"Rag Mama"

Eighty-nine years ago this week, a young North Carolinian walked into a New York recording studio as Fulton Allen and, after recording a few tunes, walked out again as “Blind Boy Fuller.”

On the recording of his composition “Rag Mama” and two other songs pressed that day, the young man was accompanied by his mentor and blues tutor, the legendary Rev. Gary Davis.

“When I first run across him,” Davis said years later, “he didn't know how to play but one piece and that was with a knife.”

But with Davis’ guidance, Allen’s playing had improved dramatically by the time he came to the attention of James Baxter Long, a record store manager and talent scout in Burlington, NC.

“I saw this blind fellow, colored man. He had on a blanket-lined overall jumper,” Long later recounted, “but I heard him sing. He could sing. Anyway, I told him, 'I'm down here at the United Dollar Store. Come by and see me.’”

Well, Fulton did, and a short time later, in July 1935, Long, Allen and Davis set off for New York City, bound for American Recording Co. (ARC), which manufactured disks for many companies, including Columbia. Over the next five years Fulton Allen — as Blind Boy Fuller — recorded 120 sides, which were released by several different labels.

Oh, and about the name on the label. Earlier when Allen started to sing on the street corners of Durham, NC, outside factories and tobacco warehouses, people called him “Blind Boy Fulton.” Eventually it was corrupted to “Blind Boy Fuller,” which was to be the name Allen provided to folks at the New York recording studio.

How the Tune Came Down to Us

Thirty years later, “Rag Mama” came down to the 1960s folk music crowd as a signature sound for the era’s jug band music revival. It was first picked up by Stefan Grossman and Peter Siegel’s Even Dozen Jug Band, then by the even better-known Jim Kweskin Jug Band.

In their seminal 1979 book Baby, Let Me Follow You Down, Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney quoted Kweskin as relating how he traveled across the country in the early 1960s developing his musical chops by performing with an array of musicians in local music stores, coffeehouses and bars.

“In Berkeley, California,” Kweskin told them, “I met a guy named Steve Talbott, who adapted an old Blind Boy Fuller tune, and I learned it from him. The song was ‘Rag Mama’ and it became my theme song.”

Enter The Flood

It was Kweskin’s rendition on his 1965 Jug Band Music album that inspired The Flood a decade later as the guys were expanding their repertoire into hokum music.

“Rag Mama” even played an important role in the early 1980s when Joe Dobbs pitched his idea to West Virginia Public Radio for a new weekly music show. When Joe asked his band mates to help him create a demo of his dream for “Music from the Mountains,” he wanted to illustrate the diversity of musical styles the show could celebrate.

Click the button below for a rather manic 1983 version of the tune offered up by Joe and his fellow Floodsters Dave Peyton, Charlie Bowen, Roger Samples and Bill Hoke:

Gimme Dat Ding

Few things stand still in the Floodisphere. That includes songs in the band’s repertoire. “Rag Mama” was still with the guys when they rolled into the 21st century, but by then the song had picked up new ornamentation.

It’s unclear just who first suggested it — might have been Peyton, might have been Bowen — but by the time the tune made it onto the band’s second studio album in 2002, “Rag Mama” had been been further fortified with a bit of 1970s folkie foolishness.

Britain’s novelty group The Pipkins hit the charts in 1970 with a little earworm that was written by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood. The Family Flood found "Gimme Dat Ding” to be a perfect ending for its ever-evolving version of “Rag Mama.”

Today’s Take on the Tune

So, this song has been floating around in the Floodisphere for nearly 50 years. Nowadays, it is not often on the set list at the band’s shows, but it almost always comes back at Flood reunion, and we had a wonderful reunion last week.

Michelle Hoge, “the chick singer,” drove in from Cincinnati. Bub — Dave Ball — was up from Florida. Old friends like Jim Rumbaugh, Karen Combs and Doug Imbrogno came by.

Everybody was singing and playing along with this one from last week’s rehearsal.