I Saw a Man at the Close of Day · I’ve Always Been a Rambler

G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter made all of their records together in two years, from October 1927 to October 1929, for Gennett and Victor. Whitter was already an experienced recording artist. His first OKeh session, in New York around 10 December 1923, produced “Wreck of the Old Southern 97” and “Lonesome Road Blues,” and in August 1927 he recorded harmonica solos for Victor in Bristol, Tennessee. Grayson was a fiddler and singer, mostly blind since infancy, who was raised in Johnson County, Tennessee. The two met at a fiddlers’ convention in Mountain City, Tennessee, in 1927.

Their first session was for Gennett in October 1927, with Grayson singing and fiddling and Whitter on guitar. Among the sides were “Handsome Molly,” “Nobody’s Darling,” “I’ll Never Be Yours (The Banks of the Ohio),” “Shout Lula” and “Train No. 45.” On 18 October 1927 in Atlanta they recorded six sides for Victor, including “Handsome Mollie,” “Train 45,” “Rose Conley” and “Ommie Wise.” Victor 21189 paired the first two in March 1928. A second Gennett session added “Cluck Old Hen” and “Old Jimmy Sutton.” Some of the Gennett couplings also came out on Champion under pseudonyms such as G. Thomas and W. Letty, and on Silvertone, Supertone and Challenge.

On 31 July and 1 August 1928 Victor recorded them at its New York studio on 44th Street. That session produced “The Red and Green Signal Lights,” “Joking Henry,” “The Nine-Pound Hammer,” “Short Life of Trouble,” “I’ve Always Been a Rambler,” “Where Are You Going, Alice?” and “Little Maggie with a Dram Glass in Her Hand,” all issued in Victor’s V-40000 series in 1929 and 1930. Their last sessions were in Memphis on 30 September and 1 October 1929, which produced “Tom Dooley,” “On the Bank of the Old Tennessee,” “Going Down the Lee Highway,” “Never Be as Fast as I Have Been” and “I Saw a Man at the Close of Day.” Over those seven recording days the pair made forty masters. Six were rejected or went unissued at the time.

Grayson was killed on 16 August 1930 near Damascus, Virginia, while riding on the running board of a car. Victor went on issuing the duo’s records after his death: “I’ve Always Been a Rambler” / “I Saw a Man at the Close of Day” (V-40324) in November 1930, then “Never Be as Fast as I Have Been” / “Going Down the Lee Highway” (23565) in July 1931. Bluebird coupled “Train 45” with “Going Down the Lee Highway” on B-5498 in 1934. In November 1930 Whitter recorded in Memphis with the banjo players Fisher Hendley and Marshall Small. Those sides came out on Victor 23528 and, credited to the Aristocrats, on Bluebird B-6555. Whitter died in 1941.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.