Vicksburg Blues- Little Brother Montgomery (Paramount, 1930)
Little Brother Montgomery’s classic “Vicksburg Blues”—the first of his many versions—derived from a piano anthem known as “The Forty-Fours” played by a number of Deep South musicians. Montgomery, a leading light among that crew, didn’t make it into the Paramount recording studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, until c. December1930, by which time Roosevelt Sykes and Lee Green had
both already recorded “44 Blues” in 1929. So Montgomery applied his rolling piano runs and trembling vocals to the same tune with a new set of lyrics immortalizing the Mississippi River town that was one of his frequent bases: “Vicksburg on a high hill, Natchez down below.” Montgomery credited Long Tall Friday, Robert “Dehlco” Johnson and Earnest “44” Johnson as early exponents of the theme.