“Done Gone,” also called “All I’ve Got’s Done Gone,” is a fiddle tune credited to Matt Brown, an old fiddler from the Texas Panhandle who was well known in his region but never recorded. In the story told about it, Brown was stranded some twenty-eight miles outside Amarillo, tried to flag down a passing car, and composed the tune while waiting for another. J.B. Cranfill, who knew both Brown and the fiddler Eck Robertson, is quoted as saying that Brown wrote it after the only car he saw all afternoon of hitchhiking passed him by. Brown died in 1915, so the story, if true, belongs to the early days of the automobile.
Robertson recorded it for Victor on 1 July 1922, and it came out on Victor 19372 with “Sallie Johnson/Billy in the Low Ground” on the other side. The Fiddler’s Companion calls it Robertson’s signature piece. It is played in B-flat in its first part, a flat key unusual for Southern fiddlers, with a second part in G minor. Clark Kessinger’s 1929 Brunswick version was copied directly from Robertson’s disc, according to Mark Wilson and Guthrie Meade. Clayton McMichen recorded it with the guitarist Riley Puckett in the key of C. Bob Wills played it, and Ed Haley’s version appears on Parkersburg Landing (Rounder 1010, 1976).
Among the fiddlers on its list of recordings, the Fiddler’s Companion includes Kenny Baker (High Country, County 714), Tommy Jackson (MCA-162), and Carl Jackson (Prize 498-02, Bluegrass Festival).
