Country music legend Grandpa Jones’ signature song — “Eight More Miles to Louisville” — started out celebrating a journey that was nearly twice as long and to an entirely different city.
About a decade before Grandpa recorded his tune, Alton and Rabon Delmore of Alabama’s famed Delmore Brothers were playing their “Fifteen Miles from Birmingham” on live radio shows as the duo trekked across the South.
That song was never a big hit for the Delmores — by then, they had many hits, including “Got the Kansas City Blues” (1931), “Brown’s Ferry Blues” (1934), “I’m Alabama Bound” (1939), “Freight Train Boogie” (1946) — but the Birmingham tune strongly inspired Jones. He rewrote it into a song with similar themes of nostalgia, longing for home and the comfort of familiar surroundings, but with new lyrics that shifted the focus north to Louisville.
By the way, both Jones and the Delmores might have borrowed the tune from a third source. In 1927 the same melody was played on the fiddle and sung to entirely different lyrics by Virginia’s Shelor Family on their song "Big Bend Gal."
It's possible the Delmores and Jones both were influenced by that recording.
Kentucky Born and Bred
When Jones recorded his new tune in the spring of 1946, he was paying tribute his beloved home state. Born Louis Marshall Jones in 1913, he grew up in the tiny farming community of Niagara, Ky., in Henderson County, 130 miles west of Louisville.
His was a musical family — his father played old-time fiddle and his mother sang ballads —and young Louis’s first instrument was the guitar.
Jones spent his teenage years in Akron, Ohio, singing on country music shows on WJW Radio. In 1931, he joined the Pine Ridge String Band, which provided the musical accompaniment for the popular syndicated “Lum and Abner” comedy program in the NBC radio network.
“Grandpa” is Born
To grow his music career, Jones next moved to Boston in 1935 to work at WBZ Radio. It was in that studio’s band that he had a fateful meeting with singer/songwriter Bradley Kincaid. Famously, Kincaid used to tease the 22-year-old fellow Kentuckian for always being grumpy when he came to the studio to do the early morning broadcast, so Kincaid nicknamed him “Grandpa Jones.”
Louis liked the name and decided to create an entire stage persona based on it. The “grandpa” character served him for the remaining 60 years of his life, from his regular appearances on the Grand Ole Opry starting in 1946 to TV’s “Hee Haw” in the 1970s and ‘80s. Jones used to tell interviewers the only difference was that over the years he needed less and less makeup to achieve his signature look.
Enter the Banjo
Performing as Grandpa Jones, he played guitar, yodeled and sang mostly old-timey ballads. Then in 1937, Jones made another fateful trip, this time to Wheeling, WV, where he worked on WWVA Radio with Cousin Emmy (Cynthia May Carver).
It was she who taught Jones the clawhammer style of banjo playing, which gave him a rough backwoods flavor to his performances. That was Jones’ distinctive sound from then on.
In 1944, at age 31, Jones put his career on hold when he enlisted in the army during World War II. Discharged two years later, he was ready to resume recording with King Records.
All he needed was a theme song. That bill was filled by “Eight More Miles to Louisville,” which he released on May 28, 1946. After that, Grandpa Jones performed it at virtually every one of his shows for the next half century.
Our Take on the Tune
Sometimes the only thing that will fit bill is a song from your youth. All of us grew up hearing Grandpa’s famous theme song.
Here’s a take from this week’s rehearsal, with Randy Hamilton singing the lead and everybody joining in on the choruses.
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