Laura Smith (blues singer) Laura Smith (blues singer) Laura Smith (March 1882 – February 1932) was an American classic female blues and country blues singer. Songs she recorded include "Gonna Put You Right in Jail" and her version of "Don't You Leave Me Here". She led Laura Smith and her Wild Cats and also worked with Clarence Williams and Perry Bradford. Details of her life outside the music industry are scanty. The researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc state that she was born Loretta Bryant in Illinois in 1882. Other sources suggest that she was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, at an unknown date. In
When Jones' Ale was New (boat man), all local occupations to do with the coal trade. A text of the song was published in "Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England" by Robert Bell and James Henry Dixon, in 1857. 46 versions have been collected from 24 English counties, 2 from Scotland and 6 from the USA. At least one version was collected in Australia, and a parody published in "The Australasian" newspaper in 1912. Recordings by the Suffolk singer Spud Bailey, the Sussex singers Bob and Ron Copper, the Shropshire singer Fred Jordan, and the Norfolk singer Walter Pardon, are available