“Farewell Blues” is a 1922 jazz standard written by Paul Mares, Leon Roppolo, and Elmer Schoebel of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, recorded on August 29, 1922, in Richmond, Indiana, and released as Gennett 4966-A under the band name Friars Society Orchestra (the New Orleans Rhythm Kings were known by both names at different points in their early career). The recording was made under the direction of Husk O’Hare.
The tune emerged from a spontaneous moment during a performance: Leon Roppolo took an extended chorus during the band’s rendition of “Weary Blues,” the band experimented with a harmonic motif reminiscent of a train whistle, and the new piece coalesced from those moments into the composition that became “Farewell Blues.” The clarinet solo Roppolo played on the original recording was widely admired and was copied note-for-note in early covers, including a 1923 version by The Georgians.
“Farewell Blues” crossed from early jazz into the bluegrass and Western swing repertoires through the broader pollination of jazz vocabulary into Southern stringband music in the 1920s and 1930s. It is widely played today as a flatpicked guitar showpiece in the Tony Rice / David Grisman lineage, and remains one of the cleanest examples of how the early jazz idiom seeded the bluegrass instrumental tradition.
