Someday Baby: a proposal

 

Dunno what on earth possessed me to go down this rabbit hole today, but I saw the song Someday Baby credited, as it always is on Garcia releases, to Lightnin' (Sam) Hopkins, and something inside me snapped. I like Someday Baby. I like its sly little strut, and I like how it weaves its way periodically through Garcia's career, first as a regular thing for Garcia/Saunders, then with Reconstruction, and then in brief spells with the JGB until 1991. I have probably said elsewhere that I take it as a good omen when it pops up in a JGB set, maybe a little sign that Jerry was feeling extra spritely that night (granted, this list doesn't necessarily prove that theory but, hey, um, never miss a Sunday show? whatever. I feel the same way about Money Honey).

Texas blues singer/guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins is always credited as the composer on official releases, although Deaddisc gives the composer of the song as Traditional / Sleepy John Estes / Lightning Hopkins, noting that "the song is attributed to Lightnin' Hopkins on the Garcia recordings but the origins of the song pre-date Hopkins."  But I propse that we go one step further and, for Garciacentric purposes, just credit Estes and co-writer Hammie Nixon - not Hopkins at all.

Sleepy John Estes (1899-1977) first recorded Someday Baby Blues for Decca in 1935, accompanied by his longtime partner Hammie Nixon on harmonica, and both were credited as the songwriters. (note that Deaddisc lists one earlier Someday Baby by Buddy Moss, but that one has almost no similarity to Estes' song). Structurally and lyrically, Estes' original version is essentially the same song that Garcia performed.  In 1938, Estes recorded an updated New Someday Baby, keeping the same structure and chorus, but changing all of the verses.  In 1962, post-"rediscovery," he re-recorded the song with its original lyrics for his Delmark LP The Legend of Sleepy John Estes. Ultimately, the song became so associated with Estes that it was used as the epitaph on his gravestone.

Lightnin' Hopkins recorded his own Someday Baby in 1948 (this recording was reissued several times on LP by Crown, first in 1961).  His version is the same basic song as Estes' but with a new set of completely different verses and a slightly modified chorus (from "you ain't gonna worry my mind anymore" to "you ain't gonna worry my life anymore"). His unaccompanied performance is also quite different from Estes': imho, the lyrics aren't nearly as good, but Hopkins' guitar playing is much more exciting: looser and more spontaneous-feeling, with two impressive breaks.  Deaddisc has a handy list of further versions/variants of the song, including one that you may be familiar with: Muddy Waters' Trouble No More from 1955, which kept most of Estes' original lyrics intact, and went on to become a staple for the Allman Brothers Band.

In 1960, B.B. King recorded Someday Baby for his My Kind of Blues LP (*see tangent below. Also, the LP was on Crown, the label that released Lightnin' Hopkins' 1948 recording in 1961). The arrangement is for a 4-piece band in King's trademark urbane style, but the song itself is the same as Estes' original 1935 recording, with nearly identical lyrics. King's record credits the songwriters as Estes/Nixon.

It is unmistakably B.B. King's version that Garcia "covered" with his own groups. Through various permutations from 1973-1991, Garcia's arrangement stayed basically the same as King's, from the opening lick, to the solo that precedes the first verse, to the way that Garcia phrases the line "you ain't gonna woorrrry my mind anymore."  The biggest difference, actually, is that Garcia often sang Estes' original line, whereas B.B. King and Lightnin' Hopkins both sang "worry my life."  And, if there's any doubt remaining, on 7/5/73 you can hear someone (Kahn, I think?) say off-mic "let's do that B.B. King song" before they play it (see fileset 79032, track 1 @11:40; I'm not sure if this is edited out on the GarciaLive official release).

But every official Garcia release still credits the song to Lightnin' Hopkins. It's an understandable error, I suppose, given how well familiar Garcia was with Hopkins' music (see here for two mentions); Garcia even said that Pigpen "picked up, just by watching and listening to me, the basic Lightnin’ Hopkins [guitar] stuff" (see here).  So it seems probable that Garcia knew of Hopkins' version of Someday Baby (he may well have had the 60's Crown lp) and possible that he might even have referred to it as a Hopkins song, which could be how it wound up being credited that way on Live at Keystone and every subsequent release.

Authorship and attribution in the blues tradition can be a very murky issue, and I am not saying that Estes is 100% responsible for the creation of the song. But he is absolutely responsible for the variant of it that came to Garcia via B.B. King - not Lightnin' Hopkins. So I nominate that henceforth everyone credit the song to just Estes/Nixon, not Hopkins.

* [sidenote/tangent: I can't help noticing that My Kind of Blues was released within a year of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959). The liner notes for My Kind of Blues (scans) devote a lot of space to discussing jazz, concluding that B.B. King is the exemplar of a "particular form of jazz." Genre, presentation, reception - ain't it a bitch?]

Merl's Tune (Help Us Out)

I assume y'all know Merl's Tune, although there are unfortunately only a small handful of known performances:

3/7/73 - with George Tickner on 2nd guitar.
4/14/73 - no circulating tape, also with Tickner
7/5/73 - released on GarciaLive vol 6
7/10 & 11/73, i.e. the various Live at Keystone releases - Merl's Tune wasn't on the original album and didn't see commercial release until the first Keystone Encores LP/CD in 1988.
11/3/73 - I believe this was Bill Vitt's last show (or one of his last) with Garcia/Saunders?

