“Slow Trains, South-Bound Women” says it all in the title.
In the tradition of the blues, “Slow Trains” is a first-person lament over the loss of a lover. She done gone.
The melody, too, is strictly old-time blues, with its three-chord progression over 12-bars, though as I am want to do, I toss in a bridge that gives us two new chords!
The way I write most of my blues: start strumming and wait for the words to follow.
What follows is a brief history of the blues:
Started in the Mississippi Delta (Delta blues), then migrated north (after the 1927 Mississippi Flood when the Great Migration began) to Chicago.
There it added a few more instruments (horns even) to the basic rhythmic harmonic structure. These other instruments added more than just three chords per song and notes, and before you know it, they were calling it jazz.
Some of that Delta blues also found its way to Memphis, where it took on more of a vaudevillian, dance style to go along with the entertainment district along Beale Street.
Here, the lead guitar was added. This would become instrumental (no pun intended) in the evolution to rock and roll, where two guitars became the norm to pair with bass and drums for all that bopping ‘round the clock.
The above is just me and my guitar, wishing I knew a little harmonica.
Slow Trains, South-Bound Women
(chorus):
slow trains, south-bound women (x3)
well they gonna be the death of me
slow trains they take forever (x3)
and never get you where you wanna be
south-bound women take it with ’em (x3)
and don’t care if they ever see you again
(chorus)
(bridge):
my south bound woman she done left me
this train ain’t never gonna catch her
south bound women slow trains
well they gonna be the death of me.
(chorus)
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def liked it