About This Song

Farewell Blues started out as a jazz tune. Paul Mares, Leon Roppolo and Elmer Schoebel of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings wrote it in 1922. The band first recorded it that August in Richmond, Indiana, under the name Friars Society Orchestra. Roppolo's clarinet solo on that record was so admired that other bands copied it. As a boy, Earl Scruggs heard an early recording of the tune on records his family bought with a windup gramophone. In October 1950 he recorded it with Lester Flatt and the Foggy Mountain Boys as a banjo instrumental in C, and that recording made it a bluegrass standard.

Also recorded by Fletcher Henderson, Sol Hoopii and Sam Ku West.

In the sixth bar of each part, the 2 moves to a flat 3 for two beats before the 1 comes back. That chromatic step comes from the tune's jazz roots.