See See Rider
Encyclopedia
The song is generally regarded as being traditional in origin. Ma Rainey's version became popular during 1925, as "See See Rider Blues." It became one of the most famous of all blues songs, with well over 100 versions. It was recorded by Big Bill Broonzy
, Mississippi John Hurt
, Lead Belly, Lightnin' Hopkins
, Peggy Lee
and many others. Broonzy claimed that "when he was about 9 or 10" - that is, around 1908 - he had learned to play the blues from an itinerant songster
named "See See Rider", "a former slave, who played a one-string fiddle.... one of the first singers of what would later be called the blues..."
In 1943, a version by Wee Bea Booze
became a #1 hit on the Billboard "Harlem Hit Parade
," precursor of the rhythm and blues
chart. Some blues critics consider this to be the definitive version of the song.
A doo-wop version was recorded by Sonny Til and The Orioles
in 1952. Later rocked-up hit versions were recorded by Chuck Willis
(as "C.C. Rider," also a #1 R&B hit as well as a #12 pop hit
, in 1957) and LaVern Baker
(#9 R&B and #34 pop hit in 1963). Willis' version gave birth to the dance craze
"The Stroll
."
Other popular performances were recorded by Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels (as part of a medley entitled "Jenny Take a Ride!," #10 US pop hit in 1965) and The Animals
(#10 US pop hit in 1966). The Animals' heavy version (featuring Eric Burdon's
screaming) also reached #1 on the Canadian RPM
chart, and #8 in Australia
. It was the last single before the group disbanded in September 1966. The arrangement of the song was credited to band member Dave Rowberry
.
Other renditions came from Elvis Presley
, Jerry Lee Lewis
, Ray Charles
, Chuck Berry
, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, The Who
, The Everly Brothers
, Charlie Rich
, Janis Joplin
, The Grateful Dead, Leon Thomas
, Snooks Eaglin
, John Fahey
, Old Crow Medicine Show
and many more. In later years, Presley regularly opened his performances with the song, such as was captured on his 1970 On Stage
album and in his Aloha from Hawaii
television special. Elvis's drummer Ronnie Tutt opened Elvis's version with a rolling drum riff followed by the band entering and Elvis's famous brass melody. Similarly, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band long had "C.C. Rider" as part of their "Detroit Medley" encore romp, which achieved significant visibility on the 1980 No Nukes
live album.
Film director Martin Scorsese
credited the song with stimulating his interest in music. He later said:
In 2004, the original Ma Rainey recording received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award
.
There is a chapter in Richard Brautigan
's classic Trout Fishing in America
titled "Sea, Sea Rider."
. So, rather than being directed to a male "easy rider," the song is in fact an admonition to a prostitute to give up her evil ways.
There are further theories:
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...
, Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...
, Lead Belly, Lightnin' Hopkins
Lightnin' Hopkins
Sam John Hopkins better known as Lightnin’ Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas...
, Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and...
and many others. Broonzy claimed that "when he was about 9 or 10" - that is, around 1908 - he had learned to play the blues from an itinerant songster
Songster
The term "songster" is most often used to denote a wandering musician, usually but not always African American, of the type which first appeared in the late 19th century in the southern United States...
named "See See Rider", "a former slave, who played a one-string fiddle.... one of the first singers of what would later be called the blues..."
In 1943, a version by Wee Bea Booze
Bea Booze
Bea Booze , often credited as Wee Bea Booze, was an American R&B and jazz singer most popular in the 1940s.She was born Muriel Nicholls in Baltimore, and made her name as a singer in Harlem. She was signed by Decca Records to cover the songs and emulate the style of Lil Green, and, under the...
became a #1 hit on the Billboard "Harlem Hit Parade
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...
," precursor of the rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
chart. Some blues critics consider this to be the definitive version of the song.
A doo-wop version was recorded by Sonny Til and The Orioles
The Orioles
The Orioles were a successful and influential American R&B group of the late 1940s and early 1950s, one of the earliest such vocal bands who established the basic pattern for the doo-wop sound....
in 1952. Later rocked-up hit versions were recorded by Chuck Willis
Chuck Willis
Harold "Chuck" Willis was an American blues, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll singer and songwriter. His biggest hits, "C. C. Rider" and "What Am I Living For" , both reached no. 1 in the Billboard R&B chart...
(as "C.C. Rider," also a #1 R&B hit as well as a #12 pop hit
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
, in 1957) and LaVern Baker
LaVern Baker
LaVern Baker was an American rhythm and blues singer, who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were "Tweedlee Dee" , "Jim Dandy" , and "I Cried a Tear" .-Early life:She was born Delores LaVern Baker in Chicago, Illinois...
(#9 R&B and #34 pop hit in 1963). Willis' version gave birth to the dance craze
Dance Craze
Dance Craze is a 1981 British documentary film about the English 2 Tone music genre.The film was directed by Joe Massot, who originally wanted to do a film only about the band Madness, who he met during their first US tour. Massot later changed his plans to include the whole 2 Tone movement...
"The Stroll
The Stroll
The Stroll was both a slow Rock 'n' Roll dance and a song that was popular in late 1950s. The dance called the Stroll began in black communities to the song "C. C. Rider" by Chuck Willis prior to the song by the same name....
."
