Alfred "Snuff" Johnson
Black Cowboy Blues and Church Songs
Many of the songs Johnson performs are remembered in bits and pieces
and combine traditional lyrics and those he improvises as he goes along. He sings with a
deep, almost moaning tone, accompanying himself on guitar and sometimes humming.
"While you're humming, " he similes, "it gives you the thoughts of what
verses to place in with your singing." Overall, Johnson's memory of his songs is
inexact. His versions of "Hey, Little Girl" and "The Good Book Told
Me," for example, are essentially guitar instrumentals that incorporate humming with
the repetition of what seems to be a truncated lyric of a longer song that might have been
forgotten or never learned. When asked about these, he say, that "blues" of this
kind were sung by people at leisure and at work. "They sang the blues when they were
sitting or walking, sometimes when they were herding cattle or riding down the road. The
blues comes from worries, and to sing the blues gives relief."
- Good Morning Blues
- I Went to the Graveyard
- Hearse, Oh, Hearse (Oh, My Lord What Shall I Do?)
- Old Time Religion
- Hobo Blues
- Mean Woman Going to Make Me So Mean
- Blues in the Bottle
- Blue Steel 44
- Going Downtown in the Morning
- Getting Ready to Go
- Hey, Little Girl
- The Good Book Told Me
- Going Back to Jesus
- Motherless Children
- Hard Time
- -
Southwest Blues CD Review - June 1999
Current Reviews - 1999 Reviews - available at our store
