This is another song I picked up from the Greenbriar Boys’ Ragged But Right album. As I’ve explained in previous posts, I’m not a huge bluegrass fan but loved that group. It was partly John Herald’s voice, and the way Ralph Rinzler and Bob Yellin played mandolin and banjo, and partly the terrifically varied repertoire, mixing bluegrass and old-time country with ragtime and old-time pop tunes — but mostly it was the energy and humor. They were terrific musicians, but also sounded like they were having a terrific time, and not worrying about getting everything perfect. The title summed it up, as well as being a great song that I later used as my regular opening number when I was playing bar gigs.

I listened to that record over and over, and ended up knowing half the songs on it. (I’ve already posted versions of “Ragged But Right” and “Roll On, John,” as well as “Katy Clyne,” which I learned off the Greenbriars’ first recording.) As an inveterate show-off, I was particularly attracted to this one by its fast comic patter section, which the Greenbriars pulled off with fine diction and verve, and with the addition of a kazoo solo I made it a feature of my two-song set at a high school talent show (along with “San Francisco Bay Blues,” which I played with kazoo and harmonica). It was the first time I got onstage and performed anything resembling the kind of music I would end up playing professionally, and I was at least a moderate hit — the fast patter and kazoo solos in particular.

This song was composed in 1919, just before blues began being marketed on recordings by Black singers, and although a lot of historians date the heyday of the style from 1920, in terms of mainstream show business “blues” was already regarded as somewhat passé, mocked in songs like “Everybody’s Talking ‘Bout the Doggone Blues, But I’m Happy.” This comic novelty was instantly recorded by a couple of white vaudevillians and continued to be recorded by lots of other folks over the years, including an instrumental version by Sidney Bechet in 1951 and a version by the Kweskin Jug Band in the 1960s. I also just ran across a video of John Denver singing it while doing some of the lamest dancing ever, and playing the break on kazoo, which I’m assuming means he got it from the Kweskin bunch. I only heard their version later, and they don’t go for tongue-twisting speed on the patter chorus, which, for me, is the whole point (which is not to say I necessarily pull it off).

In any case… when I stopped playing kazoo — no doubt a relief to everyone — I dropped this from my repertoire because I no longer had an instrumental break for it. Then, when when my wife Sandrine and I began playing together, her clarinet solved that problem and I welcomed it back with open arms… and then, since she won’t do videos, I had to work out a guitar break. However one does it, it’s a remarkably silly song and what more need be said?