Kokomo Arnold - Old Original Kokomo Blues

File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Source: LL (from CD)
Released: 1999
Styles: Blues
Time: 70:21
Size: 162,8 MB
Covers: Full

(2:45) 1. Mr. Charlie
(3:04) 2. Sagefield Woman Blues
(2:59) 3. Mean Old Twister
(3:03) 4. Monday Morning Blues
(3:12) 5. The Twelves (Dirty Dozens)
(2:50) 6. Salty Dog
(2:57) 7. Policy Wheel Blues
(2:57) 8. Travelin' Rambler Blues
(2:50) 9. The Honeydripper
(3:23) 10. Front Door Blues
(3:04) 11. Lonesome Southern Blues
(3:06) 12. I'll Be up Someday
(3:08) 13. Sissy Man Blues
(3:24) 14. Back Door Blues
(3:10) 15. Milk Cow Blues
(3:18) 16. Paddlin' Madeline Blues
(2:48) 17. Long and Tall
(2:53) 18. Old Original Kokomo Blues
(3:14) 19. How Long, How Long Blues
(3:15) 20. You Should Not A' Done It
(2:43) 21. Big Leg Mama
(3:02) 22. 'Cause You're Dirty
(3:06) 23. Fool Man Blues

Kokomo Arnold's recording career lasted just four short years (from 1934 to 1938) when he had disagreement with Decca's Mayo Williams. After that, nobody wouls succeed in returning him to the studio. As you an hear, his performances were the equal of any of his peers. Only when the blues was rediscovered in the early 1960s, he was persuaded to return to the stage for a handul of club performances. Born in Georgia, he was raised down South and learned his first guitar licks from a cousin. When he moved North to New York, it was not to play his music, but to work as a farmhand, before working in a steel plant. In the late 1920s he settled in Chicago, where he ran a operation bootlegging liquor in the midst of the Prohibition. In 1930 he recorded his first sides as Gitfiddle Jim for Victor in Memphis. He'd lay the guitar down flat across his knees, in an old-fashioned style that was practiced in only a few southern states, and this made him unique in both sight and sound. The Kokomo Arnold story would start four years later when he began cutting blues for Decca. Arnold's "Old Original Kokomo Blues", his first hit for Decca, is a joyous piece of acoustic blues delivered with sly humor ("Don't drink because I'm dry, mama, don't drink because I'm blue/Reason I drink pretty mama, can't get along with you") and a fiery, staccato slide guitar riff. It's not startlingly different from any number of similar blues songs, but it's an exemplar of the style.

Old Original Kokomo Blues
Old Original Kokomo Blues artwork

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