We commemorate Presidents Day on ASotD with Bill Monroe's 1954 recording of "White House Blues," a tune written half a century earlier to dramatize the assassination of President William McKinley, for whom my grandfather was named. McKinley's death at the gun of anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Temple of Music in Buffalo ushered in Teddy Roosevelt as the nation's youngest president in history and one who began much of the progressive/modern liberal nonsense that this country is still saddled with to this day.
But back to this amazing track, one of my very favorite "superfast" numbers of the founding era of bluegrass, with amazing banjo by an otherwise obscure picker named Rudy Lyle, who happened to be in Monroe's Blue Grass Boys at the time of this session.
Yer bound ta dieee, yer bound ta diiieee.
Thanks, this song was great.
Posted by: Pat van Slee | Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 12:49 PM