<P> Details of his life outside the recording studio are sketchy and have been the subject of rumor and speculation over the years . </P> <P> It was once thought that Gordon was born in St. Louis, but that was based solely on his performance on the B - side of a single by the St. Louis--born Peetie Wheatstraw, following a session recorded in October 1938 with the guitar player Lonnie Johnson . </P> <P> Whatever his origin and background, by 1934 Gordon was signed to a recording contract . Apart from one Bluebird side at the beginning of his recording career, all of Gordon's pre-war work was released by Decca . Gordon's backing ensembles, sometimes billed as the Vip Vop Band, variously included such notable blues and jazz musicians as Scrapper Blackwell, the brothers Papa Charlie McCoy and Kansas Joe McCoy, members of the Harlem Hamfats, Frankie Newton, Pete Brown, Buster Bennett, and the drummer Zutty Singleton . This ability to base backing units around a jazz - blues fusion of musicians was started by the Harlem Hamfats, but Gordon's use of this arrangement proved the basis for many later blues bands . His most commercially successful number was a song he wrote, "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water", in 1936 His ability to raise social issues in his songs is shown by "Don't Take Away My P.W.A." (1936), a homage of sorts to the Public Works Administration (P.W.A.), a large - scale public works construction agency in the United States in the Great Depression of the 1930s . </P> <P> Even in his own lifetime Gordon was misrepresented . When his record company released "Black Gal" (Decca 7043), early copies credited the work to "Joe Bullum"; later copies of the disc were released with a corrected credit . </P>

Who wrote i'd rather drink muddy water