Guitar Golden Boys

We knew the band room was going to rock last week as soon as we saw Danny Cox was bringing along his life-long buddy, guitarist Bobby Murnahan, who was visiting from Colorado.

As noted here earlier, Danny and Bobby have known each other since before grade school. “Our parents attended the same church,” Danny has said, “and we got acquainted in Sunday school.”

Almost immediately the youngsters were united by their interest in guitar innovator Chet Atkins. One day after church, Bobby showed up at the Cox house asking Danny to show him some Atkins-style picking.

“I showed him what little I knew,” Dan remembers, and Bob took it from there. He and Dan purchased the Chet Atkins Goes to the Movies songbook and Bobby worked out the tunes. “I learned how to play Chet correctly because of his deciphering abilities,” Dan says.

Dan and Bob have been good friends ever since. For more on the story of their friendship, see our earlier Flood Watch article by clicking here.

About This Song from Last Week’s Rehearsal

As we noted in an earlier Flood Watch article, “Deep Ellum Blues” — first recorded on Bluebird by The Shelton Brothers (under the pseudonym “The Lone Star Cowboys”) — is all about life in a notorious neighborhood of Dallas.

While New Orleans had its French Quarter and Chicago its Bronzeville, in Dallas it was Deep Ellum with its equally sketchy, colorful résumé.

In the 1920s, if you walked down the streets on Deep Ellum, you could easily have rubbed shoulders with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Huddie Ledbetter, with Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith (not to mention with gangsters Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd).

Other versions of the song that celebrated this darker side of the Big D were made between 1957 and 1958 by Jerry Lee Lewis for Sun Records, by Bobby Jackson for Gold Air Records, by Mary McCoy & The Cyclones for Jin Records and, later still, by The Grateful Dead, Levon Helm and Rory Gallagher.

For more on the history of this terrific Texas tune — as well as about the district of Deep Ellum — see our earlier article by clicking here.

More from Flood Guests?

Over the years, many guests — visitors like Bob, as well as returning Flood alumni (whom we call “Floodster Emeriti”) — sit in with us at rehearsals, jam sessions and performances.

The band’s web site devotes a page to a growing list of these guest appearances, with links to the audio and video of their visits.

To use this registry, click here to reach the page, then scroll and click on an underlined date associated with a guest. On the subsequent page, click on the title of the song to hear the audio or on a video's start arrow to view it.