Crooked Road CD Series [Back]

Nat Reese:
Save a Seat For Me

Page [1] [2] [3] [4]

1. The Preacher and the Bear 
George Fairman/ (ASCAP)

The Preacher and the Bear, one of the most popular comic songs of the early twentieth century, is credited to George Fairman (1881-1962) of Front Royal, Virginia. 

I first heard “The Preacher and the Bear” from one of the old guitar players that came through from Mississippi or Alabama.  These players would come through these little coal camps and they would ask, “Where is the place you go on a Friday night?”  All the workers knew what they were -- they were traveling musicians, ridin’ the rails.  They would come in on box cars, coal cars, and some of them would ride the bottom part of the passenger train.  Blind Charlie, he was one of the guys I learned a lot of the blues from.  He could hop a train!  Yes, with a guitar on his back and a white cane in his left hand, he could actually hop a train.  He’d push that white cane down through his belt and put that guitar on his back.  He’d listen to the train, and say, “How many tracks is that train over?”  Whoever was there would tell him, “It’s the third track, two over from you.”  And see, those tracks were six feet apart.  The engineers knew these guys and they would slow the train down.  So he’d take his stick and hold it up like this and it would bup-bup-bup-bup along the side of the train.  And then he would start running along the side of the car and hold his hand up and soon as the edge of the car passed he would reach up and grab that handle and pull his self up!  I seen it more times than I got fingers and toes!  It was a wonder man.

2. Just a Dream
William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy/ Universal MCA Music Publishing

Originally performed by Big Bill Broonzy (1893-1958) as “Just A Dream On My Mind.”

I was about 18 years old and I heard a song almost like “Just a Dream” and I never could get the right tone and the right sound of the verse so I made up the rest of it.  It wasn’t that version, it was another song, but it ended up what I call “Just a Dream.”

3. Exactly Like You 
Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh / EMI Music

Written by the gifted songwriting team of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, “Exactly Like You” premiered in the 1930 Broadway production “International Revue.”  Nat learned it from several 78rpm recordings by different bands.

4. There’ll Be Some Changes Made  
Billy Higgins and W. Benton Overstreet / Such Sweet Thunder

First recorded in 1921 by blues singer Ethel Waters, this song became an instant classic. Several other hit versions were recorded by both black and white artists for decades, most notably Ruth Etting in 1923, Ted Lewis and Marion Harris in 1924, Sophie Tucker in 1928, Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa in 1941, as well as later versions by Sidney Bechet, Fats Waller, Artie Shaw, Dinah Washington, and Billie Holiday.  Nat’s version was most inspired by Fats Waller’s 78rpm recording.

5. Take My Hand, Precious Lord
Thomas Dorsey / Tamerlane Publishing  (BMI)

Take My Hand, Precious Lord was written by famed Chicago gospel songwriter Thomas Dorsey (1899-1993), who also composed Peace In The Valley, and earlier in his career, secular dance tunes such as It’s Tight Like That (1928) which eventually sold 7 million copes of sheet music.  This hymn was a favorite of Martin Luther King, and was famously performed by Mahalia Jackson.

Did you know Dorsey was a blues and swing musician?  And that verse that I use: “Precious Lord, I love your name/Looking back from which I came,” you’ll never see it written in hymnals.  And about 18 years ago I asked him how come they never published that verse.  I knew him, you see, ‘cause I was in the Gospel field for 28 years.  He said that he added that verse later.  He played it over the radio out of Chicago.  I was in Mt. Clemens, Michigan and I heard it.  And they said, “The father of this song is gonna’ sing a new verse.”   And I liked it better than the whole other part of the song.  I love that verse – it’s got feeling in it, man.  Tears come to my eyes when I sing that song.

6. Down And Out Blues  
Arthur L. Sizemore/ MPL Communications, Inc.

The Down and Out Blues was popularized by blues harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson, who fronted the King Biscuit Time radio program with Robert Lockwood in the early 1940’s. 

Back in 19 and 81, I was teaching a blues class up at Elkins College.  And John Cephas said to me, “Nat, you ought to hear this fellow play this piece.  And I can’t recall his name, but he was singing that Down And Out Blues.  So Cephas says “Nat, you ought to be able to do something with that.  You got one of the most original blues voices that I ever heard in my life.  There’s something about your voice that I ain’t got and a lot of these other guys ain’t got either.” And I said, “Well, I come from old stock and somewhere I learned something from somebody or stole something from somebody.  But I got it and I’m using it!?  So, I rearranged it to my style.

7. ‘Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do 
Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins /Lucky Guitar Music

Nat learned this classic off of a Billy Holiday recording.

8. Juice Headed Woman
RL Jones/ Lucky Guitar Music

Juice Headed Woman is credited to the late North Carolina blues man Robert Jones, a.k.a. “Guitar Gabriel.”

