"I'd-a lost"? What does this contraction stand for?

The first lines of George Thorogood's version of "One bourbon, one scotch, one beer":

Wanna tell you a story
about the houseman blues.
I come home one Friday,
had to tell the landlady I'd-a lost my job.

What does this I'd-a stand for? These lyrics perhaps are just misheard. If so, what does Thorogood say in place of I'd-a?

(This was a originally a comment)

The lyrics are from a John Lee Hooker song called "House Rent Boogie." Thorogood himself grew up in a decidedly middle-to-upper class non-country setting and is affecting Hooker's style.

In both the original and Thorogood's medley, it sounds a lot more like "I done lost" or "I'd done lost."

Additionally, your transcription is inaccurate in that George says "house-rent blues."

For "I done" etc. See for instance ( Auxiliary movement in AAVE )

The "-a" is a mark of the speaker's regional speaking patterns; as you can see from the rest of the lyrics you posted, he has a very "country" way of speaking. The meaning is "I'd lost my job", the "-a" is just a regionalism, it doesn't add any further meaning.

The I'd expands to I had; the full sentence is I had lost my job. That is, he's telling his landlord he no longer has a job (and presumably can no longer pay his rent).

"I'd a lost my job" means "I had lost my job". The contraction is for "I had" not "I would".

The "a" in front of the "lost" participle is interesting.

This is not simply a regional dialect, but is deeply rooted in English morphology.

It is a sort of prepositional prefix which indicates being in or on something, or in the middle of an activity (if applied to a verb).

For instance to "come a knocking on someone's door" or to "go a walking in the park".

There are English words which incorporate this "a". If you are sleeping, you are "asleep". Or if you see something ghastly, you can become aghast. Words like "aboard", "ahead" and "alight" follow a similar pattern.

What is dialectal, perhaps, is overuse of this "a" prefix: applying it liberally and perhaps inappropriately to all kinds of verbs in nearly every spoken sentence.

It could also be a contraction for "I had". Which makes sense why he had to tell the land lady that he lost his job.