Down In A Willow Garden

Hi,
The song of the week is 'Down In A Willow Garden' (a.k.a. 'Rose Connelly') in the key of G.

Down In A Willow Garden was recorded by most of the first and second generation big names in bluegrass, and has been recorded many times since then both by bluegrass and non-bluegrass artists. Well-known non-bluegrass singers who have recorded the song include The Everly Brothers, Art Garfunkel, and more recently, Billie Joe Armstrong (lead singer of the pop-punk band 'Green Day') with Norah Jones.

For those interested in the history of the song, check out 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_in_the_Willow_Garden


Recordings
The following recordings are representative of the range of ways that first and second generation bluegrass artists played and sang Down In A Willow Garden.

Flatt & Scruggs - key of F 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxtjPCELO9A

Reno & Harrell - key of G
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbnQofztEtw

Charlie Monroe - key of Ab (very sharp, almost A)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZGj7m2bcJ4

The Osborne Brothers with Red Allen - key of G
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW-0ko2Mdoc

Ralph Stanley - key of G
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkivwchjXeg


Progression
The chord progression I use for Down In A Willow Garden is the same as the one on the Flatt & Scruggs and Osborne Brothers recordings: 

Verse
1    1    1    6m
1    1    6m 6m
1    1    1    6m
1    5    1    1

Chorus
6m 6m 1    6m
1    1    6m 6m
1    1    1    6m
1    5    1    1

On the Reno & Harrell recording, as well as on the Ralph Stanley recording, the 6 (Major) chord is used in place of the 6m, and on the Charlie Monroe recording, there are some spots where a chord change away from the 1 chord is implied by the melody, yet no clear chord change occurs on the guitar. 

Sandwiching 6 Major chords between 1 chords was common in the early days of bluegrass (the original 1949 Flatt & Scruggs recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown is likely the most well-known example of this), but is hardly ever done in bluegrass nowadays. The nearly universal current practice is to use 6m chords (or in some cases where it will work, 4 chords) in such spots.

Nearly all chord progressions one is likely to encounter for 'Down In A Willow Garden' at bluegrass jams that differ from the one I have written out here involve the use of the 4 chord in place of one or more of the 6m measures. The most common spots for the 4 to be used are in the last measure of the 3rd line of the verse and the chorus, and in the first two measures of the chorus.

Here is an example of the 4 being used in all of these spots, and also in the 4th measure of the 1st line of the chorus:
The Lonesome River Band - key of B
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZaKcBHWxPM

Here is a version with even more 4 chord measures in it (and one that begins in 3/4 time, switches to cut common time for most of the song. but then ends in 3/4 time):
Monroe Crossing - key of B

The reason why the 6m, 6(M), and 4 chords all work for the measures that I use the 6m in is because the main melody note (in most cases, the only melody note) in those measures is the 6th note of the Major Scale, and all three of those chords contain that note. In the key of G, that note is an E note, and the E note is part of the Em, E, and C chords. Furthermore, the E note forms a dissonance with only one of the notes of the G chord (the D note), and only a mild dissonance at that. This helps to account for the fewer number of changes away from the 1 chord in the Charlie Monroe version.

6m or 4?
If one sticks mostly to playing E and G notes in one's breaks (or backup on instruments that allow for this) on the 'Em' measures, and makes it a point to avoid B notes, then one need not be too concerned whether a C chord is being played in place of an Em in some of those measures.  

Vocals
Down In A Willow Garden is most often sung solo, but some of the recorded versions included or mentioned here are sung with harmony either on all the vocal parts of the song (e.g., Osborne Brothers), or only on the choruses (e.g., Reno & Harrell). 

Breaks
Although on most of the recordings provided here, breaks are played only over the verse progression and melody, I find it tends to work better when I lead the song at a jam to have the breaks alternate between the verse and chorus progressions when two or more breaks are played back to back. In this respect, the arrangement we will use for the song as it goes through its song of the week cycle is similar to how we almost always play Columbus Stockade Blues at the jam, except that I will usually end the song, not with a vocal chorus, but with two 'everybody' breaks played back to back: the first over the verse progression, and the second over the chorus progression.

The only essential differences between the melodies for the two parts occur in the first two measures of the parts, and once one gets past the first two measures of the chorus, the progression for the chorus is identical with the progression for the verse. So, for a chorus break, all one needs to do is to alter the first two measures of one's verse break to make it fit the chorus progression and melody.

By dropping the melody an octave lower than written in the melody sheets, guitar players can confine the melody to the 4 lowest strings of the guitar, which is ideal for creating Carter-style breaks for the song like the ones played by Charlie Monroe on the recording. The very lowest note of the melody as written (a D note: open 4th string on the guitar) cannot be dropped an octave lower when the guitar is in standard tuning. In place of the low D note in the pickup measure for the verse, and in the 8th measure of the chorus, substituting an E note (open 6th string) will work, and in place of the low D note in the 2nd measure of the last line of the verse and of the chorus, playing an A note (open 5th string) is one easy option.

