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| Pat (right) playing with Muddy Waters. Andrew Stepens (back) on bass. Late 50's - Early 60's. |
A song like this won't pass with the media these days; however it's the blues and the blues get away with everythin'.
Pat Hare was a blues guitarist who played in Memphis with Sun Records as well as serving as the guitarist for Muddy Waters and later James Cotton in the 50's and early 60's.
True to the blues lifestyle, in 1963 he shot his girlfriend and killed her, and also shot a policeman who came to investigate. Hare spent the last 16 years of his life in prison, dying a year later in 1980.
He was known for playing with a lot of distorted sounds (uncommon in the 50's at that point).
Here's his 1954 song called 'I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" (cryptic isn't it!)
Good piece and an interesting yarn. I lived in Minneapolis and had never heard of the guy. And yeah, you can get away with a lot in a blues song. One difference between the violence in blues (and bluegrass, too) and modern rap/hip-hop is that the protagonists in the latter seem to boast of violence and misogyny without consequence. Conversely, in the blues and bluegrass, protagonists who engage in violence are usually telling their story with a sense of regret because they're in prison, awaiting the hangman, etc.
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