Got the Kansas City Blues

(Delmore Brothers)

Cathy - vocal, Autoharp; Dave - vocal, guitar; Dave Wilson - fiddle; Lou Whitney - bass

Grandpa and Ramona Jones introduced us to the music and stories of Alton and Rabon Delmore some 20 years ago. They knew each other at WLW in Cincinnati, and Grandpa was one of the original Brown's Ferry Four. Alton's unfinished autobiography, Truth is Stranger than Publicity edited by Charles Wolfe and published by the Country Music Foundation, is a great source of information and candor concerning early country music and its social context. This is the first song the Delmores recorded, for Columbia Records in Atlanta in 1931.

I road the train from the state of Maine
To the land of Tennessee,
But the sunny West for me is best,
And it now is calling me.
Chorus
I've got the Kansas City blues,
Just as blue as I can be.
Now the harvest moon is calling me
To the land from which I roam.
I've got the Kansas City blues
'Cause the world's gone back on me.
Now I'm headed west for to do my best
To make my way back home.

Weary is my soul, but a spirit bold
Seems to guide my feet all right.
And though the way is long I'm singing a song,
And it makes my burden light.

I can almost cry for the days gone by
When I left my Kansas home.
Now I'm headed back for the dear old shack
And the mother I left alone.