“New Camptown Races” is a Frank Wakefield original, written in 1953 when Wakefield was 19 years old and only three years into his career as a mandolin player. He first recorded the tune in 1957 in Detroit, with Marvin Cobb and the Chain Mountain Boys, and the recording established the tune’s place in the modern bluegrass mandolin canon.
The tune’s structural daring is part of why it has lasted. It is set in the unusual key of B-flat — rare for bluegrass mandolin, where G, A, D, and E key centers dominate — and modulates to G minor on the bridge, which is now the more common form the tune takes at jam sessions. The combination of an unusual key center and a modal modulation set “New Camptown Races” apart from most of its contemporary repertoire and made it a workshop staple for advanced mandolin players.
Wakefield is generally regarded as one of the most innovative bluegrass mandolin players of his generation, and the tune ranks alongside Bill Monroe’s “Rawhide” and Bill Napier’s “Daybreak in Dixie” as one of the great bluegrass mandolin instrumentals of the 1950s and 1960s. Wakefield went on to play with the Greenbriar Boys and to perform alongside Ralph Stanley, but “New Camptown Races” remains his single most-played composition.