I am a big fan, in particular, of 3/7/73 and 11/3/73, but of course all of these shows are worth hearing.  For some reason, Merl's Tune fell out of favor (or maybe was never in favor to begin with?), but it would have fit very well next to the band's jazzier material in 1974-75.

Check this out, though.  Cue up any of those version of Merl's Tune, then take a listen @20:40 here:


"Help Us Out," credited to John White (per label scans at discogs) vs. "Merl's Tune" credited on Keystone Encores to Saunders/White.  Thanks to Youtube commentor michael tristan for pointing that out (um, 6 years ago), and to Peter Tschirky for posting it.

John White is a little-known Bay Area guitarist with, afaik, this one Mainstream LP from 1971 to his credit.  I don't know anything about him besides what's in this older blog post: http://soundological.blogspot.com/2009/09/john-white-john-white.html

Saunders plays on the whole record, along with drummer Philip Wilson (ex Butterfield Blues Band, and later a renowned drummer in free jazz circles) and saxophonist Hadley Caliman.  Mainstream's 70's jazz catalog mostly has not made the transition to digital yet, and the original LP's were usually pretty light on detailed session info, so no luck there.  The dense horn-heavy sound on this track is also typical of Mainstream's overstuffed approach to production, but imho this record definitely fits well in that gritty Bay Area rock/R&B/jazz guitar bag next to, say, Harvey Mandel or Mel Brown, that kind of thing.

I have heard a couple of Merl Saunders sideman appearances from this same Garcia/Saunders timeframe, but the ones I'm thinking of were for Fantasy Records, Saunders' label.  This John White LP is from 1971, so presumably Saunders wasn't under contract with Fantasy yet.

So, um, yeah.  Dunno if this is in the same league as the "Finders Keepers" misattribution.  Barring other information, I will just offer this for your consideration.

update (Dec 2019): 
JGMF sent along a pic the tape box for one of the Bettyboard reels from 7/11/73, with this handwritten notation of the contents:
Harder They Come
John White Song
Like a Road
How Sweet it Is
My Funny Valentine 

Okay.  John White song.  I guess that answers that question?  Maybe not?

(Finder(’)s) (Keepers)

scan courtesy 45cat.com

[update 7/16/2024: big update to this regarding the song's initial attribution on the original Keystone lp]

 I’ve been having myself a fine time digging into those newly circulating Garcia/Saunders shows from late 73.  The ‘new’ 11/5/73 has a stone-cold, stanky version of Finders Keepers that’s doing it for me, with some really outrageous keyboard from Merl.  Finders Keepers is a song that pretty much never fails me.

Finders Keepers also must be most misattributed song on official Garcia/Saunders releases.   correctly credits it to General Johnson and Jeffrey Bowen, of the soul group the Chairmen of the Board, who released it in April of 1973 as a vocal tune with an instrumental version on the single’s b-side.  It was one of the group’s biggest hits and Garcia/Saunders recorded it that July, making it one of the rare tunes in their repertoire that was a more-or-less current hit single.  [edit 2024] I only just realized that it's actually credited correctly on the original 1973 double-LP release of Live at Keystone as well, although there it's called "Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers":

But starting with the reissue of the album in 1988 as as Live at Keystone, Vol. 1 (on both CD and LP), the title is changed to just "Keepers" and credited to Merl Saunders & John Kahn. On Saunders' 1997 collection Keepers, it was changed to "Keepers (Finders)" and credited to Saunders alone. The song also appears on several of Saunders’ albums from the 1990’s-2000’s, but I don’t know how it’s credited on those. On 2004's Pure Jerry: Keystone 9/1/74 it's back to "Keepers" and Saunders/Kahn, which was repeated on the 2012 release of the Keystone Companions complete July 1973 recordings.  The most recent release with the song is GarciaLive Vol. 6: 7/5/73, released in 2016, which finally corrects the attribution to "Finders Keepers" by Johnson/Bowen.

So what the heck happened? How did they get it right the first time, then manage to repeatedly get it wrong for 18 years? I haven't dug into the many live performances, but I did find one example of Saunders claiming credit at a show on 11/10/91 where he introduces the song, "we wrote this song for the Live at Keystone album." Hmm. The changing title almost seems almost like a sly inside joke about the incorrect songwriting credit, but unless Saunders actually has some claim to the song, it just seems like a questionably shady move -- Saunders even named an album after it!  Deaddisc generously posits that perhaps the misattribution is because Saunders and/or Kahn rearranged the tune, but they didn’t really (besides slowing it down, which was pretty much SOP for Garcia).  Have a listen:

 Merl did overdub a cool, soaring ARP synth part on the original Live at Keystone recording, so there's that -- but, as far as I know, he never tried recreating that in performance.  He sure knew how to work the hell out of that clavinet though, as 11/5/73 and many other renditions show.  It turns out Merl was paying homage to one of the all-time greats: that’s Bernie Worrell (RIP) of Parliament/Funkadelic playing the clavinet part on the original.

And, just for fun, here’s the original vocal version, which is giving no trouble to the Soul Train gang: