Richie

The Sugar Hill album 'Bluegrass: The World's Greatest Show' [SH-CD- 2201] has The (almost) Original New South doing this. The lyrics are almost identical with what you have posted, but the attribution in the insert is to M. Ellis (Tannen Music, BMI).

The stanza from 'The Panic Is On' posted by Charly Noble in the first of the 'Related threads' linked above surely must be among the earliest use of the expression on a recording:

All the landlords done raised the rent
Folks that ain't broke is badly bent
Where they get the dough from, goodness knows
But, if they don't produce it, in the street they goes
Doggone, I mean the panic is on

The pertinent line is inaccurately rendered in the version in the DT. The DT gives no attribution, but the author of the piece was Hezekiah Jenkins who recorded it for Columbia [Co 14585-D] on 16 January 1931. Paul Oliver has noted that Jenkins' song was 'a remodelling of an earlier theme' and therefore it is possible that the expression did not originate with him.

Willie Dixon also used the expression in the chorus of his 'Dead Presidents', but I don't have a date for that.

--Stewie.