[78-L] Composer/arranger needed - Smokey Mary - Bob Crosby January 23, 1939

[Andrew Homzy]

If someone has the original issue of "Smokey Mary" by Bob Crosby January 23, 1939, I’d like to know the composer/arranger. Is it Matty Matlock?

This seems to be the first recording of the piece - somewhat in the folk/gospel vein à la “I’m Praying’ Humble” which I know was arranged by Bob Haggart, for the October 19, 1938 session, based on the recording by Mitchell’s Christian Singers.

Cheers,

Andrew

On April 23, 1831, the Pontchartrain Railroad made its first run down the middle of Elysian Fields Avenue from the riverfront to the Lakefront town of Milneburg, which was later absorbed into New Orleans. This journey of about 5 miles came a year after the company got its charter as the first railroad west of the Alleghenies. The first cars were horse-drawn. Steam power came in June 1832, but steam-propelled cars shared the right-of-way with horse-drawn cars until 1861, when the last horse-powered car was phased out. The train, which carried passengers and freight, got its nickname from the sooty exhaust the steam engine belched forth, forming a black film on passengers' clothing. Despite that nuisance, the train sparked a boom in Milneburg: A pier was built for ocean-going ships, and hotels, saloons and bathhouses were set up for New Orleanians seeking fun, entertainment and lake-borne breezes during torrid summers.
Smoky Mary's last passenger run was on March 15, 1932, after Milneburg's resorts were closed for a land-reclamation project. Freight runs stopped in 1935. The last remnant of Smoky Mary is a milepost on the Elysian Fields Avenue neutral ground near North Roman Street. A barely legible inscription contains the Roman numeral "I" and the words "1 Mile From the River," the Tulane University geographer Richard Campanella wrote in "Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics Before the Storm." The stone was, he said, probably one of five such posts designed to show travelers how far they had come.
Smoky Mary or Smokey Mary? There is no consensus.Soot stains notwithstanding, Smoky Mary helped spur New Orleanians' interest in the Lakefront and its potential by taking them beyond the city's traditional boundaries. It also was a force in the development of jazz through the musical equivalent of cross-pollination: Musicians who had gigs in Milneburg would see what other performers were doing, jam with them and, as a result, challenge them to do better.