Cat Man Blues- Blind Boy Fuller (NC) 1936
[Recorded on 29th April, 1936, Vocalion Vo 03134, Re-issued on Document CD Blind Boy Fuller, Volume 2, Document DOCD-5092. A cover(?) of "Blind" Lemon Jefferson's Cat Man Blues was sung by Piedmont bluesman Blind Boy Fuller.
R. Matteson 2013]
Bio of Blind Boy Fuller (All music)- Born Fulton Allen, c. 1908, in Wadesboro, North Carolina, died February 13, 1941, in Durham, North Carolina; son of Calvin Allen and Jane Walker; married Cora Mae Martin, 1926.
One of the most popular exponents of the Piedmont blues style, guitarist and singer Blind Boy Fuller recorded, between 1935 and 1940, 135 sides that found their way into the repertoires of a great number of bluesmen of the pre-World War II era. An understudy of guitarist Blind Gary Davis, Fuller created a personal style which brought an individual stamp to the large body of his work. Fuller's musical repertoire included ragtime-influenced "hokum" songs (double entendre numbers) and down home blues, several of which he displayed an exceptional talent on slide guitar. Though much of his material was culled from traditional folk and blues numbers, Fuller possessed a formidable finger-picking guitar style - one that influenced musicians such as Brownie McGhee who, during the first years of his career, performed under the name of Blind Boy Fuller No. 2.
Blind Boy Fuller was born Fulton Allen in 1908 in the small country market town of Wadesboro, North Carolina. Despite his later musical sobriquet, Fuller was born sighted, and attended school in Wadesboro until the fourth grade. After his mother's death, his father, Calvin Allen, moved the family to Rockingham, North Carolina, where Fulton eventually learned to play the guitar.
In 1926 Allen married fourteen year-old Cora Mae Martin and moved to Rockingham, North Carolina. The following year, he began to lose his eyesight. As blues scholar Bruce Bastin explained in Red River Blues, "While he was living in Rockingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having been caused by some form of snow-blindness." In search of work, Allen took his young wife to live in Winston Salem, where for short time he found employment in a coal yard. Not long after, Allen became blind and, without means of employment, turned to music as a permanent vocation. Studying the records of country bluesmen like Blind Blake, Allen became a formidable musician in the use of finger picks and the playing of slide guitar.
In 1928 Allen briefly played the tobacco warehouses in Winston- Salem and Danville, Virginia, and then moved to Durham. In Looking up at Down, William Barlow, described how "Fuller soon became a familiar figure, playing along [Durham's] Pettigrew Street and around the nearby tobacco warehouses." Through a permit requested on behalf the Welfare Department, Allen played the "Black Bottom" section of Durham, and not long after, developed a small local following. Allen gathered around him musicians such as guitar and washboard player George Washington, and a blind South Carolina-born guitarist, Gary Davis (Reverend "Blind" Gary Davis).
Cat Man Blues- sung by Blind Boy Fuller. Recorded on 29th April, 1936, Vocalion Vo 03134, Re-issued on Document CD Blind Boy Fuller, Volume 2, Document DOCD-5092.
Went home last night, heard a noise, I asked my wife what was that
Went home last night, heard a noise, I asked my wife what was that
Said man don't be so suspicious, that ain't nothin' but a cat
Lord I traveled this world all over mama, takin' all kinds of chance
Travellin' this world all over mama, takin' all kinds of chance
But I never come home before, seein' a cat wearin' a pair of pants
Lord I wouldn't call him cat man, if he'd come around in the day
Wouldn't call him cat man, if he'd come around in the day
But he waits till late at night woman, when he can steal my cream away
Lord I want that cat man to stay away from my house, Lordy when I'm out
Lord I want that cat man to stay away from my house, oh Lord when I'm out
'Cause I believe he's the cause of my woman, wearin' the mattress down
Said I went home last night, actin' just quiet as a lamb
Said I went home last night, actin' quiet as a lamb
I never raised no stuff man, till I heard my backdoor slam