Every son of the hills that fancies himself a ballad singer is always on the lookout for old songs he might have missed learning, growing up.

And although YouTube has seen the heavy hand of censorship, the do gooders at least for now haven’t put warning labels on those old hillbilly songs.

Until yesterday I thought Don’t Tell Jeanie I’m Blond was the most countriest hillbilly song ever.

DON’T TELL JEANIE I’M BLIND

Smiley Bates



However, last night researching Bashful Brother Oswald, who played the dobro on Wabash Cannonball and other Roy Acuff standards, I believe I’ve found the ultimate country hillbilly song, at least until something more hillbilly comes along.

SHOULD I TELL MY WIFE I’M DYING

Bashful Brother Oswald

Written by Onie Wheeler (Run Em’ Off)



The tune seems to be close to Teardrops Falling in the Snow by Molly O’Day, but you’d really have to be a hillbilly to know that one.

Hard to beat Adam Lee. For country, old style.



Or this one

Hank Williams “I saw the Light”

Nothing more important to life then redemption.

Those that occasionally listen to country music might think Hank Williams the father of country music, and every hillbilly singer knows I Saw The Light, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Your Cheating Heart, Cold Cold Heart, and other Hank the First standards.

But pure country music, really isn’t Hank I music, nor Lefty Frizzell honky tonk country, it’s Bashful Brother Oswald and Roy Acuff, and the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.

Pure country music, features a resonator guitar, known colloquially as a Dobro.

Bashful Brother Oswald popularized the dobro, and the first song any dobro player learns seems to be “The End Of The World”

END OF THE WORLD

Young dobro player



Mother Maybel gave us the claw hammer guitar picking style, Jimmie Rodgers the vocal style and rhythm, but it was Bashful Brother Oswald that put the twang in pure old time country music.


The most played gospel song at hillbilly jam sessions is “The Great Speckled Bird”, made famous by Roy Acuff with Bashful Brother Oswald. The tune is much older, and in the public domain.

Homer and Jethro: “She Didn’t Like my Apartment, so I Knocked Her Flat”

You know you’re in a really hillbilly jam session when somebody in the crowd requests “Rocky Top” and the jam session leader replies,,,

We don’t know that song, but how about “Good Old Mountain Dew”?


GOOD OLD MOUNTAIN DEW

Bashful Brother Oswald 1952



Rocky Top is a bluegrass song.

If Bashful Brother Oswald sang it, it’s a hillbilly song.

Experts on roots music might tell us why, but the jam session leaders avoid Rocky Top and love Good Old Mountain Dew.

Most of true old time mountain music is sad and lonesome.

It’s not called the white man’s blues, for nothing.

Actually, some might well and clearly differentiate between country music, mountain music, bluegrass and much more but, ...."hillbilly" music, .....well, lot's of folks do identify with the lowlanders, for whatever reason.
Much as with the Hillbilly Days popular in some parts of country...kinda sad, really. imho

These brothers were tops as was the tune:

https://youtu.be/vhc0N06bg2g

Defining is not all about the subject or the words....defining is about the chill.

"Dobro" is a contraction of Dopyera brothers who founded the guitar company and decided to call it Dobro because it means "good" in their native Slovakian language. It is also the Russian word for good but they spell it "Доброе".
Today, Gibson owns the Dobro trademark.

I vote for this one which we used to sing in my teenage (after drinking). We discovered it on the B side of "Big Bad John", a major hit. 'I won't go hunting with you, Jake, but I'll go catching women':

That was always one of my favorites, and what’s so rare about it is it’s a happy song that glamorizes drinking (the moon is right, and I’m half tight, and my life is just beginning,,,)

At least 90% of country music songs are sad, and of the sub genre of old time music it’s closer to 99% sad. And by and large, the songs have a good moral lesson. Tonight the bottle let me down, and let your memory, come around, is an example repeated over and over. Usually the price of the bottle is just a down payment for all the misery in this old sin cussed world.

And among all the sad songs, I’ve read for at least forty years now when actual music historians (there are experts in everything) choose just one country song to personify what country music is (or rather was, because it’s dead now commercially) they usually pick:

SAGINAW MICHIGAN

Lefty Frizzell (1964)



And the only happy part of Saginaw is the ending.

Lefty sang it all, with a cry in his voice.

Some of those old time music standards like “End Of The World” become without words, and instead Roy Acuff’s theme song tune as played by Bashful Brother Oswald.

The words to “End Of The World” have been attributed to Fred Rose, and the original was sang by Jimmie Davis. The tune is likely centuries old.



But this is the End of the World as you’ll hear it when you find a true mountain music jam session. Never any words, just somebody making a dobro cry.



All country music has guitar music, and fiddles if there’s a fiddle player around.

All bluegrass music has banjos and mandolins.

But only old time mountain roots music, has a dobro crying in the middle of all that.

I don't think the use of a dobro was confined to "only old time mountain music."

I saw a hard rock "dobro-ist" at a music festival and that was all he played, using a beer bottle as a slide. His name escapes me now but undoubtedly will come as soon as i hit "Submit."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw_UgHpQhco Duane Allman, "Amazing Grace"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Pett29IwU Henhouse Prowlers doing "Fire"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO7Vj3zHynE Lynyrd Skynyrd "Ballad of Curtis Lowe"

The resonator guitar didn’t exist until the late 1920’s and really wasn’t popular until the late thirties when Roy Acuff recorded the Wabash Cannonball with Bashful Brother Oswald on the dobro.

Even today there are jam sessions where there is not even one microphone for the singer.

And I’ve never seen one where any more than one microphone is allowed, that’s passed around for the singer. There are no electric guitars, no pedal steels, no sound amplification of instruments I’ve ever seen.

But if there’s a dobro player in the session, they’ll usually be the only one to play during breaks. More than any other instrument it’s the dobro that makes a hillbilly jam session sound hillbilly.

There is no duplication of the sound of a dobro (or other brand of resonator guitar).

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Dobro version

Let's not forget the Brian Jones, founding member of the Rolling Stones, playing a really soulful slide guitar part in "No Expectations"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URyqGD99Owg

Check out the Hill in this Billy as he plays his three string made out of a shovel. You can't get more Billy than that, IMO.



But for classic Billy, this one is as old as the hills-

everybody knows Steve Goodman and David Allen Coe wrote the perfect country western song . . .

My vote goes for this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO5Y1OuQIxo

Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life.

I like it!

Homemade one string guitars were known as "diddley bows" in the old South, played by people who were too poor to buy a real guitar. Bo Diddley took his stage name from this instrument and his signature custom made square body electric guitar was built to resemble a home made cigar box guitar.

John Prine helped Steve Goodman (writer of City of New Orleans) write “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”.

David Allen Coe’s version was the most famous.

But before Goodman died in 1984 he refined the song into one of them there musical masterpieces, you know?



Mama running her Christmas prison breakout laundry truck into a train, was based on the true story of the escape of James Earl Ray, some claim.

I couldn’t tell you for sure and certain.

Good Lord! I feel like just looking in this thread will cause me to hear twanging in my sleep for the next few weeks.