Ironically, I just reading the liner notes of a Benny Martin album (CMH 9006), which wrote:

"SALTY DOG" is one of many songs strongly influenced by Negro blues. It was a very popular recording in 1930 by the Allen Brothers, and again in the 1940s by the Morris Brothers before the 1951 recording by Flatt & Scruggs (with Benny Sims playing the fiddle).