“Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down” has no known author. The Traditional Ballad Index lists Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers’ “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues,” recorded for Columbia in New York on 27 July 1925, as the earliest recording. It describes the lyric as floating verses, among them “Been all around this whole round world,” “Left my little girl a-crying” and “Where did you get your high-top shoes,” verses that also appear in songs such as “Pretty Little Foot” and “In the Pines.” “Let your deal go down” refers to the Georgia Skin Game, a card game with two principal dealers in which a dealer’s deal can “fall.” Lyle Lofgren, writing about the song, also points to a similar line in Peg Leg Howell’s “Skin Game Blues.”
Poole’s record, Columbia 15038-D, sold 102,451 copies, against about 5,000 for an average Columbia country record of the time. Ernest V. Stoneman recorded the song in April 1926 for OKeh (45054), Fiddlin’ John Carson for OKeh in 1927 (45096), and Riley Puckett for Columbia on 11 April 1929 (15448-D). W. Lee O’Daniel and His Hillbilly Boys cut it as “Don’t Let the Deal Go Down” on 22 November 1936, and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys recorded it for Vocalion in 1939 (05282).
The singer has been all around the world and down in Alabama, and his mother told him never to let his deal go down. The last time he saw his girl she stood in the door, singing that she would be a long time gone and that he would never see her again.
The New Lost City Ramblers put it on their first album in 1958, and Mike Seeger recorded it for Old Time Country Music in 1962. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded it for Columbia on 24 March 1957, and Doc Watson played it on Doc Watson on Stage (Vanguard, 1970). Tony Trischka’s Banjoland (Rounder, 1977) has a version sung by Tony Rice. Adam Steffey recorded it on his album Grateful (Mountain Home, 2001), singing lead and playing mandolin, with Tim Stafford on guitar, Ron Stewart on banjo, Randy Kohrs on resonator guitar and Barry Bales on bass.
