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

[Han Enderman]

If this info is based solely on ODP, then it may well be incorrect.
Available label pictures of Vic 23565 (one of each side) show composer as "(G. B. Grayson)" !
Side A is actually titled Never Be As Fast As I HAVE Been.

Does someone have label info on BB B-5498 ?
Note that the reverse on BB is different.

Is it possible that Broonzy recorded a similar tune, and that this resulted in listing him as the 
composer in the discography?
Prewar recordings by Broonzy under his own name are credited to "Big Bill".

There is a possibility that ODP is correct, and that the first Victor pressing mentions Broonzy,
which was corrected on later pressings, but then it is unlikely that the Bluebird mentions Broonzy.

Or - another theory - the BB really lists Broonzy as composer of the tune (maybe he claimed it ??), 
and it was assumed by a later discographer that this also applied to the Victor.

Therefore the question is now: who has records or label images mentioning Broonzy?

Han Enderman
===
>>> On March 30, 1929, fiddler G.B. Grayson from Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee and
guitarist Henry Whitter
recorded "Going Down Lee Highway," issued on Victor 23565.

This same fiddle tune was reissued by Victor on Bluebird 5498. Both the
Victor and Bluebird releases
list Bill Broonzy as the composer of this tune.

Broonzy learned to play fiddle when he was a young boy in Mississippi and
fiddled on a few
records with Charlie Patton and the State Street Boys, but then went on to
become a famous guitar-playing blues singer, whose major hits included
"Lonesome Road Blues" and "Key To The Highway."

Did Bill Broonzy have anything to do with the composition of Grayson and
Whitter's "Going Down Lee Highway," or was this possibly the result of a
clerical error by an overworked secretary at Victor Records?

Any assistance you can provide in shedding light on this mindboggling
mystery will be greatly
appreciated.

Yours truly,

Richard Blaustein
<<<
>>>
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
<<<
>>>
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," issued 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
<<<
>>>
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
<<<