Going Up The Country

In the late 1960s, Canned Heat became popular playing blues based songs - I saw them at Woodstock.  Their most popular was Going Up The Country.  Other hits were On The Road Again and Let's Work Together.  Like so many bands of that era they could not resist the temptation of drugs and the two founders, Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, both died of overdoses.

Though I knew their songs were based on older blues, until recently I'd not heard the song that inspired Going Up The Country.  It was Bull Doze Blues by Henry Thomas and Canned Heat closely followed the original musically, though Wilson rewrote the lyrics.  Thomas, born in 1874 to parents who were formerly slaves, was a hobo and itinerant singer who recorded 24 songs between 1927 and 1929.  Along with Bull Doze Blues, Thomas also recorded Honey Won't You Allow Me One More Chance (later adapted and recorded by Bob Dylan; this is Declan O'Connell performing the Dylan version) and Fishin' Blues, which THC featured in a post on Taj Mahal last fall, though I didn't know Thomas was the composer at the time.

Thomas is believed to have died in 1930 though no one knows for certain.