Recorded in December 1933 by John and Alan Lomax at Darrington State Prison Farm in Texas. Lightning Washington and the prisoners' unaccompanied hollers were a direct continuation of the labor culture born under slavery, carried from cotton fields and railroad camps into the penitentiary. The call-and-response that bound the gang together is the structural, physical foundation of the blues.
In 1947 Alan Lomax recorded "Rosie" at Parchman Farm in Mississippi. C.B. Cook and the prisoners' axes set the beat for the call-and-response, which reached the world through the 1958 album "Negro Prison Songs" — the moment the field holler was heard as the mother of the blues.
The same labor-song lineage moves from Texas in 1933 to Mississippi in 1947 — until the unaccompanied holler is recorded and heard around the world.