{"id":4029,"date":"2018-10-06T00:10:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-06T04:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=4029"},"modified":"2018-10-06T11:43:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-06T15:43:02","slug":"old-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/old-blue\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Old Blue\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IAhx3wBJi-g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I heard this song all my life, but only started playing it when I recorded my CD, <em>Street Corner Cowboys<\/em>, in 2000. One of my sure-fire songs at that point was Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s arrangement of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/green-rocky-road\/\">Green Rocky Road<\/a>,&#8221; but it seemed silly to record that since everyone knew <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cdcoverf.jpg?resize=264%2C264&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"264\" height=\"264\" \/>Dave&#8217;s version&#8230; and then it struck me that I could do his version of &#8220;Old Blue&#8221; with pretty much the same arrangement. So I took a crack at it,\u00a0 liked it, and recorded it with Matt Leavenworth on mandolin and Paul Geremia on harmonica. I pretty much stuck with Dave&#8217;s lyrics, but when I tried to sing it like he did, with a sort of long moan on both lines of the chorus, it felt draggy, so I shortened the final line, and was thrilled when Paul said he&#8217;d never much liked the song, but that way it worked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Old Dog Blue&#8221; was first recorded in 1928 by the singer and guitarist Jim Jackson. Since he was recording in the blues era and had a huge hit with his first record, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kansas-city-blues\/\">Kansas City Blues<\/a>,&#8221; Jackson is often called\u00a0 a blues singer, but he was a versatile all-around performer who had traveled with minstrel and medicine shows all over the South, then settled in <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4030\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Jim-Jackson.jpg?resize=242%2C229&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"242\" height=\"229\" \/>Memphis working the clubs on Beale Street, and even held down a residency at the eminently fashionable Peabody Hotel. Checking back over his repertoire, I&#8217;m struck by how many songs I picked up from people who may well have got them from his records: the flip side of &#8220;Old Blue&#8221; was &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hes-jailhouse-now\/\">He&#8217;s In the Jailhouse Now<\/a>,&#8221; and he also cut versions of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/traveling-man\/\">Traveling Man<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hesitation-blues\/\">Hesitation Blues<\/a>,&#8221; as well as such unique masterpieces as &#8220;I&#8217;m Gonna Start Me a Graveyard of My Own,&#8221; &#8220;I Heard the Voice of a Pork Chop,&#8221; and &#8220;Bye, Bye, Policeman.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Samuel Charters, the blues scholar who roomed with Dave on MacDougal Street in the late 1950s, devoted several pages to Jackson in his groundbreaking <em>The Country Blues<\/em> and singled out this song for comment, saying that it was mentioned by Abbe Niles in <em>The <\/em><em>Bookman<\/em> literary magazine: &#8220;&#8230;between articles on e.e. cummings and Virginia Woolf, there was a note about &#8216;Old Dog Blue&#8230; a wholly fascinating story of a hound who treed his possums anywhere he found them, from a holler stump to Noah&#8217;s Ark.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I figured Jackson was probably Dave&#8217;s source, though in the liner notes to his LP he said he couldn&#8217;t recall where he learned it and suggested the source might have been Guy <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4031 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Carawan.jpg?resize=269%2C265&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"269\" height=\"265\" \/>Carawan. Back then I had no way to check and I&#8217;d forgotten about that note until today, when I went online to see if Carawan ever did it&#8230; and, by gum, he did. It&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/_tCMnbfmgFY\">a lovely performance<\/a>, on a duet album with Peggy Seeger, and he sings a lot of the verses Dave sang, so apparently Dave&#8217;s memory was right. And, as it happens, he shortens that last line I was feeling so proud of shortening. So no credit to me, and I&#8217;m sorry Paul never heard Guy&#8217;s version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard this song all my life, but only started playing it when I recorded my CD, Street Corner Cowboys, in 2000. One of my sure-fire songs at that point was Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s arrangement of &#8220;Green Rocky Road,&#8221; but it seemed silly to record that since everyone knew Dave&#8217;s version&#8230; and then it struck &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/old-blue\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Old Blue<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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When he recorded it in 1963 he credited it to Bob Dylan, but in later years would say, \"I learned this from Bob Dylan, who learned\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"von schmidt - cahn","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/von-schmidt-cahn.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1541,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/tell-old-bill\/","url_meta":{"origin":4029,"position":1},"title":"Tell Old Bill (Bob Gibson, Ben Harney, et al.)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This was one of my regular numbers during that first summer of street singing. I learned it from Dave Van Ronk's second album and, although he'd stopped singing it by the time I knew him, it was one of his big showstoppers back in 1961. His first wife, Terri Thal,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Bob-Gibson-I-Come-to-Sing-LP-cover-e1619022727715.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1219,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/maple-leaf-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":4029,"position":2},"title":"Maple Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk was hailed as the pioneering arranger of \"classic\" ragtime for fingerstyle guitar more or less by default. In the early 1960s he did an arrangement of \"St. Louis Tickle\" that was the first recording of a multi-part piano or orchestral ragtime composition on fingerstyle guitar -- but\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"sunday st","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/sunday-st.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3229,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/urge-for-going\/","url_meta":{"origin":4029,"position":3},"title":"Urge for Going (Joni Mitchell\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The ultimate fall-into-winter song, by Joni Mitchell, arranged by Dave Van Ronk. I tend to be more optimistic about this season, so my standard autumn song is Bill Morrissey's \"My Baby and Me,\" but I always loved the way Dave did this -- plus, my Vancouver buddy Monte Jones had\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/van-ronk-polydor.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1656,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/swinging-on-a-star\/","url_meta":{"origin":4029,"position":4},"title":"Swinging on a Star (Van Ronk\/Bing Crosby)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Along with being a fine musician, awesomely well-read, and one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, Dave Van Ronk could be supremely silly. His W.C. Fields imitation was legendary and I treasure his recordings of \"Teddy Bear's Picnic,\" \"I Want to Go Back to My Little Grass Shack\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Dave as clown","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Dave-as-clown.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1143,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/spike-drivers-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4029,"position":5},"title":"Spike Driver&#8217;s Blues (John Hurt\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The first song Dave Van Ronk taught me was John Hurt's powerfully understated meditation on the John Henry legend.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"dave van ronk7","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/dave-van-ronk7.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4029"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4068,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4029\/revisions\/4068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}