About This Song

Been All Around This World is a traditional song from the South and the Ozarks. The hanging verse traces back to Ozark ballads, and one singer said it was originally a much longer ballad about a murderer hanged at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the 1870s. The earliest commercial recording appears to be on a 1946 single by Grandpa Jones.

Most jam players learned it from Jerry Garcia. The Grateful Dead played it in their 1980 acoustic sets, released on Reckoning (1981). Garcia also recorded it with the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band on Almost Acoustic (1988), and his version with David Grisman became the title track of Been All Around This World (2004). On the bluegrass side, Hot Rize recorded it on In Concert (Flying Fish, 1984), with Tim O'Brien singing lead.

At a jam it's a relaxed, loping singer's song. One person sings the verses, everyone comes in on the closing line, and the breaks go around the same verse. Each verse in the chart is only seven bars long. Bars 2 and 3 split G to C halfway through, and the last bar runs six beats: two on G, then four on C. That held C is where people tend to come in too early, so count it out before the next verse or break starts.