Careless love

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Careless Love, played by Julien Grandgagnage (tenor saxophone)

Careless Love (also known as Careless Love Blues ) is a song released by WC Handy (music), Martha E. Koenig and Spencer Williams (lyrics) in 1926 and became a popular blues and jazz standard in the years that followed.

Origin and first recordings of the song

Bessie Smith, 1936
photograph by Carl van Vechten , from the Van Vechten Collection of the Library of Congress

The origin of Careless Love is uncertain. Possibly it is a folk song from the 1880s. Handy said he'd played the song with his band since 1891. A transcription of the original text by Howard Odum (as Kelly's Love ) dates from 1911 . According to Wooden Joe Nicholas , it was one of the most recognizable songs in the repertoire of the Buddy Bolden Band in New Orleans in the early 1900s . Handy released the tune in 1921, initially as Loveless Love ; Noble Sissle recorded this song for the first time in 1921. The blues singers Katherine Handy (1922) and Alberta Hunter (1923) followed. Bessie Smith recorded the song, accompanied by Louis Armstrong (cornet), Charlie Green (trombone) and Fred Longshaw (piano), as Careless Love Blues on May 26, 1925 for Columbia Records ; In November 1925 Papa Celestin & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra played him (with Kid Shots Madison, among others ) in New Orleans for Okeh Records . In 1926, WC Handy registered the joint copyright on the song after the text had been supplemented by Spencer Williams and Martha E. Koenig.

Features of the song

Careless Love is written in a 16-bar structure of four lines of equal length, which are written in an AAAB or AABC song form . In the opinion of numerous experts, Careless Love is "not a regular blues at all, but a sentimental song in the" folk tone "that WC Handy and the people in his circle took up in the blues repertoire." However, bars 9 to 16 are harmonious a proximity to the blues can be determined.

song lyrics

Love, oh love, oh careless love.
Love, oh love, oh careless love.
Oh, it's love, oh love, oh care-less love,
Just see what love has done to me.
Sorrow, sorrow to my heart.
Sorrow, sorrow to my heart.
Oh, it's sorrow, sorrow to my heart
When me and my true love must part.
It's a pity that we met ...
For those good times we'll never forget.
Cried last night and the night before ...
Going to cry tonight and I'll cry no more.

Cover versions

From the mid-1920s onwards, hundreds of cover versions of the song were made in the folk, blues, jazz, country and pop fields ; u. a. by Marilyn Lee , Ottilie Patterson , Pete Seeger , George Lewis , Big Joe Turner , T. Texas Tyler , Eddy Arnold , Louis Armstrong , Bing Crosby , Eartha Kitt , Lonnie Johnson , Blind Boy Fuller , Dave Van Ronk , Lead Belly , Odetta , Lee Wiley , Janis Joplin , Siouxsie Sioux , Suzy Bogguss , Joan Baez , Ray Charles , Ace Cannon , Ronnie Lane , Dr. John , Madeleine Peyroux , Bob Dylan , Bill Monroe , Johnny Cash , Frankie Laine , Skip James and Snooks Eaglin . After Tom Lord , over 600 cover versions of the title were created in the field of jazz from 1925, of which the versions by Michael Blake , Harry Connick Jr. Benny Goodman , Bunk Johnson , Lonnie Johnson, Humphrey Lyttelton , Junior Mance , Helen Merrill and the Central Quartet should be emphasized some of which were created in later years.

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  1. ↑ Martha E. Koenig (lyricist) in the Discography of American Historice Recordings
  2. ↑ a b Careless Love (Blues) (William C. Handy & Spencer Williams & Martha E. Koenig? Bessie Smith? Traditional?)
  3. ↑ a b basic information at Jazzstandards.com
  4. ^ A b c John Clark Experiencing Bessie Smith: A Listener's Companion Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2017, p. 38
  5. ↑ a b c d Edward M. Komara (Ed.) Encyclopedia of the Blues , Vol. 1, p. 181
  6. ^ A b Vic Hobson Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues University Press of Mississippi 2014
  7. ↑ a b Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed May 22, 2018)
  8. ↑ Alfons duration Blues from 100 years: 43 examples of the typology of vocal blues forms Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt a. M. 1983, p. 15
  9. ↑ Careless Love at Beth's Notes