The Legal Underground Word of the Week: Public Domain, as Read by Denise Howell

Today's Legal Underground Word of the Week, Public Domain, is read by Denise Howell of Bag and Baggage. You can hear the production as an MP3 or as a podcast by subscribing to this RSS feed with iPodder or a similar product. Meanwhile, you can find the feed to Denise's awesome podcast on the right side of her weblog.

The music that accompanies Denise's reading is a public-domain song called Paddlin' Blues by Gitfiddle Jim. Released in 1930, I found it at Public Domain 4U, which has lots of interesting MP3s that can be downloaded for free. Gitfiddle Jim's real name was Kokomo Arnold. One of his biggest hits was "Milk Cow Blues," which was one of the first songs recorded by Elvis Presley.

If you'd like to participate in my audio-blogging word-of-the-week project, simply choose a suitable word from a suitable law dictionary, record yourself reading it, and then send it to me as an mp3, wav, or DSS file. But you'd better hurry, because once I run out of words, this weekly feature is going to be replaced by The Legal Underground's Three-Minute Book Review, which will alternate each Friday (maybe) with The Legal Underground's Three-Minute Lawyer Interview.

Comments

[Yeoman]

Wasn't Milk Cow Blues a Robert Johnson song originally?

[Evan]

According to the "Big Book of Blues," which I just happen to have sitting around in my office, Kokomo Arnold recorded first and influenced Robert Johnson. Arnold's song "Kokomo Blues," for example, was reworked by Johnson as "Sweet Home Chicago." The book mentions "Milk Cow Blues" and mentions the Presley version, but doesn't mention Robert Johnson.

I did a little further research and realized the Robert Johnson song is titled "Milkcow's Calf Blues." One website says that Johnson's song was influenced by Kokomo Arnold's song. I compared the lyrics, and they are vastly different. I haven't compared the actual songs, though--I have the Johnson song, but not the Kokomo Arnold song.

[Yeoman]

I have the Johnsons song also, as well as a few variants of it here and there.

Of course, it's always difficult to tell the real origin of any of the older blues songs. Some you can be certain of their origin, but others get attributed to somebody, but were probably in general circulation and simply recorded by somebody for Lomax, or the like.

Very interesting.

Have any Elmore James? I've always thought he was really a missed master.

[pierre]

Milk cow blues is one of my favourite blues; i have never found the original lyrics by Kokomo arnold. i asked a lot of my english friends to translate the text in english but they failed;
There is many differences with the lyrics of elvis.