"Don't You Lie to Me" Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan

Original song[edit]

"Don't You Lie to Me" was recorded by Tampa Red approximately midpoint in his prolific recording career, representing the transition from his earlier hokum recordings to his later early Chicago-blues combo style.^[4] This was the same period when he began playing the electric guitar and recorded his best-known blues classics, including "It Hurts Me Too", "Love with a Feeling", and "Anna Lou Blues", the B-side of "Don't You Lie to Me".^[4]

The song is a mid-tempo twelve-bar blues that features Tampa Red playing jazz-inflected single-note guitar fills behind his vocals. Blind John Davis provided the piano accompaniment with an unidentified bass player and, as a throwback to his earlier days, Red added a twelve-bar kazoo solo.^[4] Although many later versions are credited to other artists, they usually use some, if not most, of Tampa Red's lyrics:

There're two kind of people I just can't stand
And that's a lying woman and a sneakin' man
So don't you lie to me, don't you lie to me
Because it makes me mad, and I get evil as a man can be