{"id":4510,"date":"2021-11-20T09:02:12","date_gmt":"2021-11-20T14:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=4510"},"modified":"2021-11-20T09:39:50","modified_gmt":"2021-11-20T14:39:50","slug":"windy-and-warm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/windy-and-warm\/","title":{"rendered":"Windy and Warm (Doc Watson\/ John D. Loudermilk)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Windy and Warm\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fBeO8i3-8XE?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>When I was busking around Europe in the late 1970s, &#8220;Windy and Warm&#8221; was pretty much obligatory&#8211;particularly in France, which I assume means Marcel Dadi recorded it. I didn&#8217;t know it when I left the States, and for the first year or so I satisfied requests for it by playing Bert Jansch&#8217;s version of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/angie\/\">Angie<\/a>,&#8221; which was a somewhat similar instrumental in A minor and tended to fit the bill. Then I spent a couple of weeks <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4518\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Doc-Southbound.jpg?resize=293%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"293\" height=\"300\" \/>in Antwerp in the summer of 1979, staying with a guy named Marc who played terrific guitar using just his thumb and middle finger &#8212; I have no idea why he didn&#8217;t use his index finger, but he didn&#8217;t &#8212; and he had Doc Watson&#8217;s recording and I learned a half-assed version of it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Windy and Warm&#8221; was composed by John D. Loudermilk, and I read somewhere that he composed it because Chet Atkins wanted something that sounded kind of old-fashioned, in a Merle Travis bag. Be that as it may, everyone I knew learned it from that same Doc Watson album, and to this day I&#8217;ve never heard either Loudermilk&#8217;s or Atkins&#8217;s versions &#8212; though I recently saw a nice video of Tommy Emmanuel playing it, which presumably is close to the Atkins version.<\/p>\n<p>Doc played it with only his thumb and index finger, but I played it with thumb and two fingers, because I couldn&#8217;t figure out how to get the rolls otherwise &#8212; and frankly never worked it up into anything worth playing. Then I went to Africa and got into playing with just thumb and index, and a dozen years later Ernie Hawkins showed me how Rev. Gary Davis got those rolls&#8230; and I worked out how to play this, mostly as a finger exercise. I wasn&#8217;t happy with how it came out, because I never had a touch like Doc Watson, much less like Travis, Atkins, or Emmanuel&#8230; but after trying to play it like them for a few years, I finally decided to just play it like me, and enjoyed it, and here it is.<\/p>\n<p>I still think of this as a Doc Watson piece, in part because I have no sense of John D. Loudermilk as a guitarist. He has always been a name I saw in song credits, probably first for the Lou Rawls version of &#8220;Tobacco Road,&#8221; and I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever heard him play or sing. There&#8217;s also another problem&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4519 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Loudermilk.jpg?resize=300%2C246&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"246\" \/>The only other Loudermilk composition I ever learned is a teen novelty song &#8220;Norman,&#8221; which was a hit for Sue Thompson in 1961 (which I see is also when Atkins recorded W&amp;W). I probably learned &#8220;Norman&#8221; as a joke when I was in my teens, and almost fifty years later I&#8217;m still stuck with it:<\/p>\n<p><em>Billy asked me to a show, but I said no, cannot go,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>There&#8217;s a dress that I&#8217;ve got to sew,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>And wear for Norman&#8230;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Jim invited me on a date, he wanted to take me out to skate,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>But I told Jimmy he would have to make<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Arrangements with Norman&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I may have those names and a few words wrong, and briefly considered listening to Thompson&#8217;s recording to check them, but there might be some verses I&#8217;ve managed to forget, and, if so, I don&#8217;t want them back in my head.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, &#8220;Windy and Warm&#8221; has no lyrics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was busking around Europe in the late 1970s, &#8220;Windy and Warm&#8221; was pretty much obligatory&#8211;particularly in France, which I assume means Marcel Dadi recorded it. I didn&#8217;t know it when I left the States, and for the first year or so I satisfied requests for it by playing Bert Jansch&#8217;s version of &#8220;Angie,&#8221; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/windy-and-warm\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Windy and Warm (Doc Watson\/ John D. Loudermilk)<\/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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Windy and Warm (Doc Watson-John Loudermilk) - Elijah Wald Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My take on a once-ubiquitous guitar showpiece from Doc Watson, who got it from Chet Atkins, who got it from John D. 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If you were a folk-blues player in the US, you knew \"Freight Train,\" \"Buckdancer's Choice,\" and Doc Watson's \"Deep River Blues.\" In Northern Europe,\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\/07\/traum-book-236x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4111,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candy-man-john-hurt\/","url_meta":{"origin":4510,"position":1},"title":"Candy Man (John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This may well be the first song I ever heard from Mississippi John Hurt, because it was his first track on the Blues at Newport LP from 1963. That was one of the defining albums for me, the first place I heard Dave Van Ronk, John Hammond, John Lee Hooker...\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\/2017\/01\/Blues-at-Newport-LP-295x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4525,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/malaika\/","url_meta":{"origin":4510,"position":2},"title":"Malaika (Fadhili William)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In 1990, I hitchhiked from Capetown to Nairobi, stopping for several months in Lubumbashi, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), to study with two giants of African acoustic guitar, Jean-Bosco Mwenda and Edouard Masengo. In Nairobi, I met Herbert Misango, a story I've told in another video, who\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\/2021\/11\/Fadhili-William-business-card-web-300x175.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5427,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/freight-train-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4510,"position":3},"title":"Freight Train Blues (Bob Dylan, mostly)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 26, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Continuing a spate of Dylan memories, as I wait for the movie... I learned this from Dylan's first album, which only included two songs he had fully composed, but had a bunch of songs he had transmuted in various ways. The notes said he'd learned this from Roy Acuff's record,\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\/2025\/10\/Bob-Dylan-LP-e1729798042438.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1121,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/drop-down-mama\/","url_meta":{"origin":4510,"position":4},"title":"Drop Down Mama (Tom Rush\/Lee Kidd)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A rowdy blues in open G tuning, thanks to Tom Rush and my early guitar teacher, Lee Riethmiller, with some anecdotes of youthful follies.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Lee Riethmiller","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Lee-Riethmiller.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":803,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sitting-top-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":4510,"position":5},"title":"Sitting on Top of the World (Doc Watson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another I got from Doc Watson, long before I heard the Mississippi Sheiks' original recording. 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