The Black Keys - Crawling Kingsnake

On May 14, THE BLACK KEYS releases their tenth studio album, "Delta Kream", via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others.

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded "Delta Kream" at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

Today's tune "Crawling Kingsnake" is a blues song that has been recorded by numerous blues and other artists. It is believed to have originated as a Delta blues in the 1920s and be related to earlier songs, such as "Black Snake Blues" by Victoria Spivey and "Black Snake Moan" by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

As "Crawling King Snake", it was first recorded by Big Joe Williams on March 27, 1941. The song is a country-style blues, with Williams on vocal and nine-string guitar and William Mitchell providing imitation bass accompaniment. On June 3, 1941, Delta bluesman Tony Hollins recorded "a markedly different version", which served as the basis for many subsequent versions.

John Lee Hooker began performing "Crawling King Snake" early in his career and included it in his sets after arriving in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1940s. In an interview, Hooker explained that he adapted Tony Hollins' song: "I got that 'Crawling King Snake' from him". Hooker first recorded the song in Detroit on February 18, 1949 for producer Bernard Besman. When it was released by Los Angeles-based Modern Records, "Crawling King Snake" became one of Hooker's most successful singles, reaching number six on the Billboard R&B chart in 1949. Hooker recorded several subsequent versions of the song, including one with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards for Hooker's 1991 album Mr. Lucky.

The video for “Crawling Kingsnake” was directed by Tim Hardiman and filmed at Jimmy Duck Holmes’ Blue Front Café, which is the oldest active juke joint in America.

Dan Auerbach says: “We were honored to play alongside Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, who are a direct link to R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. This is the Mississippi hill country sound that Pat and I first bonded over.”

Vinyl variants for Delta Kream include a standard black double vinyl and an exclusive Purple Haze vinyl. Pre-order now from the Official Shop: https://TheBlackKeys.lnk.to/DeltaKream



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