“Salty Dog” songs were on record more than a decade before anyone played what came to be called bluegrass. The Traditional Ballad Index describes the song as floating verses held together by the plea “let me be your salty dog,” a phrase meaning a sexual partner. The earliest recording it lists is Papa Charlie Jackson’s “Salty Dog Blues” (Paramount 12236, 1924). Several labels credit Jackson as the author, and the Index gives him as the probable writer. Others soon followed: Clara Smith in 1926, and in 1927 both the McGee Brothers and the Allen Brothers. The Allen Brothers cut their “Salty Dog Blues” in Atlanta on 7 April 1927 for Columbia.
The version later bluegrass bands credited came from the brothers Wiley and Zeke Morris. The Morris Brothers recorded it as “Let Me Be Your Salty Dog” on 29 September 1938 at the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the two of them singing and playing guitars. Bluebird issued it that December (B-7967). They recorded it again as “Salty Dog Blues” in Charlotte on 14 November 1945 for RCA Victor (20-1783). The Ballad Index notes that the Morris credit, usual in bluegrass circles, is hard to square with Jackson’s 1924 record.
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys recorded “Old Salty Dog Blues” on 20 October 1950 at radio station WDAE in Tampa, Florida. Benny Sims sang lead and played fiddle, with Curly Seckler singing tenor and playing mandolin, Earl Scruggs singing baritone and playing banjo, Lester Flatt on guitar and Jody Rainwater on bass. Mercury held it until 1 May 1952, then issued it with “Pike County Breakdown” on Mercury 6396, credited to W. Morris and Z. Morris. Seckler came back to the song on his own LP Curly Seckler Sings Again (County, 1971).
In the Flatt and Scruggs line of verses, the singer stands on a street corner with the blues and a hole in his shoe, and tells a woman that he will be her salty dog or not her man at all. He teases a girl called Sal about her run-down stockings and worn-out shoe. In the last verse he goes hunting in the woods and fires a shot that comes down in Mexico.
