in what was called the British Invasion of the 60s, and with them they brought the blues back home. Suddenly the white kids in the suburbs of America were grooving to songs by Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf.

Those early British blues rock bands had such a massive influence on American music, and it spawned a blues revival. Old acts like Muddy, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and others suddenly found broad audiences embracing their style of music back to the country blues days.  Every band that has come since that time has carried some influence from the Delta.  Even Nirvana covered ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’, an old Leadbelly song, on its ‘Unplugged’ album.            

The blues casts a powerful spell, and this spell caused the musicians of the Delta River Mudcats to come together in Denver, Colorado.  It wasn’t simply to spread the good word of the blues to Denver and its surrounding environs. It was to revive, honor, and further the musical seed that was planted in the rich, Delta soil that gives this band its name.  In the music of the Delta River Mudcats, one can hear the timeless and primitive beat and guitar slurs that have been handed from Charley Patton to Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters to England and back again.  It is a primal, down and dirty blues, played with the same attitude heard over 100 years ago in Clarksdale, Mississippi. It sounds good and feels even better.  Some may ask us “Why do you have the blues?”  A better question is, “Why don’t you have the blues, too?”

By Kenneth Corsini, Jr. and Todd Kirsch