“Statesboro Blues” is a Piedmont Blues song written by Blind Willie McTell, who recorded it in 1928. The title refers to the town of Statesboro, Georgia. Although McTell was born in Thomson, Georgia, in an interview he called Statesboro “my real home.” The eight sides he recorded for Victor, including “Statesboro Blues”, have been described as “superb examples of storytelling in music, coupled with dazzling guitar work.”
The lyrics, a first-person narrative, appear to relate the story of a man pleading with a woman to let him in her house; the speaker calls himself “Papa McTell” in the first stanza. Throughout the song, the woman, addressed as “mama,” is alternately pleaded with (to go with the speaker “up the country”) and threatened (“When I leave this time, pretty mama, I’m going away to stay”). Throughout the non-linear narrative, the “Statesboro blues” are invoked—an unexplained condition from which the speaker and his entire family seem to be suffering (“I woke up this morning / Had them Statesboro blues / I looked over in the corner: grandma and grandpa had ’em too”). Later versions, such as the one by the Allman Brothers Band, have shorter, simplified lyrics.
In 1967, Taj Mahal recorded a “wonderful modernized version” of “Statesboro Blues” with a prominent slide guitar part by Jesse Ed Davis, for his eponymous 1968 debut album. He had recorded the song earlier as a member of the group Rising Sons in 1965 or 1966; however, it was not released until 1992. His 1967 rendition reached a wide audience by being included on the best-selling Columbia/CBS sampler album The Rock Machine Turns You On!
The Allman Brothers Band recorded the song at the Fillmore East in March 1971 and first released it on the 1971 album At Fillmore East. Duane Allman contributes the slide guitar, which Rolling Stone later described as featuring “the moaning and squealing opening licks [that] have given fans chills at live shows.” Allman’s slide riffs on “Statesboro Blues” have been analyzed and transcribed in guitar magazines and the tones of Allman’s and Dickey Betts’ guitars on the song were described by Guitar Player as among the “50 Greatest Tones of All Time.” In 2008, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the Allman Brothers Band’s version of “Statesboro Blues” number nine in its list of the “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time”.
The song was still a staple of the Allman Brothers Band’s live shows in later years, with either Derek Trucks or Warren Haynes playing slide guitar. Dickey Betts also continues to play the song live. Derek Trucks often led the Tedeschi Trucks Band in tribute performances of “Statesboro Blues”, with the band onstage reduced in size to match the original Allmans lineup and Trucks facing the drum position where his uncle had played. In 2005, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ranked “Statesboro Blues” number 57 on its list of “100 Songs of the South”.
