hearing the song as a young boy sometime after 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, when he performed with a spiritual quartet that played at funerals. Older band members played "See See Rider" during get-togethers with their "sweet mamas" or as Morton called them "fifth-class whores".

Big Bill Broonzy claimed that "when he was about 9 or 10--that is, around 1908, in the Delta (Jefferson County, Arkansas)--he learned to play the blues