Hesitation Blues
| "Hesitation Blues" | |
|---|---|
| Single by Victor Military Band | |
| Released | September 15, 1916 |
| Format | 10-inch 78 rpm record |
| Recorded | September 15, 1916 |
| Studio | Victor, Camden, New Jersey |
| Genre | Blues |
| Length | 3:03 |
| Label | Victor (no. 18163-A) |
| Writer(s) | Billy Smythe |
"Hesitation Blues" is a popular song adapted from a traditional tune. One version was published by Billy Smythe, Scott Middleton, and Art Gillham. Another was published by W.C. Handy as "Hesitating Blues". Because the tune is traditional, many artists have taken credit as writer, frequently adapting the lyrics of one of the two published versions. Adaptations of the lyrics vary widely, though typically the refrain is recognizably consistent. The song is a jug band standard and is also played as blues and sometimes as Western swing. It is cataloged as Roud Folk Song Index No. 11765.
The three men were involved in the music publishing business in St. Louis, Missouri. About 1914 they joined a band and went to Los Angeles. They passed their traveling time making up verses to a traditional tune. When they returned to St. Louis the trio went their separate ways. Art Gillham remained in St. Louis, Billy Smythe went to Louisville, Smythe's brother-in-law Scott Middleton went to Chicago. In 1915 Billy Smythe published their musings as "Hesitation Blues" but not crediting Gillham.
A dispute over the credits was resolved a few years later when Gillham and Smythe began writing other songs as a team with the sheet music stating "by the writers of Hesitation Blues".
One of the first popular recordings of this song was an instrumental version by the Victor Military Band, with authorship attributed solely to Smythe. It was made on 15 September 1916 at the Victor Talking Machine Company in a Camden, New Jersey factory. This recording stayed in the Victor's catalog as the A-side of Record Number 18163 until January 1923; in February 2009, a video presenting the audio of that recording was added to YouTube.
The song was also recorded for Edison Records in 1919 by Al Bernard and exists as a Blue Amberol cylinder recording and as an Edison Diamond Disc matrix recording. Audio files of this recording are preserved at the Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project of the University of California Santa Barbara.
Art Gillham performed the song on radio and on February 25, 1925 recorded it for Columbia Records as one of the first electrical recordings (Master 140390, released as Columbia 343-D). The recording has 9 verses and a refrain, including:
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