McCoy played music under a variety of stage names but is best known as "Kan… Read Full Bio ↴McCoy played music under a variety of stage names but is best known as "Kansas Joe McCoy". Born in Raymond, Mississippi, he was the older brother of the blues accompanist Papa Charlie McCoy. As a young man, McCoy was drawn to the music scene in Memphis, Tennessee where he played guitar and sang vocals during the 1920s. He teamed up with future wife Lizzie Douglas, a guitarist better known as Memphis Minnie, and their 1929 recording of the song "Bumble Bee" on the Columbia Records label was a hit.[2] In 1930, the couple moved to Chicago where they were an important part of the burgeoning blues scene. Following their divorce, McCoy teamed up with his brother to form a band known as the Harlem Hamfats that performed and recorded during the second half of the 1930s.

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.

Chickasaw Train Blues
Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

I'm might tell everybody
What that Chickasaw has done, done for me
I'm might tell everybody
What that Chickasaw has done, done for me
She done stole my man away
And blow that doggone smoke on me
She's a low down dirty dog

I ain't no woman, like to ride that Chickasaw
Ain't no woman, like to ride that Chickasaw
Because everywhere she stop
She's stealing some woman good man off
She's a low down dirty dog

I told the depot agent this mornin'
I don't think he treat me right
Told the depot agent this mornin'
I don't think he treat me right
He done sold my man a ticket
And I know that Chickasaw leavin' town tonight
He's a low down dirty dog

I walk down the railroad track
That Chickasaw even wouldn't let me ride the blind
I walk down the railroad track
That Chickasaw wouldn't even let me ride the blind
And she stop picking up men, all up and down the line
She's a low down dirty dog

Hm, Chickasaw don't pay no woman, no mind

Hm, that Chickasaw don't pay no woman, no mind
And she stops pickin' up men, all up and down the line

Overall Meaning

The song "Chickasaw Train Blues" by Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie is a blues song that sings about a woman's anger towards another woman, Chickasaw. The lyrics speak about how Chickasaw has stolen a man away from the singer and other women at every stop the train makes. The singer expresses her frustration and anger toward Chickasaw's actions and disrespects her, calling her a "low down dirty dog."

The song is full of imagery that brings up the idea of locomotives and trains. The lyrics talk about a man who boards the train and Chickasaw leaving town, which reflects the idea of movement and change. The use of the train as a metaphor for women's sexuality is also evident in the song since Chickasaw is depicted as stealing men away from their partners.

One can interpret this song as a critique of the social dynamics and power struggles between women, where men are seen as a resource to be fought over. The song highlights the entitlement some women have to take another woman's man, and it may also reflect the patriarchal structures that allow men to be objectified and commodified, reducing their worth to their sexual availability.

Line by Line Meaning

I'm might tell everybody
I am considering telling everyone

What that Chickasaw has done, done for me
About the harm Chickasaw has done to me

She done stole my man away
She has taken my man from me

And blow that doggone smoke on me
And smoke my way excessively

She's a low down dirty dog
She is a deceitful, unkind person

I ain't no woman, like to ride that Chickasaw
I do not want to take a ride on Chickasaw

Because everywhere she stop
Since wherever she halts

She's stealing some woman good man off
She takes away some other woman's man

I told the depot agent this mornin'
I spoke to the agent at the depot this morning

I don't think he treat me right
I feel he treated me unfairly

He done sold my man a ticket
He has sold a ticket to my man