Gillian Welch - Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor

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Gillian Welch and partner/Producer David Rawlings perform at St Lukes for the BBC Four Sessions in 2007.

The song is Traditional with additional lyrics by Gillian Welch for her 2003 album Soul Journey.


From Wikipedia:

The composition probably originates from the end of the nineteenth century. One jazz historian states that the song "could have been sung around New Orleans in the mid-1890s." A 1906 report in the Indianapolis Freeman referred to a performance of the song by "The Texas Teaser, Bennie Jones".

It appeared in sheet music in 1908 as part of "Blind Boone's Southern Rag Medley No. One: Strains from the Alleys."

"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."

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

Early recordings of the song were made by numerous musicians, 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);
Stripling Brothers ("Pallet on the Floor", Decca 5367, 1936).

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", making it the year 1900 when Sam learned the song in Bolton, Mississippi.



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