“Brown’s Ferry Blues” is credited to Alton and Rabon Delmore, who grew up in Elkmont, Alabama. They recorded it in Chicago in December 1933 for Victor’s Bluebird label (B-5403), with the two singing and playing guitar, and the record came out in 1934. One biography of the brothers says the title comes from Brown’s Ferry, a place on the Tennessee River where the ferryboats stopped and where they played.
The song was popular enough to get sequels. They cut “Brown’s Ferry Blues, Part 2” in New Orleans in January 1935 (Bluebird B-5893), and a Part 3 at a session at the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in February 1939 (Bluebird B-8230). In October 1946, at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, Alton and Rabon recorded it again for King as the Brown’s Ferry Four, a gospel quartet that included Merle Travis and Grandpa Jones (King 592).
The verses are about a “hard luck Papa”: he comes down the lane and gets back his walking cane from Mama; he goes to town to see a woman and ends up down; he asks the girl’s father for her hand and gets his foot instead; the revenue man takes his gin. Each ends on the same line, “Lord, Lord, I got them Brown’s Ferry blues.”
The Green River Boys with Glen Campbell recorded it at Capitol’s studio in Hollywood for the 1962 album Big Bluegrass Special (Capitol T 1810), with Dale Fitzsimmons on banjo and lead vocal and Campbell and James Burton on guitars. The New Lost City Ramblers played it in a concert at Eliot House, Harvard, on 22 March 1962, with Mike Seeger singing and Tom Paley and John Cohen on guitars. Tony Trischka included it on his 2024 album Earl Jam (Down the Road, released 7 June 2024), with Billy Strings singing lead and playing guitar, Trischka and Béla Fleck on banjos, Sam Bush on mandolin, Michael Cleveland on fiddle and Mark Schatz on bass.
