"That Black Snake Moan" is a song written and recorded by American

country blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...

musician Blind Lemon Jefferson. Inspired by singer

Victoria Spivey Victoria Regina Spivey (October 15, 1906 – October 3, 1976), sometimes known as Queen Victoria, was an American blues singer and songwriter. During a recording career that spanned 40 years, from 1926 to the mid-1960s, she worked with Louis A ...

's "Black Snake Blues", the song was released on Paramount Records in 1926, and has since become recognized as a signature composition which exemplifies Jefferson's unconventional melodic style and utilization of

double entendres A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially a ...

. The song was re-recorded a year later as "Black Snake Moan" for Okeh Records, and both versions have remained accessible through the availability of several compilation albums.

Background

During the 1920s, Paramount Records were in-demand for customers of genuine

recordings. Blind Lemon Jefferson had been performing across

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and the Mississippi Delta since 1912 and garnered a considerable following. Jefferson was signed to Paramount in 1925 as a result of one of two proposed scenarios:

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recommended him to the label or Paramount music director Arthur C. Laibly discovered Jefferson performing on Dallas streets. Regardless, a talent scout recorded demos with Jefferson and the singer traveled to Chicago to record his first official sides: a pair of

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

tunes under the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates. Sales were strong, prompting further sessions with Jefferson in 1926. In his third session for Paramount, Jefferson recorded "That Black Snake Moan", along with "Black Horse Blues", "Corina Blues", and " Jack O' Diamond Blues". Riddled with sexual nuances, lyrically "That Black Snake Moan" was explicit with its intentions, with lines such as "Mmm, black snake crawlin' in my room / And some pretty mama had better come and get this black snake soon".

Record producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

J. Mayo Williams recalled Jefferson was "just as cool and collected as any artist I've ever seen" as they carried out the session. Indeed, Jefferson's calm and collected persona coupled with high-pitched howls added to the song's sexual innuendo. Jefferson was inspired to compose the song after singer

enjoyed success with "Black Snake Blues", a tune that Spivey insists was not intended to have the same sexual innuendo as Jefferson's "That Black Snake Moan". "That Black Snake Moan" was first released on Paramount in October 1926. Jefferson re-recorded another version of the song for Okeh Records, which was closely related to the original rendition, but also had superior sound quality. This version, titled simply "Black Snake Moan", was released in March 1927 along with another well-known Jefferson tune " Matchbox Blues". The composition has remained relatively accessible throughout the years, appearing on Jefferson compilation albums such as ''The Immortal Blind Lemon'', ''Black Snake Moan'', and ''King of the Blues''.

References

{{Authority control 1926 songs Hokum blues songs United States National Recording Registry recordings Paramount Records singles Okeh Records singles