Other popular performances were recorded by Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels (as part of a medley entitled "Jenny Take a Ride!," #10 US pop hit in 1965) and The Animals
The Animals
The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during the early part of the decade, and later relocated to London...
(#10 US pop hit in 1966). The Animals' heavy version (featuring Eric Burdon's
Eric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...
screaming) also reached #1 on the Canadian RPM
RPM (magazine)
RPM was a Canadian music industry publication that featured song and album charts for Canada. The publication was founded by Walt Grealis in February 1964, supported through its existence by record label owner Stan Klees. RPM ceased publication in November 2000.RPM stood for "Records, Promotion,...
chart, and #8 in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. It was the last single before the group disbanded in September 1966. The arrangement of the song was credited to band member Dave Rowberry
Dave Rowberry
Dave Rowberry was an English piano and organ player, most known for being a member of the rock and R&B group The Animals in the 1960s....
.
Other renditions came from Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...
, Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
, Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
, The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers are country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing...
, Charlie Rich
Charlie Rich
Charles Rich was an American country music singer and musician. A Grammy Award winner, his eclectic-style of music was often hard to classify in a single genre, playing in the rockabilly, jazz, blues, country, and gospel genres.In the latter part of his life, Rich acquired the nickname The Silver...
, Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
, The Grateful Dead, Leon Thomas
Leon Thomas
Amos Leon Thomas Jr was an American avant garde jazz singer from East St. Louis, Illinois.Thomas studied music at Tennessee State University. In the 1960s he was a vocalist for Count Basie and others....
, Snooks Eaglin
Snooks Eaglin
Snooks Eaglin, born Fird Eaglin, Jr. , was a New Orleans-based guitarist and singer. He was also referred to as Blind Snooks Eaglin in his early years....
, John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, Old Crow Medicine Show
Old Crow Medicine Show
Old Crow Medicine Show is an old-time string band based in Nashville, Tennessee. Their music has been called bluegrass, Americana, and alt-country, in addition to old-time. Along with original songs, the band performs many pre-World War II blues and folk songs...
and many more. In later years, Presley regularly opened his performances with the song, such as was captured on his 1970 On Stage
On Stage (Elvis Presley album)
On Stage is an Elvis Presley live album recorded between February 17 and 19, 1970 at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada. It features the world-wide #1 single "The Wonder of You", which topped both the United States AC tracks chart and the British music chart. It was an immediate follow up...
album and in his Aloha from Hawaii
Aloha from Hawaii
Aloha from Hawaii is a music concert that was headlined by Elvis Presley, and was broadcast live via satellite on January 14, 1973. It is the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history, viewed by an estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide. The concert took place at the...
television special. Elvis's drummer Ronnie Tutt opened Elvis's version with a rolling drum riff followed by the band entering and Elvis's famous brass melody. Similarly, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band long had "C.C. Rider" as part of their "Detroit Medley" encore romp, which achieved significant visibility on the 1980 No Nukes
No Nukes (album)
No Nukes: The Muse Concerts For a Non-Nuclear Future was a 1979 triple live album that contained selections from the September 1979 Madison Square Garden concerts by the Musicians United for Safe Energy collective, with Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall being the key...
live album.
Film director Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
credited the song with stimulating his interest in music. He later said:
"One day, around 1958, I remember hearing something that was unlike anything I'd ever heard before...The music was demanding, "Listen to me!"...The song was called "See See Rider," which I already knew from the Chuck Willis cover version. The name of the singer was Lead Belly...I found an old Folkways record by Lead Belly...And I listened to it obsessively. Lead Belly's music opened something up for me. If I could have played guitar, really played it, I never would have become a filmmaker."
In 2004, the original Ma Rainey recording received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award
Grammy Hall of Fame Award
The Grammy Hall of Fame Award is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance"...
.
There is a chapter in Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan
Richard Gary Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody, and satire. He is best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America.- Early life :...
's classic Trout Fishing in America
Trout Fishing in America
Trout Fishing in America is a novella written by Richard Brautigan and published in 1967. It is technically Brautigan's first novel; he wrote it in 1961 before A Confederate General From Big Sur which was published first....
titled "Sea, Sea Rider."
Origins of the term
The term "See See Rider" is usually taken as synonymous with "easy rider." In particular, in blues songs it often refers to a woman who had liberal sexual views, had been married more than once, or was skilled at sex. Although Ma Rainey's version seems on the face of it to refer to "See See Rider" as a man, one theory is that the term refers to a prostitute and in the lyric, "You made me love you, now your man done come," "your man" refers to the woman's pimpPimp
A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...
. So, rather than being directed to a male "easy rider," the song is in fact an admonition to a prostitute to give up her evil ways.
There are further theories:
- "Easy rider" was sometimes used to refer to the partner of a hypersexual woman who therefore does not have to work or pay for sex.
- Another incorrect theory is that the term "easy rider" sometimes originally referred to the guitar hung across the back of a travelling blues singer.
- Other confused sources indicate that 'C.C. Rider' refers to early 'Country Circuit' Riding Preachers who traveled on horseback into many towns that were without formal churches at the time.
- The Grateful Dead often played the songs "China Cat Sunflower" and "I Know You Rider" in succession, but this combination was referred to as "China>Rider" amongst Grateful Dead fans. The setlist entry "C.C. Rider" refers to the Grateful Dead's version of "C.C. Rider", sung by Bob Weir.