In 1936, the Harlem Hamfats released a record with the song "The Weed Smoker's Dream" on it. McCoy later refined the tune, changed the lyrics and titled the new song "Why Don't You Do Right?" for Lil Green, who recorded it in 1941. It was covered a year later by both Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee, becoming Lee's first hit single. "Why Don't You Do Right?" remains a jazz standard and is McCoy's most enduring composition.
At the outbreak of World War II Charlie McCoy entered the military, but a heart condition kept Joe McCoy from service. Out on his own, he created a band known as "Big Joe and his Rhythm" that performed together throughout most of the 1940s. The band again included his brother Charlie on mandolin and Robert Nighthawk on harmonica.[3] In 1950, at the age of 44, McCoy died of heart disease in Chicago, only a few months before his brother Charlie. They are both buried in Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.
Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant took his and Memphis Minnie's recording of "When the Levee Breaks," which was in his personal collection, and presented it to guitarist Jimmy Page, who revamped it and slightly altered it lyrically, and help record it on Led Zeppelin's 1971 album, Led Zeppelin IV.
In addition to those mentioned earlier, McCoy's songs have also been covered by Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, The Ink Spots, Ella Fitzgerald, Jo Ann Kelly, Cleo Laine and A Perfect Circle.
Memphis Minnie McCoy-Lawler (born Lizzie Douglas, June 3, 1897 in Algiers, Louisiana; died August 6, 1973 in Memphis, Tennessee) was an American Blues guitarist, vocalist, and composer.
Born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, Minnie was one of the most influential and pioneering female blues musicians and guitarists of all time. She recorded for forty years, almost unheard of for any woman in show business at the time and possibly unique among female blues artists. A flamboyant character who wore bracelets made of silver dollars, she was the biggest female blues singer from the early Depression years through World War II. One of the first blues artists to take up the electric guitar, in 1942, she combined her Louisiana-country roots with Memphis blues to produce her own unique country-blues sound; along with Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red, she took country blues into electric urban blues, paving the way for giants like Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, and Jimmy Rogers to travel from the small towns of the south to the big cities of the north. She was married three times, and each husband was an accomplished blues guitarist: Kansas Joe McCoy (a.k.a. "Kansas Joe") later of the Harlem Hamfats, Casey Bill Weldon of the Memphis Jug Band, and Ernest "Little Son Joe" Lawlers.[1] Paul and Beth Garon's 1992 biography on Memphis Minnie, Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues, makes no mention of a marriage to Weldon, but only says that she recorded two sides with him, in November 1935, for Bluebird Records. It does describe the relationships and marriages to McCoy and Lawlers.[2]
After learning to play guitar and banjo as a child, she ran away from home at the age of thirteen. She travelled to Memphis, Tennessee, playing guitar in nightclubs and on the street as Lizzie "Kid" Douglas. The next year, she joined the Ringling Brothers circus. Her marriage and recording debut came in 1929, to and with Kansas Joe McCoy, when a Columbia Records talent scout heard them playing in a Beale Street barbershop in their distinctive "Memphis style," and their song "Bumble Bee" became a hit.[3] In the 1930s she moved to Chicago, Illinois with Joe. She and McCoy broke up in 1935, and by 1939 she was with Little Son Joe Lawlers, with whom she recorded nearly 200 records. In the 1940s she formed a touring Vaudeville company. From the 1950s on, however, public interest in her music declined, and in 1957 she and Lawlers returned to Memphis. Lawlers died in 1961.
Cherry Ball Blues
Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I'm gonna get me a ball and chain.
I'm down by the sea.
I'm gonna get me a ball and chain.
I wanna jump over board and drown because I can't love my baby Jane.
The lyrics in Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie's song Cherry Ball Blues seems to be about a man who is feeling hopeless and despondent because his love for his partner, Jane, is not being reciprocated. The opening line, "I'm down by the sea," connotes a place of solace and respite but it becomes evident soon that the character is not finding the solace he seeks. He longs for something that will take away his pain, and in this case, it is a ball and chain.
The ball and chain is a metaphor that symbolizes both his desire to be physically chained up and the emotional consequences of his situation - he feels trapped and unable to move on, hence the desire to drown himself. The repetition of the lines amplifies the sense of despair, and the imagery of the sea serves to illustrate the depth of his despair. Overall, the lyrics are exploratory and emotive, and they convey a sense of deep pain that afflicts the character.
Line by Line Meaning
I'm down by the sea.
I am currently situated beside the large body of saltwater known as the sea.
I'm gonna get me a ball and chain.
I intend to acquire a metal object with which I can bind myself as a symbol of my commitment to my partner.
I wanna jump over board and drown because I can't love my baby Jane.
I feel so bereft without my dear sweetheart Jane's love that I desire nothing more than to jump into the ocean and end my life by drowning.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: LAWLERS, MINNIE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind