Green Light on the Southern was released by Plectrafone Records (catalog number 824761-42812-1), with Western Jubilee Recording Company as manufacturer and distributor. It appeared in the winter of 2010–11. Norman Blake produced the album and wrote the liner notes, with Scott O’Malley as executive producer; David Hammonds recorded it at Cook Sound Studio. Blake sings and plays guitar, slide guitar, Dobro and mandolin, and Nancy Blake sings harmony vocals.
The album is named in honor of the Alabama Great Southern Railway, and its seventeen tracks are mostly traditional selections, several of them songs Blake has known since boyhood. Blake wrote the title song. “Railroading on the Great Divide” is credited to Sara Carter Bayes, “Little Bunch of Roses” to William H. Delehanty, and “Hawaiian Mother O’ Mine” to Joe Davis and Roxanne Hampton. “Steel Guitar Chimes,” “Whistling Rufus” and “The New Spanish Two Step” are instrumentals, and the set also includes “The Wreck on the C&O,” “Roll On Buddy,” “Fifteen Miles from Birmingham” and “Bandit Cole Younger.”
Tracklist
- 1 Roll on Buddy alt version 3:50
- 2 Goodbye to the Plains 3:08
- 3 Little Bunch of Roses 3:00
- 4 The Tramp 2:55
- 5 Hawaiian Mother O'Mine 3:24
- 6 The Old Wooden Rocker 3:53
- 7 Railroading on the Great Divide 2:54
- 8 Steel Guitar Chimes 3:55
- 9 Have No Desire to Roam 3:08
- 10 Green Light on the Southern alt version 2:51
- 11 Fifteen Miles from Birmingham 3:33
- 12 The Wreck on the C&O 3:59
- 13 He Rambled 4:01
- 14 Whistling Rufus alt version 2:07
- 15 Goobye Dear Old Stepstone 5:00
- 16 Bandit Cole Younger 4:19
- 17 The New Spanish Two Step 3:23