You remember how late at night you could listen to different stations from Tennessee, Alabama and other places?  Well, one night I heard this song about three times.  I played what I remembered and then made up the rest.

9. Laundromat Blues
Sandy Jones Jr. / Irving Music Inc. (BMI)

First recorded by Winston-Salem, North Carolina group The Five Royales in 1953.  Though primarily a gospel group, they also recorded several secular and rather risqué numbers such as this one for a different market segment.

This song was also recorded by Albert King.  I knew Albert, played on same stage with him at a festival at Philadelphia and down in Mississippi.  In fact, I think he might have learned this song from me!

10. I Ain’t Gonna Throw It Away 
Howard Armstrong

This song was written by Nat’s late performing partner, the great Howard Armstrong.  Howard’s version has many more verses, some of which his wife Barbara Ward Armstrong has described as “naughty.”  Nat often liked to perform this song as a sing along, as he does on this version, recorded live at the Prism Coffeehouse in Charlottesville, in 2005.

This is by Howard Armstrong, he passed away about a year and a half ago.  Howard and I were the last of the old black string band musicians in these parts.  People just always fell in love with this song.  It’s more comical than anything else, like a comedian song.

11. Key To The Highway
Big Bill Broonzy (William Lee Conley Broonzy)/ Songs of Universal Inc.
 
Another classic from Broonzy’s catalogue, a standard for many blues musicians. Nat learned his version from an early recording. 

12. Too Many Bad Habits
Johnny Nicholas/ Dynaflo Music

Johnny Nicholas, the creator of this irreverent number, owns and runs a café outside of Fredericksburg, Texas.

I was awful cautious never to use profanity in my songs.  I don’t use it. I do a family show, and you can bring your children to my show.  Too Many Bad Habits is as far as I ever bend over with a song.  And a lot of times I won’t do it until the last part of my concert, and if I see a child in the audience I won’t sing it.  I know that might make me too of a high-handed of a guy, but that’s just the way I am.  And I won’t change on that.

13. Don’t Deceive Me (Please Don’t Go)
Chuck Willis/ Tideland Music

Don’t Deceive Me, written and originally recorded by Chuck Willis in 1953, was one of the final big hits for Atlantic Records by Virginia’s own Ruth Brown.

This piece of Please Don’t Leave Me, Please Don’t Go I learned back when I was working for Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna, New York.  It was about 1948 and I was sitting at a bar in Buffalo, New York, and I heard it on the jukebox.  It was right around the corner from where I lived.  I had a room on the second floor.  I’d get off the bus in front of the bar and go in and unwind.  That was where I first heard “Don’t leave me, don’t deceive me, please don’t go.”  It was playing when I went in and then somebody else played it, and I said, “Boy, that’s a pretty song!” Then nobody played it for a while so I went up and got me a bunch of nickels from the bartender.  I played it about ten or fifteen times!  Those people in the restaurant were shaking their heads.  I know they said, “I wish he’d hurry up and get through playing that!”  Because I’d punch it three, over and over, and I learned that song sitting there drinking Velvet Beer!

14. On The Sunny Side of the Street
Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh / EMI Music

Another tune from the composing duo of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, written in 1929 and subsequently recorded by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald among others.

I got that from a record of Erskine Hawkins, then Duke Ellington.  I learned some of his jazz chords, his piano jazz chords.  That’s where I heard the “bob-a-dee-be-bop-be” scat.

15. Slippin’ Around 
B.B. King/ BMG Music

This song was written by B.B. King as “Sneakin’ Around With You.”  Nat has always sung it as “Slippin’ Around.”

I got that from one of BB King’s shows I saw on TV.  My grandson recorded it for me.  It’s one of the songs BB likes to sing.

 
16. Save A Seat For Me
Clifford Driver / (ASCAP)

That was from Archie Brownlee with the Five Blind Boys out of Mississippi, not the ones from Alabama.  He died in 1955 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Archie’s real name was Wickerson, I mean his blood people.  He was raised by the Brownlee family in Shady Side, Michigan.  Archie would come up to Detroit every year to sing in that quartet contest downtown.  Archie would come over to the house three and four days a week and just set around and play music and sing.  He was sitting there singing The Lord’s Prayer and he said, “I got a good song!”  He sung it over and over again.  One of his buddies was a baritone.  So Archie started singing it again and he started singing that baritone part and I started singing tenor and playing the guitar.  Then it began to kind of sink in a little bit.  I began to like it.  Then I fell in love with it.  And that’s how I learned it, singing it with Archie in my house.  That was on Mullet Street in Mt. Clemens, back in 1955.

Page [1] [2] [3] [4]