Tommy’s Thirst For Sterno

This side was recorded by Tommy Johnson on Friday August 31, 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee.

*Tommy Johnson (1896 — November 1, 1956) was an influential American delta blues musician, who recorded in the late 1920s, and was known for his eerie falsetto voice and intricate guitar playing.

In 1928 he made his first recordings with McCoy for Victor Records. The recordings included “Canned Heat Blues”, in which he sang of drinking methanol from the cooking fuel Sterno. The song features the refrain “canned heat, mama, sure, Lord, killing me.” The blues group Canned Heat took their name from this song.

*Drinking canned heat is something that was all too common among poor prohibition era Southerners who could not afford the high price of bootleg liquor. To drink the Sterno was spooned out of it’s tin into cheese cloth, strained by squeezing through the cloth into a container, and flavored with orange popsicles to make it ingestible. Notorious for his high alcohol tolerance Tommy drank more than his share of this noxious concoction.

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