Make Me a Pallet on the Floor

"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (also "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor", "Make Me a Pallet", or "Pallet on the Floor") is a blues/jazz/folk song. It is considered a standard.[1] As Jelly Roll Morton explained, "A pallet is something that – you get some quilts – in other words, it's a bed that's made on a floor without any four posters on 'em."[2]

Structure

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The melody is 16 bars long.[2] One writer describes the structure as "a proto-blues [...that] has little in common musically with regular blues".[3] When played in the key of C, the typical structure is:[3]

F F C C
F F C C
C E 7 Am Fm 6
C D 7G 7 C C

History

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The composition probably originates from the end of the nineteenth century.[3] One jazz historian states that the song "could have been sung around New Orleans in the mid-1890s."[2] A 1906 report in the Indianapolis Freeman referred to a performance of the song by "The Texas Teaser, Bennie Jones".[2] It appeared in sheet music in 1908 as part of "Blind Boone's Southern Rag Medley No. One: Strains from the Alleys."[4] "The lyrics first appear in a 1911 article by folklorist Howard Odum, who had transcribed them from a performance he had heard in Mississippi a few years before."[3]

Some sources attribute the modern score to W. C. Handy, who later modified it into a song known as "Atlanta Blues".[5] He published "Atlanta Blues" in 1923, featuring lyrics credited to Dave Elman.[3] The first recording of the melody appears in Handy's band's 1917 performance of "Sweet Child", which was written by Stovall and Ewing.[3]

Early recordings of the song were made by numerous musicians,[3] including Virginia Liston ("Make Me a Pallet", OKeh 8247, 1925), Ethel Waters, ("Make Me a Pallet on the Floor", Columbia 14125-D, 1926), Mississippi John Hurt ("Ain't No Tellin'", OKeh 8759, 1928); and country music duo the Stripling Brothers ("Pallet on the Floor", Decca 5367, 1936).[6]

During a live session captured by Alan Lomax, Delta blues guitarist and singer Sam Chatmon accounted, "When I first started picking guitar it was about the first or the second [song] I learned ... [I] was about 4 years old",[7] making it the year 1900 when Sam learned the song in Bolton, Mississippi.

References

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  1. ^ Oricelli, Robert (2006). "Odetta". In Komara, Edward (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Blues. Routledge. p. 733. ISBN 978-0-415-92699-7.
  2. ^ a b c d Hobson, Vic (2011). "New Orleans Jazz and the Blues". Jazz Perspectives. 5 (1): 3–27. doi:10.1080/17494060.2011.590676. S2CID 191544824.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Muir, Peter (2006). "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor". In Komara, Edward (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Blues. Routledge. pp. 648–649. ISBN 978-0-415-92699-7.
  4. ^ Blind Boone's Southern Rag Medley No. One: Strains from the Alleys. Allen Music Co. 908 Broadway, Columbia Missouri. 1908.
  5. ^ Robertson, David (2009). W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues. Random House of Canada. pp. 98–99. ISBN 978-0-307-26609-5.
  6. ^ Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle, The Traditional Ballad Index, Version 5.2, 27 July 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020
  7. ^ "Sam Chatmon: Make Me A Pallet On the Floor (1978) - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
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