Had a different song I was going to post this week, but jammed my index and middle finger of my right hand changing an alternator on the old F250 when a ratchet slipped this past Tuesday, so not playing a lot of banjo with a swollen hand and a couple busted knuckles. Decided to post a tune I recorded a while ago, but which has never been a TOTW.

The tune comes from Art Rosenbaum via J.T. Adams and the Indianapolis blues scene going way, way back. I first heard the tune on Art's outstanding Kicking Mule Clawhammer banjo LP "The Art Of The Mountain Banjo" that I've had for well over 50 years. Ed Denson & Stefan Grossman's Kicking Mule Records was a great label that featured artists playing tunes that you could mail order tabs for and then learn the tunes. I got the book, but ended up learning most of the tunes by ear; still a couple I need to work out one of these days. The tabs have been reprinted by Mel Bay, but I don't think the LP has ever been re-issued.

My dad George Hocutt distributed Kicking Mule records in the 70"s, among a 50+ year career in the music industry that included working with legends like Otis Redding, Tony Joe White, CCR, John Fahey and James Brown to name a tiny few, so I was able to wear a couple copies of the LP out without going broke in the process. As a further aside, Art was a HUGE influence on my early banjo playing. His field recordings (he released 2 box sets of a portion of them, winning a grammy for Vol 1) and work while living in Indianapolis as a young man were instrumental in  rediscovering "lost" blues artist's like Scrapper Blackwell, Pete Franklin, Brooks Berry, Shirley Griffith and of course J.T. Adams. Art's first, and subsequent field recordings, preserved the repertoire's of these, and many more influential early recording and hitherto unknown folk artists through a lifetime of superb musicology. I was extremely fortunate enough to have met and jammed with Art on several occasions over the last 5 decades, and even was able to record several tracks with him in early 2022 with business partner David Bragger for our Tiki Parlour Recordings label. Art unfortunately passed away shortly thereafter. Incidentally, Scrapper Blackwell, playing guitar with pianist/vocalist  Leroy Carr, were 2 of the earliest stars of the blues, their 1928 Vocalion 78 "How Long, How Long Blues" was a huge hit and later became a blues standard. But I digress...

J.T. Adams was a local Indianapolis bluesman, who according to Art, had a large catalog of jigs and medicine show banjo pieces he played that pre-staged the "modern" blues of the 1920's, "Sweet Nora Lee" being one of them, J.T. learning it from his father when he was little. Art had played the tune on his LP as an up-picking piece, but I've always rapped the tune.

J.T. had grown up in Morganfield KY, born there in 1911, but moved to Indianapolis in the early 40's where he quickly fell into the local blues scene, playing frequently with Scrapper Blackwell and mostly with Shirley Grifftih who had been mentored by blues legend Tommy Johnson. Adams and Griffith's version of "Big Road Blues" is a masterpiece in it's own right. Adam's and Griffith recorded a couple of LP's for the Prestige/Bluesville label, but Adams faded from the public eye and died in relative obscurity of heart disease in Indianapolis in 1982.

Okay, I REALLY went down the rabbit hole; back to "(Sweet) Nora Lee." It's a black banjo tune i play in standard "gDGBD" that predates "modern" blues. A lot of people play this tune slow, like Mike Iverson and most of the other versions on YouTube, but I always heard this as a "frolic" tune rather than a slow love song, something that track gangs or miners might have danced to on a moonshine filled night up the holler, so I kick up the tempo a little and let 'er rip. Hope you like it and give it a go no matter how you play it. There are lyrics, I think Art sings 2 verses on the Kicking Mule album, the only ones I remember are...

Five miles away from town, rooster calls for day
Pretty little gal sittin' in my lap, got me all carried away.
Sweet Nora Lee my love, sweet Nora Lee
Sweet Nora Lee my love, sitting in the apple tree.

Again, hope you like this little tune...

Nora Lee

 

Edited by - RG on 09/10/2026 22:08:08