Blue Ridge Cabin Home

3/24/2017

Hi,
The song of the week is the old Flatt and Scruggs Bluegrass jam classic 'Blue Ridge Cabin Home' in the key of A.

For those who find these useful, attached here are melody sheets in standard notation, mandolin tab, guitar tab, and banjo tab, to help guide you in coming up with a melody-based break for the song.

The chord progression is the one labelled as W8 on the Basic Chord Progressions handout, namely:

1144
5511
1144
5511

Notice that both halves of the progression are identical with each other.

Two other old Bluegrass classics on the beginner jam song lists that use the same progression are Flatt & Scruggs' '(Someday) We'll Meet Again Sweetheart', and Bill Monroe's 'Sweetheart You Done Me Wrong'. The same progression is also used for 'We Can't Be Darlings Anymore', 'Is It Too Late Now?' (both of which are highly jam-friendly classic Flatt & Scruggs songs) 'A Few More Seasons', 'Nobody's Business', the verses of 'I Wonder Where You Are Tonight', 'Are You Tired Of Me My Darling', 'Sunny Tennessee', 'I'm Using My Bible For A Roadmap', 'I'd Rather Be Alone', and 'Thinking About You', and the A-Parts of 'Daybreak In Dixie', 'Randy Lynn Rag', 'Orange Blossom Special', and 'Durham's Reel'.

For those of you who are still far less familiar with Bluegrass than with certain other genres of music, then, depending on your musical background, good points of reference for Prog. V8 may include one or more of the following songs: 'The Prisoner's Song' (an old country song that sometimes comes up at Bluegrass jams), 'I'm Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes', 'The Great Speckled Bird', 'The Wild Side Of Life', 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels', 'Fraulein', the verses of 'Your Cheating Heart', 'They'll Never Never Take Her Love From Me', and 'Mocking Bird Hill', the chorus of 'Reuben James', the A-Part of 'Life In The Finland Woods', and the first half of the B-Part - or, in some versions, the entire B-Part - of '(O Dem) Golden Slippers'.

Here are a couple of youtube links to listen to:

Flatt and Scruggs - key of Bb. This is the original recording of 'Blue Ridge Cabin Home'. It is in the key of Bb instead of A only because all the instruments were tuned a half-step higher than normal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCKBD17GKV4

Here is a link of the same recording, but which the person who posted it on youtube has taken it upon himself to slow it down a bit so that it is in the key of A. You may wish to try playing along with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdo34w5-DtQ

For a more recent recording of Blue Ridge Cabin Home, here is one of my favorites:

The Bluegrass Album Band - key of Bb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htxGouge9-g

Happy Pickin',
Jason