Shorter than usual post, but wanted to put something together for The Blaze Foley song Cold Cold World. Cold Cold World is featured on Live At The Legion, Billy's 2025 release with Bryan Sutton, that was released without any advance fanfare. That version is truly great, but it's not the first time Billy's played that song or other Blaze Foley songs that I suspect he heard on the same record.
The Stats:
Bmfsdb.com has Billy playing Cold Cold World 15 times as of this writing, with the first time played in 2022. I've actually been in the audience for two of those. Once at "Rain Rocks" (Red Rocks night 1, 2023) and in Austin a month later. Here's Rain Rocks:
Given which Blaze Foley songs Billy has covered, and when he started playing some of them, I'm guessing he heard this one on The Dawg Years (which is not a reference to David Grisman). I love this record & highly recommend it. You'll get pretty much the whole Blaze experience on one record.
Ole Slew Foot is a great bluegrass song with an interesting history. It's got a great sing-along chorus & gets a great response at Billy Strings shows. According to bmfsdb.com, Billy Strings has played Ole Slew Foot 110 times, as of this writing. That's about 10.5% of the shows, with almost half of the plays coming in 2022 & 2023. Here's a nice vid from '23. Check out Billy Failing getting into it as they get going!
The Song
Ole Slew Foot has J.D. Crowe and Jimmy Martin listed as authors & started life as Bear Tracks, the instrumental B-side to the "You Don't Know My Mind" single in 1960.
J.D. Crowe has a version on his killer Blackjack record.In 1961, Johnny Horton put words to it & Ole Slew Foot was born. It was more of a straight country or even rockabilly song.
About a year later, Rose Maddox released a bluegrass(ish) version. After that you start to see it pop up from a decent number of bluegrass and country acts.
Jim & Jesse
Doc Watson
The Stonemans (this one smokes)
Buck Owens
All told, secondhandsongs.com lists 41 versions of Bear Tracks/Ole Slew Foot. Billy Strings is not listed ;->
Pretty Daughter is a song that I would call "murder ballad adjacent". I've always felt like there's something ambiguously creepy about the father/narrator, but nothing concrete. Unlike most murder ballads, it's the "boy from the town" who gets the wrong end of the pick axe, not the woman. Billy Strings took the original lo-fi, kind of messy original & turned it into a powerhouse, building on what Jeff Austin had done with it earlier. Billy emphasizes the opening melody and really turns it into a riff. The song only has 2 chords, Gm & F. Billy plays with a capo on the 3rd fret, so he's playing in position for Em and D. Em has all the same notes as G major, so there's a lot of familiar runs available, with emphasis on different starting & ending notes. As of this writing, bmfsdb.com shows that Billy Strings has performed Pretty Daughter 68 times, with it showing up in 6.75% of shows. Secondhandsongs.com doesn't list any covers for Pretty Daughter, but I know of a few.
Here's one pre-Alex
And one with Alex.
The Bad Livers
The Bad Livers were a rowdy string band from Austin. Although I doubt they would like the description, they sounded like a cross of folk, bluegrass & punk. Maybe like the Velvet Underground of acoustic music, not a ton of people knew about them but a lot that did started a band. Pretty Daughter comes from an album with one of the greatest titles of all time - Delusions of Banjer.
Covers
There aren't a ton of other covers of Pretty Daughter other than those by Billy Strings. Here's a nice one by The Kitchen Dwellers. They get into Pretty Daughter at about the 7 minute mark.
Here's a great clip of Jeff Austin & Bill Nershi playing Pretty Daughter with The Travelin' McCourys from way back in 2012.
Here's another of Jeff with his own band, featuring Kyle Tuttle, who now plays with Molly Tuttle's Golden Highway band.
This one's a little bit of a mystery. After The Billy stats, I'll talk about why. This is a quartet vocal that bmfsdb.com lists as 'traditional', probably because there is nothing online indicating the origin. Speaking personally, I'm always happy when the boys break this one out. First off, it means we're in a single mic segment, where they're playing old-school bluegrass style. The first time I saw them play it was Red Rocks night 2 in 2023. The night before was rainy, cold & miserable, forever to ber known as "Rain Rocks". For night 2, I'm pretty sure the plan was to open with "I Can See Clearly Now The Rain Is Gone", but fate, in the form of rig problems, intervened. After a few minutes of standing & waiting, they made the call to get the single mic & pick a few. If Your Hair's Too Long, was the last one before they went back to the original set. A mighty cheer went up for the line "You'll live a life of fear & dread if you listen to the Grateful Dead" as it always does.
