A country blues classic…

Good Morning Little School Girl… I love this tune… it’s considered a blues standard and resides in the Blues Hall of Fame as of 1990… Sonny Boy Williamson is credited with having recorded it first in 1939, but as with many blues tunes, original authorship can be a bit foggy… Williamson’s tune is believed to be a reworking of Son Bonds’ Back and Side Blues… The melody of Bond’s tune and Williamson’s are very, very close…

Here’s Bonds’ original Back and Side Blues…

https://youtu.be/3QJYeNNJOt0

And here’s Williamson’s original 1939 Hall of Fame version of Good Morning Little School Girl…

Though backed up by a pair of guitars, Williamson’s version is dominated by his harmonica, for which is most well known… The first version I remember hearing was recorded by Muddy Waters and in this version, his guitar playing carries the tune:

What struck me besides Waters’ masterful guitar playing was the Rolling Stonesesque lecherous nature to the tune… Basically an adult male chasing after an underage girl reminiscent of Jagger and Richards’ Stray Cat Blues, which is equally nasty… Here is the opening stanza of Good Morning Little Schoolgirl:

Good morning little school girl
Good morning little school girl
Can I go home with
Can I go home with you?
Tell your mother and your father
I once was a schoolboy too

Wicked… nasty… not politically correct… but so bluesy… love it…

After hearing Muddy Waters’ version of the tune, I thought how fun it would be to learn it and I was delighted that Stef Grosman included the tab and lessons in his Bottleneck Blues Guitar DVD. Grossman based his arrangement on Fred McDowell’s interpretation of the tune. I really like McDowell’s version… his guitar playing is clean and penetrating and his slide vibrato is perfect…

I do not like to sing when I play… I am guitarist, so I tend to learn tunes that sound decent when played as an instrumental and Good Morning Little Schoolgirl fits the bill… I also tend to favor playing the tune a bit slower and “swamping” it up…

When I was shopping for my Reso-Lectric at Dave’s Guitars in LaCrosse, WI one of the store guys approached me and told me how much he likes my swampy play as compared to so many others who rip through slide pieces when trying out guitars in the store… He compared me to Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas Soundtrack… I was a bit taken back because I am not in the same galactic dimension as Ry Cooder, but the compliment was encouraging…

Here’s my version:

There’ve been a bajillion cover recordings of this tune, like the poppy, somewhat inane version by the Yardbirds, or the long jam version by the Grateful Dead, or Taj Mahal’s own idiosyncratic take, which you can see below:

Finally in closing, I will remind all that country blues is the foundation upon which rock and roll music stands and these old tunes are often reinterpreted in a variety of way… here you can see the great Alvin Lee of Ten Years After ripping out a version of School Girl…

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Thanks for dropping in!