This is not so much a blues song in the strictest sense, as it is a country cheating song in the tradition of Hank Williams: “I Got a Feeling Called the Blues.” (If only I could yodel! Seriously.)
The cheating song has a long tradition in all forms of jazz: blues, pop, rock and roll and country. In country, some of its best songs are in this sub genre: from Dolly Patron’s “Jolene,” to “Your Cheating Heart,” another Hank classic.
The key to a good cheating song seems to be the straight-ahead undeniability of the fact, and the raw emotional response.
Cheating songs, like falling-in-love songs, don’t necessarily have to come from a singular personal experience. Rather, they can come from tapping into the universal sense of falling in love or being dumped. Almost everyone has experienced either or both of those emotional carnival rides.
At a certain age, there seems to be little else one feels.
And with all blues, the singing it, the hearing it, or dancing to it somehow lessens its impact.
The above is just me and my guitar
Got the Blues Last Night
(chorus):
I got the blues last night
saw my baby with another guy
haven’t slept a wink
for cry-i-ng
baby had on a new red dress
where she got it don’t know hate to guess
but that’s not all that’s troubling my mind
see that wasn’t baby’s first time
(chorus)
said she’d love me til the end of time
now I know she was just lying
haven’t slept a wink
for crying
just might get me a gun
shoot that sucker just for fun
but that wouldn’t make everything right
cuz baby’s going out again tonight
(chorus)
baby taught me a thing or two
there’s more to life than the blues
so get yourself a baby
you don’t have to worry about
looking for me a new baby
one who won’t go stepping out
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loved it!