horsemouth has been much concerned with two songs of late - skip james' hard time killing floor blues and 13th century monk’s complaint the worldes blisse last ne time no.
horsemouth is currently putting some work into learning the former (well no he’s bodging it with Em, G, B7 rather than playing it in the open Dm tuning people say skip james used) and once upon a time he put some work into learning the later - having first arranged it for the chords G7, Bflat7, now this he plays using an open D5 ‘nashville’ tuning - it would probably work dadgad too).
worldes blisse he learnt from edward lee’s music of the people (second hand bookshop/ library sale - somewhere/ sometime) laboriously ‘translating’ the dots without an audio recording to help him along - he could therefore have got it hideously wrong. this makes it a trad.arr. - a traditional tune, arranged by___, in songwriting terms. in any event he played it live (and explained his arranging techniques) at the solo (plus guests) musician of bremen gig some time ago.
since then he has discovered at least two other attempts to make use of this tune. peter maxwell davies played a 40 minute orchestral version at the proms in 1969 provoking a near riot, soundtrack (and choral music) classical composer geoffrey burgon did a version with two counter-tenors, and it looks like ancient and traditional music singer and lutenist john fleagle has done a version. none of these has horsemouth heard yet.
for the writer of worldes blisse the world is a fallen creation, life is mired with care and sorrow, you are better off dead really. for skip james it’s just hard times - better times may come, but even then ‘well you say you got money... you’d better be sure...’
horsemouth particularly liked gary lucas’s introduction (he has picked skip james’ blues as one of his three favourite things);
"in the darkest hours of my life, when I felt completely alone in the world and without hope, I found a tremendous solace in listening to skip james."
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