“Moon Goin’ Down”

Happy Monday, folks!  Hope your weekend went swimmingly & that you return to the week full of renewed vim & vigor.  But if you need a little extra something to get you going, here’s the Monday Morning Blues for your enjoyment.

These days the Monday Morning Blues is an easy post for me because I’ve been recording a lot & have somewhere close to two dozen songs at my disposal, with more on the way.  In case you missed the earlier post about this, I’ll be happy to have at least one CD & quite probably two for sale at gigs this summer.  I don’t expect this to bring in anything more than mad money, but every little bit helps.

Today’s selection is by one of my favorite Delta blues musicians, Charlie Patton.  Patton was one of the first wave of recorded Delta blues players, & he waxed 57 songs at four sessions between 1929 & 1934, including a memorable 1930 session in Grafton, WI where Son House, Willie Brown & Louise Johnson were also present.  In fact, Patton maintained friendships with House & Brown, & the latter duetted with Patton on several of his records, including Patton’s recording of today’s song, “Moon  Goin' Down.” There’s an excellent concise online biography of Patton by Elijah Wald here.  I’m quite intrigued by Wald’s take on the old-time blues scene as evinced in this article & in his excellent book, Escaping the Delta, but for a different view, you can check out Robert Palmer’s seminal work, Deep Blues.

Obviously, my arrangement of “Moon Goin’ Down” is different than the original—for one thing, it’s not a duet!  Patton played the song in open G tuning, while I’m playing it on my Regal resonator in drop D tuning capoed up so that the actual key is E.  This tune has been in my repertoire for a while, & I always enjoy playing it.   

Hope you like it too!