‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’ / Home Recording Session w/ Duster Bennett – ‘Kind Hearted Woman’

Although this is the third installment of our look at the three Robert Johnson covers that Peter Green put to tape over the course of a few months in 1968, this is considered the first to have been recorded.  (A specific date has yet to be established to the best of my knowledge.)

This performance comes from a tape of five recordings done at the home of Duster Bennett, originally released on a compilation CD titled “Out in the Blue” (Indigo 1998)

The other two songs were both done for broadcast on the BBC for the Top Gear show: ‘Dead Shrimp Blues’ on May 27, 1968 and ‘Preachin’ Blues’ on August 27, 1968.

It would be interesting to know what spurred Green’s sudden interest in performing Johnson’s songs at this time.  The first commercially available collection of Johnson’s songs (the same sixteen titles released on “The King of the Delta Blues” – including the three that Green covered) had been released in the U.K. since 1962.

Among his contemporaries in the Folk / Blues scene, people like Tony McPhee, Jo Ann Kelly, RL Jones and others had been performing Johnson’s song in clubs for just as long.

It does not appear as if any of the three songs Green chose had yet been commercially released by any of his contemporaries when he recorded them.

It would be another twenty-nine years before Green returned to covering Robert Johnson.

In 1997, he covered three Robert Johnson songs on the debut release of Peter Green Splinter Group.

The following year, he released “The Robert Johnson Songbook” credited to Peter Green with Nigel Watson / The Splinter Group.  A CD consisting of sixteen Robert Johnson songs (including ‘Kind Hearted Woman’).

‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’ was the first song that Robert Johnson recorded at his first session at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas on November 23, 1936.

As Elijah Wald wrote in his excellent, “Escaping the Delta – Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues” (Amistad 2004) Johnson would have wanted to start with what he felt was his “best” number; one that had the best chance of being a hit.

He chose a song built on an earlier number that proved to extremely popular a few years earlier: Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell’s 1934 number, ‘Mean Mistreater Mama’

There were at least five covers released in 1934, the earliest appearing to be Tampa Red’s ‘Mean Mistreater Blues’ (with Carl Martin on second guitar). 

Producer Mayo Williams seems to have been the instigator behind many of the others, having his artists record slight variations on the number for both Decca Records and his own Bluebird Records.

In March of that year, Josh White recorded ‘Mean Mistreater Mama’ backed by Carr and Blackwell at a session credited to Pinewood Tom and His Blues Hounds.  (I do not believe the song was released at the time.)

After Tampa Red’s release, pianist Jimmie Gordon, backed by Charlie McCoy on guitar, recorded the number as ‘Mean Mistreatin’ Blues’ in August of 1934.

Amos Easton (Bumble Bee Slim) was up next, recording the number with a new arrangement, titled ‘Cruel Hearted Woman’.

Bumble Bee Slim

Amos Easton: vocal /

Unknown: piano / Unknowns: guitars /

Unknown: violin (plucked)

Recorded September 06, 1934, Chicago, Illinois

Released A-side Decca 78

Bumble Bee Slim – Cruel Hearted Woman Part I (2:35) –

The following day, he cut the song again, with Jimmie Gordon on piano and Willie B. James on guitar. 

At the end of October, he recorded the number once again, this time backed by Big Bill Broonzy and Carl Martin on guitars and an unknown pianist under the title ‘Mean Mistreatin’ Woman’.  It was released as the A-side of a Decca 78 credited to Amos.

It was Bumble Bee Slim’s ‘Cruel Hearted Woman’ that caught Johnson’s ear and the number on which he built his own ‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’.

Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson: guitar & vocal /

Recorded November 23, 1936 – Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, Texas

Released, January 04, 1937 (B-side Vocalion 78)

First Available on LP, “King of the Delta Blues Singers” (Columbia 1961) U.S.

&  “Robert Johnson 1936 1937” (Phillips 1962) U.K.

Robert Johnson – Kind Hearted Woman Blues (Take 1 – with guitar break) (2:53) –

Personnel and recording information same as above

Released 1937 (date not known) Vocalion Brown label

First Available on LP, “Mississippi Blues Vol. 1 (1927 – 1942)” (Roots 1967) Austria

& “King of the Delta Blues Singers Vol II” (Columbia 1970) U.S.

Robert Johnson – Kind Hearted Woman Blues (Take 2 – without guitar break) (2:30) –

One of the most notable aspects of Take 1 is that it is the only song in Johnson’s catalog to have a “guitar solo”.  As Wald points out, the thirty-two second solo causes the song to run long – a 78 rpm record could not hold more than three minutes – requiring him to drop the last verse of the song as he had planned it.

He “corrects” for this on the second take, dropping the solo and easily fitting in his original final verse.

Take 1 would be issued as the B-side to Johnson’s first release on January 04, 1937 (the A-side was ‘Terraplane Blues’ one of the last songs recorded at his first session.  ‘Terraplane Blues’ would be the most popular song in terms of sales released during Johnson’s lifetime.

Peter Green & Duster Bennett

Peter Green: guitar & vocal /

Duster Bennett: guitar

Recorded at Duster Bennett’s home, Kingston, Surrey –

early 1968 – exact date not known

First Released on Out in the Blue (Indigo 1998 – out of print)

Available on*: Peter Green / Fleetwood Mac – Jumping At Shadows

The Blues Years (Castle 2002)

Peter Green & Duster Bennett – Kind Hearted Woman (2:30) –

Unlike the other two Robert Johnson songs that we have from 1968, this one was never intended for public consumption.  Green does not even complete the song.

This is him and his friend Duster Bennett trying the song on, as if to see if they could fill out Johnson’s clothes.

Green is literally imitating Robert Johnson, not only his guitar style, but also his vocal, with the sudden bursts of falsetto singing.

This is not the same as Spencer’s emulation of Elmore James’ vocal style, or his imitations of Elvis Presley; it is as if Green is attempting to channel Robert Johnson, meticulously recreating the song and vocal style as a way to work himself inside of it, to see what makes it work, how Johnson achieved the effects that he did.

Green’s slide** gives the notes a beautiful, bell like tone (just like the sound of Johnson’s on the original recording) and one can only regret that he chose to play with a slide on the rarest of occasions, most likely out of deference to Spencer.

Green does not finish the number, he does not need to – this is strictly an exercise, not something intended for release. He sings the first two verses as performed by Johnson and turns the solo into an outro, leaving the final two verses (or three in Take 2) unsung. 

It would be a full thirty years before Green would be heard playing on the song again (ceding the vocal duties to Nigel Watson), on “The Robert Johnson Songbook” (Artisan 1998)

Without concern for running time, Green and Watson take the best of both versions, making minor variations.

Watson sings the fifth and final verse from take two, after the third verse after which they insert an instrumental break, Green on harmonica.

After the harmonica break, Watson sings what had been Johnson’s fourth verse, which gives the song a feeling of finality; telling his woman that she should kill him, if that is what she has in mind.

*There were five songs from the “Home Recordings” released on “Out in the Blue”.  All five are available on the Castle collection.

**Green’s use of a slide actually aligns this version more closely with Muddy Waters’ 1948 cover of Johnson’s song.  On that recording, Waters sang and played guitar backed only by Ernst “Big” Crawford on double bass.

Waters’ rendition brought the song back to Delta.

Waters followed Johnson’s Take 1 closely, except he placed the solo after the second verse and ended the number with the third verse (which Johnson had used as the bridge)

Waters’ cover did not see release for nineteen years, not escaping the vault until 1967 on the Chess LP “More Folk Blues”.