“Dixie Hoedown” is an instrumental by the brothers Jim and Jesse McReynolds, who grew up near Coeburn, Virginia, and recorded as Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys. Record labels credit it to both brothers. They first recorded it in Jacksonville, Florida, in the summer of 1959, with Bobby Thompson on banjo and Don McHan on bass. The master was one of several the brothers sold to Starday. Starday issued it in 1960, first in February on the various-artists EP Country Instrumentals, Vol. 5 and then in May on the LP Country Express. In 2003 King used it as the title of a CD of the duo’s complete Starday recordings.
Jesse McReynolds is best known for the crosspicking and split-string mandolin styles he worked out himself, and he also played fiddle. Thompson, the banjo player on that first session, made the earliest recordings of the melodic banjo style while he was with Jim & Jesse in the late 1950s.
The tune stayed with the brothers for decades. Jesse opened his 1973 album Me and My Fiddles (Atteiram) with it, recorded at the Hi-Lo Studio in Smyrna, Georgia. He played fiddle and mandolin, with Charlie Collins on guitar, Vic Jordan on banjo and Butch Robins on bass. On 2 May 1975 Jim & Jesse played it at Sugino Hall in Tokyo, with Jesse on mandolin and Joe Meadows on fiddle, for the album Jim & Jesse Show Live in Japan.
Other players took it up in the 1970s. Mark O’Connor recorded it on Pickin’ in the Wind (Rounder 0068, 1976), with John Hartford on banjo, Norman Blake and Charlie Collins on guitars, Sam Bush on mandolin and Roy Huskey Jr. on bass. The David Bromberg Band recorded it at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley in January 1978 for Bandit in a Bathing Suit, and Jimmy Gaudreau and Moondi Klein included it on 2:10 Train (Rebel, 2008).
