This is an amazingly played song by blues master Lightnin' Hopkins.
While it's sung in a funny tone, the song is actually a metaphor about whites and blacks.
You see, back before the civil rights movement, there was a lot of racial tensions in the US, especially in the 50's and 60's.
This song, which also features some amazing fingerstyle skills, while humorous in the way Hopkins speaks it, has serious underlying tone, such as:
The black cat told the white cat, let go out to town and clown
The white cat told the black cat to sit his black self down
I do feel a lot of the speech is improvised... which is a usual style of Lightnin'... to make up lyrics as he went by.
Here's the song!
I realised there are no lyrics for this song online, so here they are (approximately)
ReplyDeleteThis is the black cat told that white cat let's go across town and clown
The white cat told the black cat to sit his black self down, and I just left like this
The black cat told the white cat stay where you can be
He said I believe you're trying to cheap pull me and then
Kept on going across town...
Poor white wouldn't even drink some of that ole' Morgan Davis wine
Alright
Long time...
Just go ahead on and drink that Morgan Davis wine...
That black cat got worried, you know he got up again and danced
The white cat told the black cat sit down, said you look like you've got ants in your pants
Black cat he couldn't get a word in
And he sat down and he said gimme a little bottle of that Kronenbourg
Both of em are drinking wine,
One drinking Morgan Davis and the other drinking Kronenbourg
They got drunk and they're beginning to stagger home together
Said the black cat to the white cat said ain't we with one another he said yeah
Black cat told the white cat I believe you're feeling a clown
The white cat told the black cat you better sit your black self down
Because it ain't no time for clowning and carrying on like that...
You know that was that white cat
Black cat told the white cat he said you know we've been together and the white cat said yeah
He said it don't make sense for us to get mad at one another and he said no
He said but you doing something I really don't like and he said what is it?
He said just because you'se the black cat
The black cat told the white cat said I'm doing it because I'm in town
Since I was the biggest to prove it now you've got to prove it and sit your white self down
"Black Cat Blues" - Sam "Lightnin'" Johnson