Remember hearing this as a very small child, on Saturday nights very late, from our neighbor "Old Jimmy" drunkenly singing as he passed up the holler by our house. Mom would shake Dad awake and make him light a lantern and "take Old Jimmy on home," so he wouldn't fall in the branch and drown. This must have been 1927 or '28. His singing always included, "God bless them moonshiners..." I leaned a few words and pestered Dad until he taught me the others, with a caution to "never let your Ma hear you sing this'n."

And I didn't, for many years, but in 1956 I recorded it on Riverside, on a 12" album titled, "Saturday Night and Sunday Too." I guess I sang it at the early Newport Folk Festivals, too,(the first was in l959) for I met Peter Bellemy there and he loved the song and learnt it from me, recorded it a bit later in England.    Jean