Poor Boy, 1978

From the Alan Lomax Archive (via):

Shot throughout the American South and Southwest over the course of seven years (1978-1985) in preparation for a PBS series, "American Patchwork," which aired in 1991, these videos consist of performances, interviews, and folkloric scenes culled from 400 hours of footage.

Here's a folkloric scene with R.L.Burnside in a field in Mississippi, 1978:



Burnside says he learned the song from Howlin' Wolf.  It's an old old song though. Booker "Bukka" White recorded it for Alan Lomax's father John Lomax back in 1939. Here he is in 1967, playing it lapstyle on his National guitar.

The man who rediscovered Bukka White in the Sixties was John Fahey. And here we are, 1978 again, in a concert hall in Hamburg:

There's another lovely Fahey take on Poor Boy here, playing lapstyle like Bukka White.