What if St. Louis Blues was Synth-Pop
I hate to see de ev'nin' sun go down
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What if St. Louis Blues was Synth-Pop
W. C. Handy's blues walks out of a hot St. Louis evening and into a wet street under neon. The piano and the horns are gone; in their place are analog synth pads, a drum machine and a low synth bass, with a breathy female vocal staying close to the microphone. The complaint in the lyric does not change. Only the century around it does.
Every word is Handy's, and it is spelled the way his sheet music spelled it: "I hate to see de ev'nin' sun go down", and later, "If my blues don't get you, my jazzing must". Three verses and all five chorus stanzas printed in the 1914 first edition are all here, in the score's order, with nothing added, cut or modernised — including the aside the score marks spoken, "Doggone it!" 12 The words and music were published in New York in 1914 and are in the public domain. 3
Play it late: on a drive home through a city that has emptied out, or at the end of a Sunday with the week already in view. It is a sad song on a steady pulse, which is the whole idea. You can move to something you are mourning.
References
- 1St. Louis Blues (1914) — W. C. Handy, Wikisource
en.wikisource.org
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