Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris
I Feel the Blues Movin’ In
Trio II (1999) Discogs
“I Feel the Blues Moving In” was written by Del McCoury and recorded by the Del McCoury Band on their 1990 Rounder album Don’t Stop the Music. McCoury’s catalogue of original songs is substantial but lightly indexed; this is one of the pieces from the early Del McCoury Band period (right around the lineup transition that brought sons Ronnie and Rob McCoury into the band) that has stayed in steady rotation in the band’s working set.
The lyric is a heartbreak text in the McCoury mode: the singer can feel the blues moving in like weather, the inevitability of the next round of grief settling into him before it has fully arrived. The harmonic shape is straightforwardly traditional and three-chord, but McCoury’s high-tenor lead and his sons’ tight family harmony give the song a piercing edge that lifts it above the run of similar heartbreak pieces in the bluegrass songbook.
The recording sits at the start of what would become the Del McCoury Band’s three-decade run as one of the most consistent traditional bluegrass acts in the field. The song works as a moderate-tempo singer’s piece in G or A and is a frequent call in McCoury-Band-influenced bluegrass jams that lean toward the harder traditional vocal register.
