“I Feel the Blues Moving In” is a Del McCoury song. He recorded it for Don’t Stop the Music (Rounder 0245, 1990), produced by Ken Irwin and engineered by Bill McElroy at Bias Recorders in Springfield, Virginia. McCoury sang lead and played guitar. His son Ronnie McCoury played mandolin and his brother Jerry McCoury played bass. Jon Glik played lead fiddle and Warren Blair harmony fiddle. Ronnie, Jerry and Blair sang the harmony parts.
The song is built around a letter. The singer and the woman he loves are far apart, and he had thought the distance would make their love stronger, as it had before. Her latest letter comes on blue paper, and he can tell from her writing that something has changed. The words themselves are not what hurt. It is the mixed feelings he reads between the lines, the tears on the page, and the way she signs off as if to an old friend. In the last verse he feels himself sinking deeper the harder he digs to get out. He asks her for the one answer that would set his world right: that she still loves him.
The Cox Family made it the opening track of Just When We’re Thinking It’s Over (Asylum, 1996). Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt recorded it as “I Feel the Blues Movin’ In” in 1994 for Trio II. Label disputes and conflicting schedules kept that album back until Asylum released it on 9 February 1999. Valerie Smith opened Turtle Wings (Rebel, 2000) with the song, singing lead with Shelia Wingate and Travis Alltop on harmony. Jr. Williams recorded it with Amanda Cook singing harmony for Railroad Town (Mountain Fever, 2022).
