Customer Reviews

Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1, 1924-1925

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I bought this CD after hearing a few Butterbeans and Susie songs on the anthology CDs "The Roots of Rap" and "Double Crossing Blues". It's got a lot of good songs on it, but some of them that I suppose were supposed to be funny at the time are kind of unpleasant to listen to now, "A to Z Blues" in particular. The reason is because they're full of threats of violence to the wife in this husband-wife team, Susie. You get used to seeing that from time to time in blues songs this old, but I was kind of surprised by the amount of it, and the extent to which the songs focused on it. Not that Susie always treats her husband with respect and dignity in the songs, of course. Often the threats of violence are in response to infidelity or threats of infidelity. Susie rarely appears meek or afraid of her husband after he makes these threats, which saves this from being too painful to listen to.

Anyway, there are also songs that have no violence in them. Some are funny and some are just good. "Construction Gang" is funny, and pretty typical of the songs here: both Susie and Butterbeans make extraordinary demands of their spouse, and after the dramatic tension has grown sufficiently, they are refused. There are also sweet love songs, sometimes tinged with sexuality, like "Kiss Me Sweet" and "When My Man Shimmies".

Overall, this CD has some catchy and amusing songs, but it's also interesting as a window on attitudes to marriage in the 1920s. And it's certainly much more interesting than "The Lockhorns".