Annotation:Old Weary Blues

Find traditional instrumental music

Back to Old Weary Blues


OLD WEARY BLUES. American, Rag or Blues Song. A New Orleans jazz standard seldom recorded by string bands, although Jess Young's band (Chattanooga, Tenn.) recorded it for Columbia in 1929. Steve Wade [1] identifies Young's piece as a member of a related group of songs that includes Ida Cox’s “Blues Ain’t Nothin’ Else But!” (1924), Uncle Dave Macon's “Arcade Blues," (1926), the Brock Sisters’ “Broadway Blues” (1929), and Milton Brown’s “Texas Hambone Blues” (1936). He believes the precursor may have been a song by black-face vaudevillian Leroy “Lasses” White, who copyrighted a version in 1912 as “Nigger Blues.”

Source for notated version:

Printed sources:

Recorded sources: Columbia 15493-D (78 RPM), Jess Young Band (1929). Folkways RBF 18, Jess Young - "Ragtime: The Country" (1971).




Back to Old Weary Blues