[78-L] Grayson and Whitter "Going Down Lee Highway" with BillBroonzy Composer Credit

[Gregg Kimball]

Thanks for the added detail, Richard.  It made me go back and listen to 
"Home Town Blues," and it is remarkably similar!  The CD version of the 
County release of the Roane County Ramblers seems to be available at CD 
Universe.  I love those guys.  I recently junked a decent copy of their 
"McCarroll's Breakdown" / "Green River March," Columbia 15438-D.

Gregg


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Blaustein" <rjblaustein at gmail.com>
To: <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: [78-L] Grayson and Whitter "Going Down Lee Highway" with 
BillBroonzy Composer Credit


> Many thanks to Gregg Kimball for his answer to my query re: Going Down Lee
> Highway.
>
> Selection:     Going Down Lee Highway
> Artist:    G.B.Grayson & Henry Whitter
> Composer:    Bill Broonzy (label)
> Date Recorded:    09/30/29
> Recording Label:    Victor
> Catalog Number:    vi23565
> Matrix 1:    56313=1
> XRef 1:    bb5498
> Source File:    http://honkingduck.com/fix/victor23000series.html
> (Source: Online Discography Project)
>
> Joe Wilson got the story about G.B. Grayson composing Going Down  Lee
> Highway in the back of a car
> riding down the Lee  Highway on the way to a recording session in Memphis
> from a recorded interview with one of Grayson's children.
>
> In the early 1970s one of my early students at East Tennessee State
> University, Jim Meadows,  videotaped an interview
> with his mother, one of G.B.'s daughters, who told him a  similar story 
> with
> a slight variation: Grayson was riding in the back of a car driving down
> the Lee Highway coming back from a fiddle contest when he made up this
> tune.
>
> After all these years, it is impossible to tell where the truth lies.
> Memories become confused, stories run together,
> and what started out as family history becomes family legend and 
> mythology.
> This is how folklore develops, after all.
>
> What makes this story even more complicated and interesting is the fact 
> that
> fiddler Jimmy McCarroll and his Roane County Ramblers from east of 
> Knoxville
> recorded an almost identical fiddle tune, "Home Town Blues," ssued a year
> before Grayson and Whitter's "Going Down Lee Highway":
>
> Selection:    Home Town Blues
> Artist:    Roane County Ramblers
> Date Recorded:    10/15/28
> Recording Label:    Columbia
> Catalog Number:    15328 d
> Matrix 1:    w147182
> Source File:    http://settlet.fateback.com/COL15000d.htm
> (source: Online Discography Project)
>
> This tune was reissued on two LPs:
>
> Roane County Ramblers. Southern Dance Music, Vol. 1, Old-Timey LP 100, LP
> (1965), trk# 15 [1928/10/15] (Home Town Blues)
>
> Roane County Ramblers. Original Recordings, 1928-29, County 403, LP 
> (1971),
> trk# B.02 [1928/10/15]
>
> "Home Town Blues" is currently available on an MP3 CD,
> "Roots of American Fiddle Music, Volume 3." HEAHEAH - MP3CD-0600
>
> Ahmet Baycu, the producer of  this compilation, was clearly unaware of 
> the
> recording history of  this tune when he stated: "from Tennessee, the 
> blazing
> Jimmy McCarroll of the ROANE COUNTY RAMBLERS provides an amazing reworking
> of the classic Lee Highway Blues with his Home Town Blues."
>
> This error is readily excusable when you hear both recordings:
>
> "Home Town Blues" and "Going Down Lee Highway" are virtually the same tune
> with very slight variations,
> so close that it is very, very  hard to imagine that they are not 
> connected
> somehow.
> Bill Broonzy's name on the composer credit of Grayson and Whitter's
> recording of "Going Down Lee Highway"
> just adds another element of  mystery to the cloudy history of this tune.
>
> Whoever actually composed it first, the Grayson and Whitter version 
> clearly
> was the source of "Lee Highway Blues,"
> which has been  frequently  recorded and is still widely known and played 
> by
> fiddlers to this day.
>
> All the best,
>
> Richard Blaustein
> 1303 Buffalo Street
> Johnson City, Tennessee 37604
> rjblaustein at gmail.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Gregg Kimball" <gdkimball at cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Grayson and Whitter "Going Down Lee Highway" with
>       BillBroonzy Composer Credit
>
>>Joe Wilson's liner notes to County 3517, "The Recordings of Grayson and
>>Whitter," state that "He [Grayson] composed Going Down the Lee Highway in
>>September 1929 as Whitter's Model T chugged down U.S. Route 11 in 
>>northeast
>>Tennessee (known locally as Lee Highway) on the way to a Memphis recording
>>session." Indeed, Tony Russell shows the tune recorded on September 30,
>>1929, in Memphis (their last recording session), matrix # 56313-1.
>
>>I still love driving down sections of the old Lee Highway here in 
>>Virginia.
>
>>Gregg Kimball"
> _______________________________________________
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> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l


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