Hey Alan: here’s our own version of the song that “the Four Pennies” did in “Pop Gear” ST. It’s a very old song…unfortunately the vidcam here did not pick up the banjo and mandolin very well…it was about 20 degrees outside and we had 0 visitors to the museum that day…had to build a fire in the potbelly stove. It’s one of the few songs I can remember lyrics to!
Around the same time your 4 Pennies did this the Sir Douglas Quintet over here had a regional hit with it. Interesting both versions borrow from Leadbelly’s version, not so much Bill Monroe’s. Mine kinda takes from all of them, even Mickey Newbury’s.
Was Sir Douglas (Doug Sahm) known over there at all? It’s a hilarious history he has….child prodigy fiddle and steel guitar player in the early 50s, by the 60s he had R&B bands around the state, then when the Beatles hit the US, Cajun nut-case and record “producer” Huey Meaux locked himself into a hotel in Houston for a weekend with a stack of “Brit invasion” group 45s and a portable record player. He tried to figure out what they were doing that was making them so huge. After a few bottles of liquor he called Doug Sahm in San Antonio and said “Grow your hair long and let’s do this shit!”. Renamed The Sir Douglas Quintet, Huey thought he’d trick the public into thinking this Texas band was from England. The Album jacket featured only backlit silhouettes because two of the members were Chicanos and while their hair could make them pass for being Brits, the brown skin and facial features were a giveaway. Another thing that (temporarily at least) succeeded in fooling the public was that Augie Meyer had just about the only Vox organ in the US. He paid an arm and leg to import it. So they HAD that aspect of their sound down enough to sound like they may have been another Brit Invasion band. “She’s About a Mover” was a huge regional hit and deservedly so…like most of Doug Sahm’s output, it combines every kind of Texan music you can think of but the German accordion sounding part being done by the Vox organ might have fooled only a few into thinking “Hey another Brit band!”.