Zoomer Roberts: Dobro
Buddy Winston: guitar
Anybody who has ever played guitar has tried sliding something across the strings: a bottleneck, a piece of pipe, an empty jar, a pocket knife, a microphone stand -- anything to get that shimmering glissando. For a few years in the early 1980s, I aspired to being a Dobro player, a Dobro being an acoustic steel guitar with a metal resonator. It's a difficult instrument to play well, and this is about as good as I ever got. The song is an adaptation of the old sentimental parlour favorite, "When You and I Were Young, Maggie." Josh Graves of the Foggy Mountain Boys disposed of a couple of chords and dubbed it "Maggie Blues." The recording heard here comes from a 1984 Jerry, Buddy & Zoomer practice tape.