"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 Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

/ jazz/ folk song. It is considered a standard. Jelly Roll Morton explained the title: "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."

Structure

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

History

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 The ''Indianapolis Freeman'' (1884–1926) was the first illustrated black newspaper in the United States. Founder and owner Louis Howland, who was soon replaced by Edward Elder Cooper, published its first print edition on November 20, 1884. ...

'' 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 Dave Elman (May 6, 1900 – December 5, 1967) was a noted American radio host, comedian, and songwriter, and important figure in the field of hypnosis. He is most known today as the author of ''Findings in Hypnosis'' (1964). Over the course of his ...

. 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 Virginia Liston (''née'' Crawford; c. 1890 – June 1932) was an American classic female blues and jazz singer. She spent most of her career in vaudeville. She performed with her husband, Samuel H. Gray, as Liston and Liston. In the 1920s s ...

("Make Me a Pallet", OKeh 8247, 1925), Ethel Waters, ("Make Me a Pallet on the Floor",

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region in ...

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). Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle, ''The Traditional Ballad Index, Version 5.2'', 27 July 2020
Retrieved 29 August 2020

Delta blues Delta blues is one of the earliest-known styles of blues. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, and is regarded as a regional variant of country blues. Guitar and harmonica are its dominant instruments; slide guitar is a hallmark of the s ...

guitarist and singer Sam Chatmon accounts, during a live session captured by

Alan Lomax Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, sch ...

, "When I first started picking guitar it was about the first or the second ongI learned ... was about 4 years old". Making it the year 1900 when Sam learned the song in Bolton, Mississippi.

References

{{Authority control American folk songs Blues songs Songs with music by W. C. Handy