| Volume 3 : British Isles Music |
| Chapter 16. Down Yonder: Old Time String Band Music from Georgia |
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| Goodbye, Little Bonnie,
Blue Eyes This is a traditional Southern folk song, known in the Carolinas and Georgia. Gordon Tanner remembers singing this song "when my daddy begin to put me in front of the public, I guess when I was around five years old, or six." He learned it from Nora Day, an aunt on his mother;s side. "They were around the organ a good bit, and they sand… She had two brothers, and they played the banjo some, that's just home, around the fireplace, and I believe she wrote it down and had me learn that song." Performed by Gordon Tanner (fiddle and vocal), Joe Miller (guitar), and John Patterson (banjo). |
| Down Yonder In a story that Gordon had not heard, Unvle John told how the tune had been titled. It seemed that John was with Gid Tanner, Lowe Stokes, Fate Norris, and some others at the Fiddler's Convention in Atlanta in the twenties. "I was there with the banjo, and I was very small. I just wanted to be around, play with 'em. They'd say, 'Come on in Uncle John.' I'd be sort of timid, and set down, and you talk about banjo, fiddle, and guitar, we'd tear it apart! So I broke a string. They'd been workin' on this tune for a long time, and nobody knew what they was playin.' And I broke a string, and I says, 'I got to go down yonder and get a string.' Anf they said, 'That's it, "Down Yonder!" And I went down on Decatur Street and got a string to go on the banjo." "That's history." Performed by Gordon Tanner (fiddle), Joe Miller (guitar), and John Patterson (banjo). |
| Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad Originating in the black pre-blues tradition, this song is known by practically all Southern folk musicians, black and white. Woody Guthrie and others made it the theme song of the dust bowl refugees of the thirties, and the Bluegrass musicians play it as an instrumental. "Lonesome Road Blues." Gordon, Joe, and John have played it as long as they could remember. Performed by Gordon Tanner (fiddle), Joe Miller (guitar), and John Patterson (banjo). |
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