Yuku free message boards

This is an excerpt from Dan Lacey's Website.
I am not posting this as "Gospel" just to add to the debate.




Robert Petway
Born- ca. 1908, Yazoo City, MS (unconfirmed)
Died- Date unknown, Chicago (unconfirmed)


A well-respected country blues artist despite his limited output, Robert Petway was a blues guitarist who recorded eight sides for Bluebird Records in 1941 and followed those up with eight more in 1942 (of which six were issued). Little biographical information is available on Petway, although it is known that he lived and played in Mississippi. The only surviving image of him shows him in overalls, holding a metal-bodied National resonator guitar. His song "Catfish Blues" gained some notoriety when it was recorded by Muddy Waters, who renamed it "Rollin' Stone," providing the inspiration years later for the name of the rock band, the Rolling Stones.
The following bio is from Document Records:
Robert Petway made the first recording of 'Catfish Blues', and there's a good case for believing that he composed it: 'He just made that song up and used to play it at them old country dances. He just made it up and kept it in his head,' says Honeyboy Edwards, who learned the song from Petway in person. It is remarkable, given the later ubiquity of 'Catfish Blues', how little solid information there is about Robert.
He was born about 1908, probably on the J.F. Sligh Farm near Yazoo City, like his running buddy, Tommy McClennan. His publicity photograph shows a small man with a toothbrush moustache, a lantern jaw, and big, guitar player's hands. Most unusually, he apparently saw no reason to don the sharp suit and hand painted tie so often favoured by musicians (Tommy McClennan included) when facing the camera; photographed in his working man's blue duckins, Petway's only concession to style was a rakishly angled trilby.
Despite his lack of concern for appearances, it seems that Robert was a dedicated 'ladies' man'. Honeyboy Edwards, who met him and McClennan when he moved to Greenwood, Mississippi in 1930, recalls that Petway was 'married two or three times; he wouldn't stay with nary a woman,' and he would pursue female members of the Sanctified Church, playing for services until he had made his conquest, then go back to the blues. Honeyboy remembered Robert and Tommy as both 'about four foot and ten.' It's tempting, but no doubt superficial, to suggest that Petway's musical and sexual aggressiveness represents over-compensation for his shortness - and it's only fair to note that Big Bill Broonzy described Tommy as five foot seven.
McClennan and Petway would play at house parties, and in the juke joint at Three Forks crossroads, nowadays famous as the place where Robert Johnson was poisoned.
‘Three Forks Store as it looked in 2001, some seventy years after it rocked to the music of Robert Petway, Tommy McClennan and many others. It was also, reputedly, the scene of Robert Johnson’s fatal demise.’ Richard Havers collection.
It was another decade, though, before Robert Petway became a recording artist, and Tommy McClennan, brought to Chicago by Lester Melrose in 1939, had made two dozen sides at three sessions by the time Petway came to the microphone in March 1941.
The first bars of 'Catfish Blues' locate his music squarely in the gravel-voiced, rhythm-dominated tradition usually thought of as typical of the Mississippi Delta; the song chugs implacably on, powered by a monochordal riff. In the context of blues recordings of the time, Petway sounds anachronistic, but as Paul Oliver (YONDER COME THE BLUES) has pointed out, 'blues singers whom we mentally associate with one point in time by the date of their recordings, tended always to play in much the same way, both before and after cutting their few tracks.'
Despite those big hands, Petway was no guitar virtuoso, but he ably exploited his National Steel's capacity for volume, and made effective use of the trademark triplet runs which can be heard in many of his songs; during 'Ride 'Em On Down' he varies the device, providing instead an exciting rush of sixteenth notes. Like McClennan, Robert favoured a dramatic vocal delivery, growling out the lyrics, bearing down hard on the beat, and encouraging himself with spoken asides.
Petway's second and last session, a year later was held immediately after a session by Tommy McClennan (which was also McClennans last session as it turned out). It was perhaps Tommy's presence and example that encouraged Robert to crank up the energy a notch, coming closer to the more manic level attained by Tommy's version of their joint style. Eight titles were recorded, of which six were issued; the high point of the set came half way, when McClennan joined Petway (and Alfred Elkins, heroically plunking his one string bass) on 'Boogie Woogie Woman', one of the most exhilarating recordings of this or any other era, and as close as we shall ever get to Saturday night at the Three Forks juke.
Robert Petway's recording career ended with a 'Cotton Pickin' Blues' that draws on the realities of his life, and thereafter he fades from view almost completely. According to Honeyboy Edwards, 'he moved to Blytheville, Arkansas, he was picking cotton there, then he come to Chicago.' Honeyboy heard that Petway was living on the north side, but never made contact, and 'nobody I know heard what become of him.'
It is Catfish Blues that remains so influential...
The great Muddy Waters later borrowed some of the lyrics (a Blues tradition,) and recorded his classic song, "Rolling Stone". Muddy also recorded another tune with the same type of riff called "Still a Fool". Much later, in the late 60's, Jimi Hendrix would perform a combination of these two Muddy Waters tunes and call it, appropriately enough, "Muddy Water Blues", later changing the title to "Catfish Blues".