Musicians
“Way Downtown” is a traditional song, and much of it is older than the title. One of its verses, about Willie coming home late at night and knocking at the door, belongs to a song that was already on record in the 1920s. On 14 April 1926 in New York, Uncle Dave Macon, with Sam McGee on guitar, recorded “Last Night When My Willie Came Home,” issued on Vocalion 15319. Charles Bowen of the West Virginia string band the 1937 Flood has written a history of the song. He says it was making the rounds in the South at the time, and that Frank Blevins and His Tar Heel Rattlers recorded it for Columbia in Atlanta about a year later. He also credits the New Lost City Ramblers with reviving it for Folkways in 1960 as “Late Last Night When Willie Came Home.”
The verses don’t follow a single story. The singer has been fooling around downtown and ends up in jail with nobody to pay his bail. Willie arrives home late, slipping in his new shoes, and his mother tells him to stop rapping at the door. The singer wishes he were at his sweetheart’s house with his guitar and his arm around her. Finally he shrugs that he owns next to nothing and will carry nothing to the grave.
The present title comes from Doc Watson, who recorded it as “Way Downtown” on the Folkways album Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s, Part 2 (1962). Bowen writes that Watson gave the song that name. Watson also played it at the Newport Folk Festival with Clarence “Tom” Ashley on banjo, Clint Howard on guitar and Fred Price on fiddle, and he and Howard shared the singing. Vanguard issued that performance in May 1964 on Country Music and Bluegrass at Newport. Another Newport performance with Price and Howard appears on Vanguard’s two-record The Essential Doc Watson, and in 1972 Watson sang it with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on Will the Circle Be Unbroken.
Tony Rice recorded it for his 1977 Rounder album Tony Rice. The session was in July 1976 at 1750 Arch Studios in Berkeley, with J.D. Crowe on banjo, David Grisman on mandolin and tenor vocal, Jerry Douglas on dobro, Richard Greene on fiddle and Todd Phillips on bass. In 1977 Jody Stecher sang it on Going Up on the Mountain (Bay), with John Herald singing tenor. Billy Strings recorded it at Sound Emporium in Nashville for Me/And/Dad (Rounder, 2022), with Terry Barber on tenor. He also recorded it with Bryan Sutton on Live at the Legion (Reprise, 2025).
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