- Style
- Jazz
- Tradition
- Blues
- Form
- Blues, two 12 bar strains, a 16 bar minor tango strain and a 12 bar chorus
- Key
- G
- Level
- 4
- Played on
- Voice
In the public domain. Source
Music
Two blues strains, the minor tango strain and the chorus. Swing the blues strains; play the minor strain straight.
Click any note to start from there
Chord chart
History
W. C. Handy published it in September 1914. He said a woman he met on a St. Louis street, upset that her husband was gone, gave him the line "Ma man's got a heart like a rock cast in de sea." Besides the 12 bar blues strains, the song has a 16 bar strain in habanera rhythm that Handy called a tango.
Bessie Smith recorded it in 1925 with Louis Armstrong on cornet, and that record entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993. She also sang it in the 1929 film St. Louis Blues. Handy's own 1922 recording with his Memphis Blues Band is in the National Recording Registry.