Tampa Red

Originally written in 1940...

By Tampa Red.

And the song is It Hurts Me Too.

So we'll do Elmore James' version, which he recorded in 1957.

hurts me too

All right.

Hellmore James and the old Tampa Red song, It Hurts Me Too.

So song number two here, or cover number two, is done by a band out of New Orleans.

And he's not initially famous as a gospel guy at all.

He's a blues player, and he's the co-founder of a mini genre called hokum that was super popular late in the '20s, and this is Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, Georgia Tom being Thomas A. Dorsa- Dorsey from Villa Rica, Georgia, and this is Tight Like That, and I hope you're not offended by, uh, sexy lyrics.

Don't get me every, don't mean no harm.

You know it's tight like that.

I mean, it's tight like that.

And that was Tight Like That, which just got my dog all worked up.

That was Georgia Tom and Tampa Red.

So it was one thing to discover Thomas A. Dorsey.

Before he was the father of gospel music, he was Georgia Tom.

With Tampa Red, he cut one of the raunchiest hits of the 1920s.

It's tight like that.

Then he wrote Precious Lord.

Dorsey had come up with playing blues piano under the name Georgia Tom.

He was Tampa Red's recording partner, and their 1928 recording, It's Tight Like That, was one of the raunchiest and most commercially successful records of its era.

then dorsey underwent a profound spiritual conversion and devoted himself entirely to sacred music what he created what he called gospel music was a fusion of the old spiritual tradition with the rhythmic energy and emotional immediacy of the blues and jazz The results scandalized many traditionalists in the black church who did not appreciate blues rhythms in the sanctuary, but have found an enormous popular audience because Dorsey had found a way to make sacred music feel as urgently alive as any secular art.

The personal crisis that produced his most enduring composition is almost unbearably moving.

Maybe she won't show, Washboard Sam winked.

Tampa Red jumped on stage and shouted through the mic.

Y'all know the rules.

Our finalists each get two songs to sway this illustrious panel of judges, including Sleepy John Estes, Sonny Boy Williamson, and myself.

The crowd roared and hoisted their bottles high.

Grand prize, Tampa Red yelled.

One-fifth Gordon's Gin.

You know what our friends at Fortune Magazine said, this stuff only goes into martinis and negros.

It was a cover.

I think it was like a Tampa Red tune.

But 1951, you're that close to the end of World War II, and that to me sounds like a real rock and roll type of a track there.

So we're saying happy 101st birthday to legendary blues guitarist and all-around great rockin' fella there, B.B. King.