Old Blue: A Song History
"Old Blue" is an American folk song in which a hunter remembers Blue, his possum-hunting dog, and recounts how the dog died and was laid to rest.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index dates the song to at least 1913 and finds it in the American South, with texts in collections from the Ozarks, North Carolina and Mississippi and in the Lomaxes' anthologies Our Singing Country and Folk Song U.S.A.[1]
George Stubbs, Dog (A Foxhound Viewed from Behind), roulette work with etching, 1788. An English foxhound rather than a possum dog, shown for the song's hound.
Jim Jackson, singing to his own guitar, recorded it as "Old Dog Blue" in Chicago in October 1927, for issue on Vocalion, and again for Victor in Memphis on February 2, 1928.[2][3] The Victor take was later reissued on Folkways LPs, among them Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music of 1952, where it appears in the volume devoted to social music.[3][4] Pete Seeger is among the later singers who recorded it.[1]
"Old Blue" appears, in DAD tuning, in Mike Anderson's Songs For Kids, a 59-page Fingers Of Steel book in which he offers easy arrangements of children's favorites, drawing on his decades of teaching kindergarten.[5]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index (Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle): "Old Blue".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara Library): "Brunswick matrix C1270-C1271. Old dog Blue / Jim Jackson".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara Library): "Victor matrix BVE-41827. Old dog Blue / Jim Jackson".
- Mainly Norfolk: "Anthology of American Folk Music".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Mike Anderson, Songs For Kids".
- Image: George Stubbs, Dog (A Foxhound Viewed from Behind), roulette work with etching, 1788. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.