Melody
The melody of the Down In A Willow Garden is Major Pentatonic, which means that it uses only the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th notes of the Major Scale. In the key of G, those notes are G, A, B, D, and E. The melody has an unusually wide range for bluegrass: wider even than (though only by a half-step)  the range for the melody of Wildwood Flower. The melody for Down In A Willow Garden spans the same range as the melody for Fireball Mail. In order, from lowest to highest, the notes for both tunes when played in the key of G are: D, E, G, A, B, D, E, G. 
 
Song List
18 songs were played at last night's jam:

Cherokee Shuffle - A
Clinch Mountain Backstep - A
Cry, Cry Darlin' - A
Down In A Willow Garden - G
Gold Watch And Chain - Bb
I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore - D
I'll Still Write Your Name In The Sand - Bb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Eo0VE310s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_j5U3mf0oI
In The Sweet By And By - G
Little Cabin Home On The Hill - C https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhJ6r_R8crQ  https://www.youtube.com/watch? 
Old Joe Clark - A
Will You Be Loving Another Man - A
Wreck Of The Old '97 - D
Little Darling Pal Of Mine - B 
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1qz3CW5GE4 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjrzoqbaEBM 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHbW_OeTzDM
Mountain Dew - A
I Saw The Light - B
Roses In The Snow - B https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-wOyMjJMw
Little Maggie - B
Cripple Creek - A

Here's a more straightforward Hank Snow recording of 'Wreck Of The Old '97' than the one on the record that I played last night at the jam during the teaching segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNo0cGi1xZU 

Here's a common bluegrass jam standard that I first heard on a Hank Snow record long before I ever heard any bluegrass recordings of it:
I Wonder Where You Are Tonight - Hank Snow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbR7fcb9o70 

I Wonder Where You Are Tonight - Flatt & Scruggs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSN_RIbrLxQ

Here's the original recording of Wreck Of The Old '97, that predates the million-selling Vernon Dalhart record released in 1924 that we listened to at the jam last night on the old 78 in my collection:
Henry Whitter - 1923
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b8fUJT_ZNA&list=PLA566F095F93095ED  

Henry Whitter, together with G.B. Grayson on fiddle, was also the first to record 'Down In A Willow Garden'. 

Rose Conley
Grayson & Whitter - 1927 or 1928
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9HjllAe9oI 

If you look back in the recordings section of this song of the week write-up, you'll notice that the Ralph Stanley recording of Rose Conley (Down In A Willow Garden) is taken from a Ralph Stanley record released in 2005 titled 'Short Life Of Trouble: Songs Of Grayson & Whitter.' 

Btw, the 'Grayson' who is mentioned by name in some versions of the song 'Tom Dooley' (e.g., in the second verse of the Kingston Trio's version, and in the last verse of the Grayson & Whitter version) was G.B. Grayson's uncle.

Tom Dooley - The Kingston Trio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhXuO4Gz3Wo  

Tom Dooley - Grayson & Whitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9NHKINSKFk  

According to the wikipedia article on G. B. Grayson (Gilliam Banmon Grayson): "G.B.'s uncle, James Grayson (1833–1901), was a Union Army officer who helped organize an anti-Confederate uprising in Carter County, Tennessee at the outbreak of the American Civil War and later aided in the capture of legendary North Carolina fugitive Tom Dula.[4] G.B. and Henry Whitter were the first to record the folk song Tom Dooley— based on the capture of Dula— in 1929.[3]"

Here's the B-Side of the Vernon Dalhart 78 record of Wreck Of The Old '97:
The Prisoner's Song - Vernon Dalhart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TouFORc4tg0   

Just like Wreck Of The Old '97, The Prisoner's Song has also been performed and recorded by many big name Country, 'Pre-Bluegrass', and Bluegrass artists, as well as big name artists from less-closely related genres, over the past 9 decades:

Bill Monroe - studio recording (not exactly the type of instrumentation one would usually expect to hear on a Bill Monroe record)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWhT4XVqZhA 

Bill Monroe - live 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GewNXif75Lk 

The Osborne Brothers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TAut9u1f8s 

Del McCoury & David Grisman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsxiBuSf5wk

Johnny Cash - live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aooko3XvoxQ  

Eddy Arnold - pop-country
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDLe2vCySFs  

Hylo Brown (with Earl Scruggs on banjo) - live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlY9WtbpGiY  

Brenda Lee - pop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75cnhZZpc2Q 

Happy Pickin',
Jason

Down In A Willow Garden - banjo tab (chorus)
Download File

Down In A Willow Garden - banjo tab (verse)
Download File

Down In A Willow Garden - guitar tab (chorus)
Download File

Down In A Willow Garden - guitar tab (verse)
Download File

Down In A Willow Garden - mandolin tab
Download File

Down In A Willow Garden - melody in G
Download File