It’s one of the most recognizable songs in American pop culture, but most people don’t know that this tune was originally written in 1927—nearly fifty years before the cover “Going Up the Country” by Canned Heat made it internationally famous.
Bull Doze Blues was written by Henry Thomas, an American country blues singer songwriter born in 1874. He was one of the oldest black musicians who ever recorded for the phonograph companies of the 1920’s—and his music is a unique glimpse into the past. (Not much music was recorded in those days, especially American black folk music.) Norman Blake wrote this about Henry Thomas and what life was like during that period:
Where the Texas Pacific Railroad ran through cotton gin towns
The lumber mills and the peach orchards used to stretch for miles around
He’d change cars on the Katy ‘cause he didn’t know where he’s bound
With his ragged clothes and old guitar he’d walk right through their towns
And they called him Ragtime Texas, Henry Thomas was his name
From Deep Ellum down in Dallas to the Texarkana cane
Kansas City to Saint Louis, Chicago in the rain
He’s on his way but he didn’t know where, just a-ridin’ on a train
His daddy sharecropped cotton in East Texas bottom land
He became a drifter before he was a man
Playing country dances, the cane quills he blowed
Then he found an old guitar and a hard life on the road
Down to cruel Huntsville prison farm they run him on in
He never knew from day to day if he had a friend
In the boxcars and the migrant camps, on the sidewalks of the town
He seen all them hard traveling men, on their last go ‘round
Although the hobo life is highly romanticized, it’s hard not to love the idea of traveling town to town by rail, relying on a guitar, a voice, and the kindness of strangers to get by. Nearly 150 years later, we salute you, Henry.
