This was the first song that Johnson recorded, and it was carefully crafted in imitation of recent hit records. It was composed in a similar style to "Cruel Hearted Woman Blues" by Bumble Bee Slim (Amos Easton), which in turn was based on "Mean Mistreater Mama" by Leroy Carr accompanied by Scrapper Blackwell.[citation needed] Johnson uses the Carr melody and conveys something of Carr's style in his relaxed singing.[clarification needed] His guitar accompaniment echoes Carr's piano phrases in the first verse, then copies Blackwell's guitar phrases in the second verse. He then adds a musical bridge in the style of another hit record, "Milk Cow Blues" by Kokomo Arnold. At the end of the bridge, he jumps into a higher register as Arnold does, but then maintains a controlled falsetto, which may have been based on the singing of Joe Pullum. Johnson combined these elements of the styles of others into an individual style of his own.[3]
Like Bumble Bee Slim, Johnson wrote lyrics consisting mostly of conventional twelve-bar three-line verses, but varied with an eight-barbridge. Slim's bridge merely repeated the words, but Johnson wrote a more complex sequence:
"Cruel Hearted Woman Blues"
"Kind Hearted Woman Blues"
You's a cruel-hearted woman, swear, — and you treat me like a slave …… x 2 You keep me fallin' — down on my bending knee
I got a kind hearted woman, — do anything in this world for me …… x 2 But these evil-hearted women, — man, they will not let me be
Do you remember one mornin' — when the lights was burnin' low You give me my clothes — and drove me from your door Do you remember one mornin' — when the lights was burnin' low You give me my clothes — and drove me from your door
There ain't but the one thing — make Mr Johnson drink I swear how you treat me Baby, — I begin to think Oh Babe — my life don't feel the same You break my heart — when you call Mister So-and-so's name
Johnson also makes a marked change in tone. Leroy Carr's original "Mean Mistreating Mama" was resigned, even understanding:
You're a mean mistreating mama, and you don't mean me no good And I don't blame you baby, I'd be the same way if I could
Bumble Bee Slim removed that hint of sympathy when he covered the song as "Mean Mistreatin' Woman":
You's a mean mistreatin' woman, but I love you just the same I know you didn't want me, the day I changed your name
When he wrote new words to the tune, his mood was still resigned:
You's a cruel heated woman, swear, and you just can't realise That's all right baby, I'll be the same when I rise
Johnson decides that his "kind-hearted woman" is, after all, hostile. But there is no resignation, only anguish:
I love my baby, my baby don't love me And I really love that woman, can't stand to leave her be
She's a kind-hearted woman, she studies evil all the time You wells to kill me, as to have it on your mind
