Well, it seems I'm on a Porter Grainger (or maybe a Bob Dylan) run.
So ... here's the latest.
In March, 1962, about the same time his first album was released, Bob Dylan served as a backup musician, playing harmonica, for an album featuring blues legends Victoria Spivey (b. 1906), Big Joe Williams (b. 1903), Roosevelt Sykes (b. 1906), and Lonnie Johnson (b. 1899). The album was titled Three Kings and a Queen. Young guy, aging legends; Dylan fit right in.
1962 was a busy year for Dylan the session player. He was twenty years old, and had already served as harmonica backup for Harry Belafonte on Belafonte's 1962 release of "Midnight Special."
Harry Belafonte (Dylan, 20 yrs old, on harmonica) "Midnight Special" 1962.
He had also played harp for three songs on Carolyn Hester's self-titled third album. On the one below, Hester's interpretation of Walter Davis' (1911-1963) "Come Back Baby," Dylan's harmonica has a subdued subterranean pulse. But at around 1:50 he holds a note for twenty seconds before modulating. This young man was a creative, well-practiced instrumentalist, sensitive to the nuances of a song, sensitive to how he contributed to the whole.
Carolyn Hester, "Come Back Baby," 1961.
So, back to Porter Grainger.
The back cover of Dylan's New Morning CD features a photograph of him (standing with a guitar) beside Spivey (sitting at a piano). Spivey had often recorded with Porter Grainger accompanying on piano and occasionally backup vocals. They wrote songs together. In 1937 she recorded Porter Grainger's "One Hour Mama."
Victoria Spivey "One Hour Mama" 1937
Written by Grainger, this is a woman talking about sex. Porter Grainger was extraordinary in this way; he had an ability to emulate another's point of view.
I've always heard that haste makes waste
So I believe in takin' my time
The highest mountain can't be raced
It's something you must slowly climb
I want a slow and easy man
He needn't ever take the lead
'Cause I work on that long-time plan
And I ain't a-lookin' for no speed
Etc.
Grainger did this again and again. He could grasp a female point of view and make it universal (from "Sing Sing Prison Blues," written for Bessie Smith: "Judge, you ain't no woman / And you can't understand"). He could take the perspective of a slave, and make you feel it (from "Song From A Cotton Field:" "All my life I been makin' it / All my life white folks takin' it ' / This ol' heart they jus' breakin' it...") He could communicate pride (with maybe a touch of cynicism) in black engagements in war (1919's "When Our Brown Skin' Soldier Boys Come Home From War" ... can you recall any other WW1 patriotic song with black Americans as the focus?).
He often wrote in a cabaret style popular in the '20s, but he could could take on the blues (music, rhythm, lyric), he could take on spirituals, he could take on popular music.
Porter Grainger has been forgotten.
How do we forget the composer of "Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues" and "Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do?" How do we dismiss almost everything else he wrote? (Until I wrote I Went Down to St. James Infirmary, it was assumed that Blind Willie McTell wrote "Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues.")
2025.
Maria Muldaur, possibly first coming to public awareness as a member of the early 1960s Even Dozen Jazz Band, interprets songs as if she was living the lyric - this is the signal of a great singer, as it is of a great actor. Her contributions to the Americana canon are exemplary.
She released an album of Victoria Spivey songs in 2025. The title song is Porter Grainger's "One Hour Mama." Muldaur reaches deeply into formative blues throughout the album, her vocals are evocative, drawing out the nuance of the lyric, and the instrumental underpinnings could not be more sympathetic. It's also a whole lot of fun!
Maria Muldaur "One Hour Mama" 2025
So thank you, Maria Muldaur, from both me and, I am sure, Porter Grainger. (Spivey would have loved this!!)
You can find more selections from Three Kings and the Queen on-line. The LP was originally released on Spivey Records, co-founded by Victoria Spivey and jazz historian Len Kunstadt. Spivey died in 1976, and the label ceased production after Kunstadt's death twenty years later. Occasionally reports emerge that the music has been re-engineered, and the label is about to be revived, but nothing materializes. Used copies can be found via sites like Discogs.
