Nigger Blues

"Nigger Blues", written by Lee Roy "Lasses" White (1888-1949), was one of the first blues songs published. Copyrighted by White in 1912, it was first titled "Negro Blues", but for some reason when White published it in 1913, he retitled it.

In addition to the importance of the "Nigger Blues" for being one of the first published blues songs and written by one of the first composers of twelve-bar blues, it was the first whose lyrics were in what would become the standard blues form used by the 1920s vaudeville performers and found in the folk blues songs collected and recorded in the 1930s. e.g.:

and: