TAJ MAHAL - SHE CAUGHT THE KATY

SHE CAUGHT THE KATY

TAJ MAHAL

SONGWRITER: TAJ MAHAL & JAMES RACHELL

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS THE BLUES – TAJ MAHAL

LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS

GENRE: BLUES

YEAR: 2003

"She Caught the Katy (And Left Me a Mule to Ride)" is a blues standard written by Taj Mahal and James Rachell. The song was first recorded for Taj Mahal's 1968 album The Natch'l Blues, and is one of Mahal's most famous tunes. It has since been covered many times, and is included on the soundtrack for the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers (the song plays over the opening credits, as Jake Blues leaves prison). According to John Belushi's widow, it was Belushi's favorite blues song.

The "Katy" refers to the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad.

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942), who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician, a singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments. He often incorporates elements of world music into his works and has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional

forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific

Mahal leads with his thumb and middle finger when fingerpicking, rather than with his index finger as the majority of guitar players do. "I play with a flatpick," he says, "when I do a lot of blues leads." Early in his musical career Mahal studied the various styles of his favorite blues singers, including musicians like Jimmy Reed, Son House, Sleepy John Estes, Big Mama Thornton, Howlin' Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, and Sonny Terry. He describes his hanging out at clubs like Club 47 in Massachusetts and Ash Grove in Los Angeles as "basic building blocks in the development of his music." Considered to be a scholar of blues music, his studies of ethnomusicology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst would come to introduce him further to the folk music of the Caribbean and West Africa. Over time he incorporated more and more African roots music into his musical palette, embracing elements of reggae, calypso, jazz, zydeco, R&B, gospel music, and the country blues—each of which having "served as the foundation of his unique sound." According to The Rough Guide to Rock, "It has been said that Taj Mahal was one of the first major artists, if not the very first one, to pursue the possibilities of world music. Even the blues he was playing in the early 70s – Recycling The Blues & Other Related Stuff (1972), Mo' Roots (1974) – showed an aptitude for spicing the mix with flavours that always kept him a yard or so distant from being an out-and-out blues performer." Concerning his voice, author David Evans writes that Mahal has "an extraordinary voice that ranges from gruff and gritty to smooth and sultry.

She caught the Katy1, and left me a mule2 to ride

She caught the Katy, and left me a mule to ride

My baby caught the Katy, left me a mule to ride

The train pulled out, and I swung on behind

I'm crazy 'bout her, that hardheaded woman of mine

Man my baby's long, great god she's mighty, she's tal

You know my baby's long, great god she's mighty, my baby she's tall

Well my baby shes' long, my baby she's tall

She sleeps with her head in the kitchen and her big feet out in the hall

And I'm still crazy 'bout her, that hardheaded woman of mine

Well I love my baby, she's so fine

I wish she'd come and see me some time

If you don't believe I love her, look what a hole I'm in

If you don't believe I'm sinking, look what a shape I'm in.