Free Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald

is quite possible that the passionate energy of his delivery on take two—its main saving grace—comes from irritation at having his masterpiece dismissed so cavalierly.
    Whatever the interaction in the studio, the end result was that take two was chosen for release, and take one surfaced only in 1961. Since then, it has been so generally accepted as the canonical version that when I read the discographical entry saying that it was left unissued, I at first assumed that this was a typographical error. There could be no better example of the differing aesthetics of 1930s blues producers and modern-day fans—or of the way Johnson’s work highlights these differences.
    There are also points of agreement, though, and Johnson’s next selection would please everybody. “ Terraplane Blues ” was his one hit, albeit a modest one by the standards of 1937’s busy blues market. It would be chosen as his first release, and considerably increased his prestige with Mississippi music fans.
    Once again, the song is an adept combination of Delta styles and hot contemporary trends. The Delta can be heard in Johnson’s intricate rhythmic juxtapositions, while the basic structure is taken from “Milk Cow Blues,” and the lyric is a typical example of the sort of songs being churned out by the Chicago hit factories. Big Bill Broonzy famously explained the formula for writing such lyrics:
    You can take a chair, a box, an ax, anything, a knife…and start writing a blues from it. Because you can think of the different things you would do with a knife. Take a knife and you could maybe skin a fish, or cut a chicken’s throat, trim your toenails or your fingernails. Then youcould kill somebody with it too. By the time you think of all the things you could do with a knife, then you got the blues. It don’t take but five verses to make a blues. Think of five things you can do with something and that’s it. 12
    What Broonzy did not mention is that, at least in the 1930s, it was extremely helpful if all the things you did with the chosen object could be understood as double-entendre descriptions of sexual acts. Such “party blues” were ubiquitous, sung by almost everyone in the field, but the most prolific master of the form was Bo Carter. Along with being a sometime member of the Mississippi Sheiks, Carter was probably the most popular Mississippian recording on his own in this decade, and his song titles are a comic catalog of phallic objects—“Banana in your Fruit Basket,” “Pin in Your Cushion,” “Ram Rod Daddy,” “Cigarette Blues,” “Please Warm My Wiener”—and other imaginative metaphors: “She’s Your Cook, but She Burns My Bread Sometimes,” “Squeeze Your Orange,” and “Pussy Cat Blues.”
    Johnson seems to have had relatively little interest in this sort of “naughty” comedy, but his next two songs show that he could handle the style if necessary, and the success of “Terraplane”—in which the mechanical components of an automobile substitute for various body parts—showed the wisdom of making the attempt. That said, the lyrical games can only get partial credit for the song’s popularity, since they are so utterly subsumed in Johnson’s performance. His singing draws on two of his favorite models, Kokomo Arnold and Peetie Wheatstraw: Arnold’s falsetto “plee-ease” shows up in a couple of verses, while Wheatstraw’s “ooo-well” yodel is quoted in verse two. These were famous mannerisms, and Johnson must have been aware that he was paying homage, but another borrowing may have been unconcious, and shows how deeply he had assimilated the styles of his heroes: In two verses, he sings the phrase “oo-ooh, since I’ve been gone” with exactly the same inflections that Wheatstraw had used to sing the same phrase in his “Police