The musical rabbit hole is exquisitely deep today so we’ll cover the boring volatility stuff first and the real fans can keep going for some very deep blues history.
We need to begin with the weekly recap because the lack of action in the vol space was remarkable. Two points of change for the VIX Mix, one bip for spot VIX, one penny for SVIX…..it was a week tailor-made for a summer vacation.
As noted, VIX Mix was essentially unch’d on the week, finishing in the low end of the bullish spectrum. Ten of 17 components were green versus 11 the end of last week.
We finished the week with two green bars and the only nag is that SPX is up in new high territory and the VIX Mix is hanging out below bullish readings of the prior three weeks. This a divergence we’ll be watching.
The VIX futures term structure showed a little bit of lift during a week that saw the expiration of the July contract at $16.74. That leaves us with a gaping premium between the Aug futures and spot VIX.
Another way to look at the futures premium is to compare constant maturity VIX futures to the spot value. As shown below, that spread was almost three points or 18% on Friday. That ranks at the 86th percentile and the implication is that shorting the futures will be very profitable if spot VIX stays where it is.
The danger, however, is that spot VIX has returned to a squeeze condition and this one is getting very tight (both Bollinger Band width and Keltner Channel width are at the narrow end of their typical ranges). Two things: We can hang out in this tight range for an extended period and the squeeze may end with a whimper rather than a volatility spike that might be a trade opportunity. But I won’t be taking any vacation while this condition persists.
Phew! We did it! Now for the musical history. It all started back in the 1930’s when a sharecropper’s son known as Sleepy John Estes recorded a song called Someday Baby Blues.
I don’t care how long you go, I don’t care how long you stay
But that good kind treatment, bring you home someday
Someday baby, you ain’t gonna worry my mind anymore.
If that sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’re a fan of the Allman Brothers Band and have heard Gregg Allman sing those lyrics any one of the hundreds of times they recorded them. But we need to rewind before returning to the Fillmore East.
Blues music followed the migration from the agrarian South to the industrial upper Midwest and it was in Chicago where Big Maceo Merriweather recorded Worried Life Blues in 1941. The song shared some elements of the Estes composition but Big Maceo played the piano and gave his version some new lyrics and some big city stride.
Oh lordy lord, oh lordy lord
It hurts me so bad, for us to part
But someday baby, I ain’t gonna worry my life anymore.
So we have two songs with a common theme and some overlap of lyrics. Unlikely that anyone paid attention. Not to mention that copywriting songs for blues artists in the ‘30s and ‘40s was pretty much non-existent and not every artist or record label bothered with proper credits.
Big Maceo did get credit when the king of the blues boogie, John Lee Hooker, included Worried Life Blues in an early ‘50s recording session. Otis Spann (best known as the piano player in Muddy Waters band) also recorded the song and gave props to Big Maceo on one live version even if credit was absent on the album version. Then along comes none other than Ray Charles with a 1961 album called The Genius Sings The Blues and a track called Some Day Baby. What you get is the Sleepy John title with mostly Big Maceo lyrics and, wait for it, songwriting credit to Ray. Who’s gonna notice?
Also during the ‘60s, Alan Lomax was wandering the South doing field recordings of blues music and found Mississippi Fred McDowell. Fred is best known for You Gotta Move that was picked up by the Rolling Stones, but Fred’s Worried Life Blues was included in a McDowell compilation released by Arhoolie Records in 1993. The producers were students of blues history and gave partial credit to Sleepy John. Not his title after all.
The first cover outside the black blues community came in 1962 when Eric Burdon and The Animals recorded an almost funerial version of Worried Life Blues for their second album.
We then get back to the Allman Brothers in 1969 when they release their debut album with a cut called Trouble No More, wandering away from both originals. The lyrics come straight from Someday Baby but the credit mysteriously goes to Muddy Waters. Wonder if he collected any royalties.
The next tribute/bungle arrived in 1971 courtesy of Freddie King who dropped Worried Life Blues on the album Getting Ready that included his biggest hit, Going Down. Big Maceo was credited for Worried Life and that would have been great except that Freddie sang all the lyrics from Sleepy John’s Someday Baby. Matters were made worse by a separate credit given to Willie Dixon, a famous bluesman who had nothing to do with either song. It was the ‘70s. There may have been drugs and alcohol involved.
If you’ve made it this far, you can handle two more. Jimmy Rogers was a Chicago blues guitar player best known for his work with Muddy Waters. Toward the end of his life in the late ‘90s, the famous record exec, Ahmet Ertegun, organized an all-star recording session that resulted in the 1999 release, Blues Blues Blues. Stephen Stills sat in with Jimmy for Worried Life Blues and credit went to Big Maceo (YES!). Then came Someday Baby with Mick Jagger mostly sticking to Sleepy John’s original lyrics. Awesome except that Muddy Waters gets the credit once again.
Last but hardly least is the one and only Bob Dylan. You might think that his extensive catalog of original songs would be enough. But look no further than his 2006 album, Modern Times, for evidence to the contrary. The credits make clear that Bob wrote all of the songs. That would include Rollin’ and Tumblin’ that traces its roots to Hambone Willie Newbern in 1929 and then Robert Johnson and then Muddy Waters. Not enough, we get The Levee’s Gonna Break (Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929) and yes, Someday Baby, totally snatched from Sleepy John. No big deal. Bobby changed up some lyrics and whoever owns the rights can try to sue him. Lazy, sloppy and disgusting. That’s pretty much the history of the music business. It’s a shame.
That music history was super cool! The VIX stuff boring in comparison LOL!!