Canned Heat Blues - Free Acoustic Blues Lesson

TAB/videolesson I made of a previous performance in 2008 Tommy Johnson recorded this song in 1928. The words must be understood in the context of the Prohibition. With the sale of liquor outlawed, many men like Johnson, who were accustomed to drinking, turned to cheap and still legal substitutes - more or less anything that contained alcohol. Sterno, a cooking fuel called “canned heat“, was one of the most common of these substances. How many people it killed or crippled with the ’jake leg’ we may never know, but these unexpected side effects of the ’Great Experiment’ were felt most severely by blacks, who clould not affordto buy the more expensive bootleg liquor, particularly during the Depression when there was mass unemployment. Although the Prohibition amendment was repealed not long after Johnson’s song was recorded, its effects continued to be felt in Mississippi. Archaic members of that state&#