“The Hobo Song” was written by Jack Bonus, a songwriter and saxophone player associated with the San Francisco music scene of the early 1970s. He recorded it himself in 1972.
The song is the testimony of an old hobo speaking to a younger gambling man. He tells how he too once had money, family, and standing, and how he sank, step by step, to a homeless and forgotten life. It is at once a warning and a portrait of a man past saving.
The song reached bluegrass audiences largely through Old and in the Way, the 1973 group that recorded it, and it has since been a standard.
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