Tampa Red (January 8, 1904 - March 19, 1981), born Hudson Woodbridge but kn… Read Full Bio ↴Tampa Red (January 8, 1904 - March 19, 1981), born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an influential American musician.

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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My gal is gone
Tampa Red Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

No one to love me, no one to care
It's mighty hard for me to bear
This seems to be my last affair
My gal is gone

Just as sure as the sun
Shine up in the skies above
Why you cannot be happy

When you ain't with the one you love

Now I'm as lonesome as I can be
Nothing else to live for, as I can see
My happiness is misery
My gal is gone

Baby, baby, baby
Please come back to me
If I been a bad fella
I did not intend to be

Hmm hmm, hmm hmm
Hmm hmm, hmm hmm
Lord, my gal is gone

My heart is heavy and achin' so
I walk and I worry from door to door
But I don't feel welcome, no place I go
Lord, my gal is gone

I set a-waitin'
But I never do get no mail

I'm drifting and worrying
Just like a ship without a sail

Overall Meaning

The song "My Gal Is Gone" by Tampa Red is a mournful lament about lost love. The singer sings about his heartache after his girlfriend or wife has left him. He has no one to love or care for him, and he finds it hard to bear the pain. He knows that this break up is the end of the line for him. He laments that he cannot be happy without the woman he loves. He is lonely and feels that there is nothing else to live for. He has grown miserable in his happiness because his gal is gone.

The repetition of "hmm hmm" creates a tone of sadness and introspection, conveying that the singer is lost in thought about his former love. He begs his gal to come back to him, even if he has been a bad fella, it was unintentional. This line suggests that he is willing to change his behavior and make things right to win her back. The final verses of the song show the singer in desperation. He walks aimlessly, seeking solace but finding none. He waits for her to send a letter but never receives one, leaving him adrift like a ship without a sail.

Overall, Tampa Red's "My Gal Is Gone" is a poignant reflection on heartbreak and loss. The song uses simple language and a repetitive structure to create a sense of sadness and desperation. The singer is utterly alone without his love and is forced to confront the emptiness of his life.

Line by Line Meaning

No one to love me, no one to care
I am alone and have no one in my life to love or care for me.

It's mighty hard for me to bear
It is very difficult for me to tolerate this situation.

This seems to be my last affair
I feel that this is the final relationship I will ever have.

My gal is gone
My girlfriend has left me.

Just as sure as the sun
Without any doubt.

Shine up in the skies above
The sun that appears in the sky above us.

Why you cannot be happy
It is difficult to be happy.

When you ain't with the one you love
When you are not with your lover.

Now I'm as lonesome as I can be
I am as lonely as I can be.

Nothing else to live for, as I can see
I feel that there is nothing else worth living for.

My happiness is misery
I am so unhappy that I feel miserable.