BMFSDB.com says that (as of this writing), Billy Strings has played If Your Hair's Too Long 26 time, with it appearing in about 2.6% of shows. 2023 seems to have been the big year so far, with 9 plays.
The Song
If Your Hair's Too Long (There's Sin In Your Heart) sounds like an old gospel quartet song from the '60's or '70's, I couldn't find anything on discogs or secondhandsongs about it. When I looked on Youtube I found this (in addition to a bunch of BMFS vids).
Not particularly helpful, or good. After some more searching, I found this clip.
So this is interesting. LaVerne Tripp sang for the Blue Ridge Quartet, a southern gospel group. Otis Forrest was their producer for a bunch of records. In the clip, Edith Tripp says to Otis "you produced it" and Otis goes on to talk about how heavily bootlegged the song was. It certainly sounds like something the Blue Ridge Quartet could have performed, but I just can't find it online.
I went through the track listing on every one of their albums & singles I could find, but no joy. If anyone knows the original recording, please leave a comment,
Freeborn Man is a classic guitar picking song and a bluegrass favorite. Billy Strings has (as of this writing) played it 88 times, with it appearing in about 8% of his shows. The song traditionally features a flashy guitar intro. Not sure if it qualifies as a train song, but it does mention "every mile of railroad track". It's a favorite of mine & it gives me an opportunity to post a bunch of videos of killer versions. Her are a couple of choice Billy versions.
The Song
Freeborn Man was written by Keith Allison & Mark Lindsay and released by Keith Allison in 1967. Keith Allison released a solo record that included Freeborn Man before joining Paul Revere & The Raiders. Heavy hitters picked up on the song pretty quickly. In 1968, Glen Campbell recorded a version. It had the beginnings of the big guitar intro.
In September of 1969, both Jimmy Martin & Jerry Reed released versions.
The version that I'm guessing had the biggest impact on Billy was the one that leads off the debut Tony Rice solo album. Here's a clip of Tony joined by Mark O'Connor, Sam Bush & Bela Fleck.
Secondhandsongs.com lists 37 covers of Freeborn Man, and that doesn't include Tony Rice's, so that tells me their list is nowhere near complete.
All Fall Down is a song by John Hartford, from the 1972 album Morning Bugle. As of this writing, Billy Strings has played All Fall Down 82 times, with it appearing in about 8% of his shows according to bmfsdb.com. Secondhandsongs.com doesn't list any versions for All Fall Down. Setlist.fm only has it showing up in one other artist's set - Larry Keel in 2008. As far as I can tell, All Fall Down wasn't a particularly significant John Hartford song. I'm guessing Morning Bugle was a part of Terry Barber's record collection and Billy heard it growing up.
I think it's fair to say that Billy Strings has taken ownership of All Fall Down similarly to how Jimi Hendrix took ownership of All Along The Watchtower. Live, Billy takes All Fall Down "out" in the free jazz or psychedelic sense of the word.
John Hartford
John Hartford is a fascinating figure in bluegrass and music in general. He was a banjo player & fiddler who wrote a monster hit song (Gentle On My Mind, with 290 covers listed on secondhandsongs.com) and then got weird and hippified in the '70's. He wrote a bunch of songs that show up in bluegrass jams and made records with bluegrass greats like Sam Bush and Norman Blake. He released 25 albums during his life, with Areo-Plain being maybe the most notable, featuring Vassar Clements, Norman Blake, Randy Lynn Scruggs and Tut Taylor. He passed away in 2001 from cancer.
Little Maggie is one of the old songs that predates the earliest recording, maybe by 50 years or so. Billy Strings plays a supercharged version that is patterned from what I would say is the definitive version by the Stanley Brothers. According to BMFSDB.com, Billy has played Little Maggie in 263 shows as of this writing. Over the years, you have a 1 in 4 chance of hearing Little Maggie at Billy Strings show, although those stats are skewed by the fact that the band played it around 100 of those 263 times in 2017-2018.
At Billy's shows, my experience has been that Little Maggie packs the most punch when coming as the 2nd half of a two song segue. How Mountain Girls Can Love is the same way. Coming out of a hot jam, maybe into a key change and then Billy belting out "Yonder staaaaaaaaaaaaaaands little Maggie" gets the crowd (or at least me) fired up. And of course, you get "I'm going to pay Jarrod Walker's fine" and a hot mando break. What's not to love?
The Song
Little Maggie doesn't show up with a lot of lyrical variation for such an old song, especially when you compare it to something like Shady Grove. As noted on secondhandsongs.com, it's related to Darlin' Corey and has at least 109 recorded versions. The first recorded version pretty much has all the elements of subsequent recordings, but it really is "owned" by the Stanley Brothers.
