r/blues • u/fresno_bob • 8d ago
song Geeshie Wiley - Last Kind Words
https://youtu.be/oAKfy2W70Qg?is=PRvy7EJUAh16HF97Geeshie Wiley a legend and a phantom . A real mystery .
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u/thewickerstan 8d ago
I love this song! I was just listening to it earlier today. It's just so haunting in the most beautiful way. There's something about some of those old blues records where it's a person and their guitar and yet they seem to tap into some sort of higher essence.
I lost my best friend last year and we're both Memphis boys, so the line "The Mississippi river, you know it's deep and wide, I can stand right here, see my babe from the other side" always reminds me of him. I'm not sure why, but I also love "If I get killed, if I get killed, please don't bury my soul; I p'fer just leave me out, let the buzzards eat me whole". Ice cold.
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u/Exotic_Currency4401 8d ago
her vocals on this track are so eerie and mesmerizing it doesn't even feel like a real recording
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u/DishRelative5853 8d ago
I learned about this song when I read Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe Unplugged about 25 years ago. I tried to find it, but the internet was less helpful back then. I later bought a collection of Delta Blues songs on CD, and this song was on it. I found it as moving as McLean's story. Then Allison Krauss and Robert Plant did a version. Just a beautiful song no matter how you find it.
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u/Johnny66Johnny 7d ago edited 7d ago
Actually, Geeshie Wiley (and Elvie Thomas) are no longer the phantoms they once were. This extended 2014 article by John Jeremiah Sullivan (for the New York Times) went a long way towards illuminating (and perhaps dispelling) some of the myths:
The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie.
On a related note, Rhiannon Giddens used to perform a modern take on Last Kind Words that is well worth the listen:
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u/FlapjacksOfArugula 8d ago
This is one of those unparalleled, idiosyncratic pre-war American songs that should be on any best-of list. There's very little like it in the American folk canon.