Show 66: The Appalachian Tradition in Blues
This one follows the crooked mountain road where old-time country, early blues, and hillbilly records keep crossing paths. The roster shows how Appalachian string music, railroad songs, hollers, and blues feeling all lived closer together than later genre labels would have you believe. Blues-adjacent old-time material is included intentionally, the show treats the genre boundary as porous, which it was.
I'm your host. For today's 66th episode of the Copacetic Communion Blues Show, we will be exploring the blues that came about in the red hills of Kentucky, Tennessee, and East Virginia before 1950. Up first is a song I'm sure you'll all recognize from my advertisement, but here's the full track of Jimmie Rodgers' "Waitin' for a Train," followed by the Kentucky legend Merle Travis.
| # | Track | Artist |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Waiting for a Train 📖 Story | Jimmie Rodgers |
| 2 | Lost John | Merle Travis |
| 3 | Jesse James | Harry McClintock |
| 4 | The Coo Coo Bird (The Cuckoo) | Clarence Ashley |
| 5 | Rock About My Sara Jane | Uncle Dave Macon |
| 6 | Hills of Mexico | Roscoe Holcomb |
| 7 | Mississippi Heavy Water Blues | Roscoe Holcomb |
| 8 | Leaving Home | Charlie Poole |
| 9 | Curly Headed Woman | Burnett & Rutherford |
| 10 | Tom Dooley bridge | G. B. Grayson;Henry Whitter |
| 11 | Constant Sorrow bridge | The Hall Brothers |
| 12 | John Henry Blues | Earl Johnson & His Dixie Entertainers |
| 13 | The East Virginia Blues | The Carter Family |
| 14 | In The Hills Of Roane County | The Blue Sky Boys |
| 15 | Old Mountain Dew | The Delmore Brothers |
| 16 | Somewhere Down Below the Dixon Line | Jimmie Rodgers |
| 17 | Got the Jake Leg Too | The Ray Brothers |
| 18 | Chicken Roost Blues | Cliff Carlisle |
| 19 | Oh Molly Dear bridge | B.F. Shelton |
| 20 | Will The Circle Be Unbroken bridge | The Monroe Brothers |
| 21 | Don't Let Your Deal Go Down | Bill Williams |
| 22 | Birmingham Jail | Bud Billings;Carson Robison |
| 23 | The Little Black Train | The Carter Family |
| 24 | Wild Bill Jones | Dock Boggs |
| 25 | Spring of '65 | James D. Cornett |
| 26 | Blue Yodel No. 9 | Jimmie Rodgers |
| 27 | Short Life And It's Trouble | Wade Mainer;Zeke Morris |
| 28 | So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust) | Woody Guthrie |
| 29 | Wildwood Flower bridge | The Carter Family |
| 30 | I Don't Want Your Greenback Dollar bridge | The Blue Sky Boys |
| 31 | Walking Cane | Peg Leg Sam |
| 32 | You Don't Know My Mind | Pink Anderson |
| 33 | Old Rub Alcohol Blues | Dock Boggs |
| 34 | She's A Hum Dum Dinger (From Dingersville) Part 2 | Jimmie Davis |
| 35 | Slow Drag | Turner Foddrell |
| 36 | Karo Street Blues | James Lowry |
| 37 | The TB Is Whipping Me | Ernest Tubb |
| 38 | Won't You Be Kind? | Luke Jordan |
| 39 | Jailhouse Blues bridge | Rabbit Muse |
| 40 | Girl Dressed in Green bridge | John Tinsley |