Hard Travelin’ featuring The Ballad of Jed Clampett cover

Hard Travelin’ featuring The Ballad of Jed Clampett

Flatt & Scruggs

Album · 1963 · Columbia CL 1951

Hard Travelin’ featuring The Ballad of Jed Clampett is a Columbia LP by Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, issued in early 1963 as CL 1951 in mono and CS 8751 in stereo. Its title comes from the opening track, Woody Guthrie’s “Hard Travelin’”; Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” is also on the album. Don Law and Frank Jones produced it, and Pete Welding wrote the sleeve notes.

The Jed Clampett song was written by Paul Henning as the theme of the CBS series The Beverly Hillbillies. On television it is sung by Jerry Scoggins with Flatt and Scruggs backing him, and Flatt and Scruggs then cut their own version for Columbia, with Flatt singing. Released as a single, it reached number 44 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the country chart, the only country number one of their career. It was recorded in Nashville on 24 September 1962, the same session that produced “Hard Travelin’,” “Wreck of the Old 97” and “99 Years Is Almost for Life.” The other eight tracks were cut on 21 October 1962.

The band at both sessions was Flatt on guitar and lead vocal, Scruggs on banjo, Paul Warren on fiddle, Jake Tullock on bass and Josh “Buck” Graves on dobro, with Murrey Harman on drums in September and William P. Ackerman in October. Graves and Warren are not on every track: “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” has no dobro, and “Pastures of Plenty” has only Flatt, Scruggs, Tullock and Ackerman. Scruggs plays guitar rather than banjo on “Drowned in the Deep Blue Sea.” Three songs on the album, “Coal Miner’s Blues,” “My Native Home” and “Drowned in the Deep Blue Sea,” carry A.P. Carter credits.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Hard Travelin’ alt version 2:42
  2. 2 Dixie Home (with The Foggy Mountain Boys) 2:26
  3. 3 Wreck of the Old 97 Source Recording Henry Whitter · key Bb · 128 bpm 2:30
  4. 4 Over the Hill to the Poor House (with The Foggy Mountain Boys) 3:19
  5. 5 Drowned in the Deep Blue Sea (with The Foggy Mountain Boys) 2:21
  6. 6 Coal Miner’s Blues alt version 2:31
  7. 7 Pastures of Plenty alt version 2:37
  8. 8 The Ballad of Jed Clampett Source Recording Paul Henning · key A · 139 bpm 2:03
  9. 9 My Native Home (with The Foggy Mountain Boys) 2:14
  10. 10 When I Left East Virginia (with The Foggy Mountain Boys) 3:48
  11. 11 99 Years Is Almost for Life (with The Foggy Mountain Boys) 3:26
  12. 12 Bound to Ride alt version 1:45
  13. 13 Bound to Ride alt version

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