Listening To the Rain - Doc & Merle Watson

Listening To the Rain - Doc & Merle Watson
3:14
Home Sweet Home, 1998 (recorded 1967)

Written by Don DeVaney, 1967?

This bluegrass number, like the entire album it's on, is a blend of old and new recordings.  The label took thirty-year-old tapes and digitally added the fine instrumentation of Marty Stuart, mandolinist Sam Bush, and others to fill out the duo's sound.  Merle's skill at the banjo is evident on the recording: his lightning-fast picking adds a jauntiness to the otherwise quite bleak lyric ("The beating on the window can't compare with the beating that I'm taking / The window's gonna hold, but look at me, I'm already breaking").  Note: This song was first officially released by the Osborne Brothers in 1970, but since every source I found insists these Watson tapes are from 1967, I can only assume DeVaney wrote the song earlier than the Osborne released it.

Deep River Blues - Doc Watson

Deep River Blues - Doc Watson

3:12

Doc Watson, 1964

traditional

A fatalistic low and slow folk gospel.  The narrator doesn't care how much it rains.  There's a hit of absurd humor when he says his gal reminds him of a water fowl when it rains, but mostly the song seems bleak.  "Now I'm gonna say goodbye, and if I sink, just let me die / 'Cause I got them deep river blues."  This song is a little-changed update of a 1933 song sung by the Delmore Brothers called "Big River Blues."