“Come Along Jody” is a fiddle tune by Benjamin “Tex” Logan, who was born in Coahoma, Texas, in 1927 and led two careers. He studied electrical engineering at Texas Tech and MIT, took a doctorate at Columbia, and spent decades on signal theory at Bell Labs. He also fiddled with Mike Seeger in the late 1950s, with the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover and with Bill Monroe in the 1960s, and later with Peter Rowan. His best-known composition is the song “Christmas Time’s A-Comin’,” which Monroe made popular. The tune is named after Logan’s daughter, Jody, who was at his side when he died in Morristown, New Jersey, in April 2015. Rowan has described it as one of Tex’s medium-tempo tunes.
The Fletcher Bright Fiddle Band recorded it in 1993 for Last Night’s Fun, at Pyramid Records on Lookout Mountain, Georgia, with Bright on fiddle and Sam Currin on mandolin. In January 1998 it was cut in Hendersonville, Tennessee, for Pinecastle’s Bluegrass ’98, with Aubrey Haynie on fiddle, Wayne Benson on mandolin, Scott Vestal on banjo, Jeff Autry on guitar, Randy Kohrs on dobro and Mark Schatz on bass. That release credits the tune to Tex Logan and Garden Street Music (ASCAP). Skip Gorman recorded it with Bright on fiddle for The Old Style Mandolin, Vol. 2: Monroesque (2003). It then appeared on Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper’s On Down the Line (Compass, 2014), on Jake Schepps’s 2017 single, where Grant Gordy had brought it to the band, on Twisted Pine’s Right Now (Signature Sounds, 2020), and on Peter Rowan’s Calling You from My Mountain (Rebel, 2022), where Julian Pinelli plays the fiddle.
