West Virginia guitarist and singer Frank Hutchison was one of the great instrumental stylists of early country music. Perhaps best-known for his song ‘The Train that Carried my Girl from Town’, his recorded legacy consists of 32 tracks recorded for the Okeh label between 1926 and 1929. Like many other pioneering country artists, his recording career didn’t survive the depression and subsequent collapse of the record industry. Hutchison was a pioneering ‘white bluesman’, an excellent slide guitarist with a widely varied repertoire that included old-time country tunes, rags, and blues.

This track was recorded in New York City on July 9th, 1929, in, as Hutchison says in the song’s spoken section, the Union Square Hotel.

K.C.Blues.mp3

Following his career as a recording artist and mdicine show performer, Hutchison and his moved between Ohio and West Virginia. He died of liver cancer in 1940, and is buried in Columbus, Ohio.

All of Hutchison’s known recordings are available on CD. They are collected on two CDs in the excellent Document 8000 Series, both of which are sadly out of print. They are available again, however, on a JSP set called Worried Blues.