The Lonesome Road

"The Lonesome Road" is a 1927 song with music by Nathaniel Shilkret and lyrics by Gene Austin, alternately titled "Lonesome Road", "Look Down that Lonesome Road" and "Lonesome Road Blues." It was written in the style of an African-American folk song.

The lyricist and composer were both extremely popular recording artists. Gene Austin estimated he sold 80 million records, and Nathaniel Shilkret's son estimated his father sold 50 million records. Joel Whitburn lists recordings by Austin, Bing Crosby, Ted Lewis, and Shilkret (see list of recordings below) as being "charted" at Numbers 10, 12, 3 and 10, respectively. There are no reliable sales figures that can be used to verify or dispute any of the estimates above.

Use in film and live performances

The composition was notably used as a substitute for Ol' Man River in the finale of the part-talkie 1929 film version of Edna Ferber's novel Show Boat. It was performed onscreen by Stepin Fetchit as the deckhand Joe. Fetchit's singing voice was supplied by bass-baritone Jules Bledsoe, who had played Joe in the original stage version of the musical. The Shilkret autobiography contains a brief account of the motivation for using the song in the film.

Lonesome Road (album)

Lonesome Road is the title of a recording by Doc Watson and Merle Watson, released in 1977.

Lonesome Road is out-of-print and was re-issued on CD in 1998 by BGO Records. It was also released in 2002 by Southern Music packaged with Look Away!.

Reception

Writing for Allmusic, music critic Jim Worbois wrote of the album "Doc does the country blues as well as anything else he does and this record is filled with some fine performances."

Track listing

Personnel