Tampa Red is best known as an accomplished and influential blues guitarist who had a unique single-string bottleneck style. His songwriting and his silky, polished slide technique influenced other leading Chicago blues guitarists, such as Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Nighthawk, as well as Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Mose Allison and many others. In a career spanning over 30 years he also recorded pop, R&B and hokum records.
He was born Hudson Woodbridge in Smithville, Georgia. His parents died when he was a child, and he moved to Tampa, Florida, where he was raised by his aunt and grandmother and adopted their surname, Whittaker. He emulated his older brother, Eddie, who played guitar, and he was especially inspired by an old street musician called Piccolo Pete, who first taught him to play blues licks on a guitar.
In the 1920s, having already perfected his slide technique, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and began his career as a musician, adopting the name "Tampa Red" from his childhood home and red hair. His big break was being hired to accompany Ma Rainey and he began recording in 1928 with "It's Tight Like That", in a bawdy and humorous style that became known as "hokum". Early recordings were mostly collaborations with Thomas A. Dorsey, known at the time as Georgia Tom. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom recorded almost 90 sides, sometimes as "The Hokum Boys" or, with Frankie Jaxon, as "Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band".
In 1928, Tampa Red became the first black musician to play a National steel-bodied resonator guitar, the loudest and showiest guitar available before amplification, acquiring one in the first year they were available. This allowed him to develop his trademark bottleneck style, playing single string runs, not block chords, which was a precursor to later blues and rock guitar soloing. The National guitar he used was a gold-plated tricone, which was found in Illinois in the 1990s and later sold to the "Experience Music Project" in Seattle. Tampa Red was known as "The Man With The Gold Guitar", and, into the 1930s, he was billed as "The Guitar Wizard".
His partnership with Dorsey ended in 1932, but he remained much in demand as a session musician, working with John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Memphis Minnie, and many others. In 1934 he signed for Victor Records. He formed the Chicago Five, a group of session musicians who created what became known as the Bluebird sound, a precursor of the small group style of later jump blues and rock and roll bands. He was a close friend and associate of Big Bill Broonzy and Big Maceo Merriweather. He enjoyed commercial success and reasonable prosperity, and his home became a centre for the blues community, informally providing rehearsal space, bookings, and lodgings for the flow of musicians who arrived in Chicago from the Mississippi Delta as the commercial potential of blues music grew and agricultural employment in the south diminished.
By the 1940s he was playing electric guitar. In 1942 "Let Me Play With Your Poodle" was a # 4 hit on Billboard Magazine's new "Harlem Hit Parade", forerunner of the R&B chart, and his 1949 recording "When Things Go Wrong with You (It Hurts Me Too)", another R&B hit, was covered by Elmore James. He was "rediscovered" in the late 1950s, like many other surviving early recorded blues artists such as Son House and Skip James, as part of the blues revival. His final, undistinguished, recordings were in 1960.
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Delta Woman Blues
Tampa Red Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
That's where I belong
I'm goin' back to the delta
That's where I belong
If old bad luck and trouble
Don't keep me far to long
Than any place I know
I'd rather be down in the delta
Than any place I know
Because I don't feel happy
No other place I go
My little woman in the delta
She was good to me
My little woman in the delta
She was good to me
Well, she was a good kind-hearted
As one poor gal could be
I'm goin' back to the delta
Fall down on my knees
Gonna ask my delta woman
To forgive me if she please
I'm goin' back to the delta, woo
Goin' to fall down on my knees
I'm gonna ask my delta woman
To forgive me if she please
I've tested with all-a my women
From here to Mexico
But my woman in the delta
She's the sweetest gal I know
I've tested with all-a my women, woo
From here to Mexico
But my little woman in the delta
She's the sweetest gal I know
In Tampa Red's song "Delta Woman Blues," the singer expresses his longing for home in the Mississippi Delta, where he plans to return to find comfort and solace. He seems to have been experiencing bad luck and trouble, and he hopes that these issues will not detain him long. Despite having checked out various places, he remains discontented and cannot find happiness anywhere other than the delta. The singer believes that his woman in the delta was kind-hearted, as he recalls fondly, adding that he had tested his love for her with other women and found that she was the sweetest. He plans to apologize to her and ask for her forgiveness when he returns.
The song's theme of longing for home reflects the tradition of the blues in which a sense of displacement and yearning for home is often expressed. The delta itself was the origin of the blues, and this fact is not lost in the song, as the singer longs to return to the place of origin. Tampa Red's writing is also reminiscent of the migration of African Americans from the South to the North during the early 20th century, as they sought better opportunities and to escape the Delta's oppression. His homesickness is palpable and echoes the feelings of other migrants.
Line by Line Meaning
I'm goin' back to the delta
I will go back to the Mississippi Delta region.
That's where I belong
I feel that I belong in this part of the United States.
If old bad luck and trouble
If my difficulties and misfortunes
Don't keep me far to long
Do not hold me there for a long time.
I'd rather be down in the delta
I prefer to be in the Mississippi Delta.
Than any place I know
More than any other place, I find contentment there.
Because I don't feel happy
I feel unhappy in other locations.
No other place I go
No other geographic region brings me happiness.
My little woman in the delta
My female companion in the Mississippi Delta region.
She was good to me
She was kind and supportive of me.
Well, she was a good kind-hearted
Indeed, she was a kind-hearted person
As one poor gal could be
As sympathetic and supportive as any underprivileged woman.
Fall down on my knees
I will kneel down.
Gonna ask my delta woman
I am going to ask my female companion from the Delta region.
To forgive me if she please
I will implore her to pardon me, if it is her inclination to do so.
I've tested with all-a my women
I have tried out all my other gender partners.
From here to Mexico
From this geographic spot to Mexico.
But my woman in the delta
My woman from the Mississippi Delta,
She's the sweetest gal I know
In fact, she is the most charming lady I have encountered.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: HUDSON WHITTAKER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@SlimDavenport
Love this song.