Send Me Joan
The original version was recorded by Will Shade in 1961 in his apartment in Memphis, with some of his neighbors adding the background vocals.
This song is an unusual combination of traditional blues ("who's been here since I've been gone"), an English nursery rhyme ("Robin the bobbin, the big-bellied Ben") and Cab Calloway's "Jump and Jive" ("I get my kicks on the mellow side"), sung mostly over a I-I7-IV-iv chord progression. Charlie Musselwhite says Shade used to play extended versions of this song with additional verses in the style of Cab Calloway. Besides this upbeat version that he recorded for Don Hill and Dave Mangurian, he also recorded a slower version for George Mitchell in 1964.
While titled "Jump and Jive" or "Send Me John" on those recordings, Roger Brown proposed that Shade is really singing "get up, Nell, and send me Joan" as someone would do when requesting a second course at a brothel, and I've adopted that interpretation here.
This version is available for purchase on the Golden Harvest album.
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