“Catfish John” was written by Bob McDill and Allen Reynolds and first recorded by McDill in 1972; a version by Johnny Russell became a country hit that same year. It is one of the songs that helped establish McDill as a sought-after Nashville songwriter.
The lyric is a grown man’s tender memory of a childhood friendship: Catfish John, an old Black man, born into slavery in Vicksburg and once traded for a horse, who fished the river and never spoke in anger. The boy’s mother warns him away; the man remembers him with love. It is a quiet, generous piece of Southern storytelling.
The song crossed easily into bluegrass and string-band music. Old and in the Way — the band of Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, and others — kept it in their repertoire, and it appears on the later release That High Lonesome Sound.
