“Deep Elem Blues” (also spelled “Deep Elm” and “Deep Ellum”) is named for Deep Ellum, the Black neighbourhood on the far, “deep” end of Elm Street on the eastern edge of downtown Dallas. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Lead Belly and Bill Neely helped build its music scene, and the area all but disappeared when Central Expressway was built through it in the 1950s. Where the song came from is unknown. It shares a number of lyrics with “The Georgia Black Bottom,” which the Cofer brothers, Leon and Paul, recorded in Atlanta on 21 March 1927 as the Georgia Crackers, for OKeh (45111).
The earliest known recording under the Deep Elm name was made by brothers from Reilly, Hopkins County, Texas: Bob and Joe Shelton (born Attlesey). On 4 August 1933 in Chicago, as the Lone Star Cowboys, they recorded “Deep Elm Blues” with Leon Chappelear: Joe on mandolin, Chappelear on guitar and Bob on ukulele, all three singing. Victor issued it on 23846, and Bluebird on B-6001. As the Shelton Brothers, Bob and Joe recut it as a duet in Chicago on 22 February 1935, and Decca put it out in May as 5099, backed with “Hang Out the Front Door Key.” The Prairie Ramblers recorded it the same year. The Sheltons kept coming back to it: “Deep Elem Blues No. 2” (Decca 5198) was cut in New York in December 1935, “Deep Elm Blues No. 3” at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas in February 1937, and “What’s the Matter with Deep Elm” in Houston in 1940.
The verses are warnings to a visitor. Go down to Deep Elem with your money in your shoes, because the women there have the Deep Elem blues. A preacher who knew the Bible through and through went down there, and now his preaching days are through. Redheads will put you on the rocks, and you had better have fifteen dollars ready when the policeman comes. The chorus answers each warning with “Oh sweet mama, your daddy’s got them Deep Elem blues.”
Jerry Lee Lewis cut it at Sun in Memphis around the turn of 1957. Red Allen, Frank Wakefield and the Kentuckians were among the first bluegrass bands to record it, in New York in 1964, with Wakefield singing lead, Allen tenor and Bill Keith baritone and banjo, for the Folkways LP Bluegrass. The Grateful Dead made it a fixture of their acoustic sets but never recorded it in a studio. A performance from the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco on 11 October 1980 opens side C of their acoustic live album Reckoning (1981).
