Salty Dog Blues before Flatt & Scruggs ･ﾟ✧
Originally posted January 9, 2021 on tumblr. Adapted to this post March 28, 2024 with a few edits.
There are other songs I'm more worried about singing at bluegrass jams, but Salty Dog Blues is near the top of the list. Something about necrophiliac sex means I have to watch my mouth around kids.
Salty Dog Blues has been around longer than bluegrass, becoming a genre staple after Flatt & Scruggs released their 1950 recording. Like many people, I became familiar with Salty Dog Blues through Flatt & Scruggs. The song was catchy enough for me to love it as it was, but the lyrics further piqued my interest. I got caught in the age-old bluegrass fan question: What is a salty dog?
I realized I was assuming what a “salty dog” was through the lyrics rather than dialing in on a real meaning. But looking at the lyrics for clues was hard. There’s a narrative, but it feels just off-kilter enough I suspected the song had folk origin. Folk music can sound like verses were haphazardly sewn together like a ragtag quilt patched with mismatching fabrics. That's the danger - and the charm - of passing lyrics through oral tradition. It’s a game of international, generational telephone. Clearly, I had to go beyond the Flatt & Scruggs version in order to decipher the meaning.
I couldn't have spent my time better deep-diving this tune. Holy wow have I run into a jackpot of wildly fun things! I still have so much more I could look into. I had suspicions of what I’d find, but the following lyrics posted into a forum went way beyond expectations:
Two old maids laying in the grass,
One had her finger up the other one's ass
Honey, let me be your salty dog!
Welp. If I hadn’t been interested already, I would have been THEN. And the sexual explicitness... and other fun times... just kept COMING (lame wordplay intended here).
So! Below, I want to go further into the meaning of “salty dog” and listen to how the song developed from a blues tune to the 1950 Flatt & Scruggs country song. It would require a whole other post to go past 1950, so that’s why I’ve restricted my range from the earliest recorded tunes to the moment it entered bluegrass.
What *IS* a Salty Dog?
The first entertainment I got was seeking a definition for “salty dog.” The OED gave nothing to me, sadly, so I was left to peruse other sources. Reading forums, interviews, articles, and more, I encountered a hilariously diverse array of proposed definitions. I got peeps saying:
1. It’s a type of soft drink.
2. It’s a type of cocktail using grapefruit juice and gin or vodka. It’s served in a glass with a salted rim.
3. It’s the name of a specific bar in North Carolina.
4. It’s a medicinal solution from early frontier communities, especially in eastern Appalachia. A sausage soaked in brine solution was placed under people’s clothes during winter as a counter to pneumonia and flu.
5. It’s an ornery sailor, mariner, or pirate who’s spent a large portion of their life at sea. Just like a sea dog or an old salt.
6. It’s any person who’s really good with their work. A tough fellow, since salty can mean “full of spirit and fight.”
7. It’s a sweetheart, someone you love, or a favorite person. Applying salt to hunting dogs was believed to keep ticks away, and because salt was a rare commodity in those times, you’d only apply it to your favorite and most valuable dog.
8. It’s an illicit lover or libidinous man or woman, someone getting sex the wrong way.
9. It’s a pimp.
10. It’s a reference to oral sex. Have sex with one individual, then shortly later have someone perform oral on you.
The last one, which was embellished by Urban Dictionary (thanks, Urban Dictionary) could likely be an instance of linguistic pejoration, in which a word’s meaning “worsens” semantically over time. That said, I’ve seen everyday people in forums comment that in the 1940s and 50s in their communities, it did refer to oral sex. I’ll believe their testimony. So, contemporary to the time Flatt & Scruggs recorded, the more crude sexual sides appear to have been in vernacular use. It’s likely most if not all of the definitions proposed are real meanings of “salty dog,” but clearly the song Salty Dog Blues isn’t referring to all simultaneously.
Bluegrass musicians have not always been helpful providing a definition. For instance, Curly Seckler, one member of Flatt & Scruggs, proposed the benign soft drink suggestion. He said in this moment onstage in 1985:
Curly Seckler: I found out what a salty dog was. I think I was down here before I didn’t know, but I do now. I went home here, I believe it was last year, they had a big day down there. And, course I went over through the Smokies over there, and I stopped over there at Wiley Morris’s garage. . . . And we sang Salty Dog Blues and some of the old numbers together. But I asked him, I said, “Wiley, I’d like to know before I pass on, what in the world is a salty dog?” See, they wrote the Salty Dog Blues, him and Zeke. He said, “Well, North Carolina, years and years ago, had a drink they called salty dog. Now that’s a pop, a soda. And I said, “Well, I’m from North Carolina, but I don’t remember that.” But he said that’s why that got them the idea of writing a song called—”
And then, hilariously, Curly is distracted by his band, who’ve been whispering to each other the entire time and grinning, and calls out, “What am I hearing?” I’d like to imagine they were talking about the real meaning and Curly picked up the chatter’s more scandalous side.
After all, Zeke and Wiley Morris did not write Salty Dog Blues, and their story seems to be a coverup to defend their writer’s credit (which for the record is legitimate... a novel arrangement was given writer’s credit frequently in these times) and a polite way to get around the meaning of what a “salty dog” was. An article written by Wayne Erbsen shows that the brothers themselves gave varying definitions of the term:
Wiley explained that “I have a different definition of a salty dog than Zeke has. Back when we were kids down in Old Fort we would see a girl we liked and say “I’d like to be her salty dog.” There also used to be a drink you could get up in Michigan. All you had to do was say “Let me have a Salty Dog,” and they’d pour you one.” Zeke remembers that “I got the idea when we went to a little old honky tonk just outside of Canton which is in North Carolina. We went to play at a school out beyond Waynesville somewhere and we stopped at this place. They sold beer and had slot machines. At that time they were legal in North Carolina. We got in there after the show and got to drinking that beer and playing the slot machines with nickels, dimes and quarters. I think we hit three or four jackpots. Boy, here it would come! You know you had a pile of money when you had two handfuls of change. The name of that place was the “Salty Dog,” and that’s where I got the idea for the song. There’s actually more verses to it than me and Wiley sing, a lot more verses.”
As I and others who’ve read the article noticed, the fact that the Morris Brothers admitted there were many more verses... is indirect admittance of folk origin. The Morris Brothers were professional musicians in the 1930s, their recording of Salty Dog Blues was recorded September 29, 1938... and our earliest audio versions of the song come from the 1920s. There are many recordings of this song that predate the Morris Brothers. Still, even in a documentary from the 1970s, they maintained their story they wrote it.
But the song’s true origin outside the Morris Brothers allowed me to expand the scope of my investigation. It was time to peep into the alternate lyrics from earlier versions, and hope that those gave me a better understanding of the song and what a salty dog in this context meant.
The Lyrics of Salty Dog Blues
What the Morris Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs sang were fairly tame. However, the lyrics still involved a gun being shot and a person singing the following lines:
Looky here Sal, I know you
Run down stocking and a worn out shoe
Honey, let me be your Salty Dog
Let me be your Salty Dog
Or I won't be your man at all
Honey, let me be your Salty Dog
“I won’t be your man at all” in the chorus is a good hint of what a salty dog is supposed to be. It wouldn’t make sense to replace the term “salty dog” with mariner. I suspected from the start this song’s meaning veered toward the concept of a lover, and alternate versions of the lyrics prove that the case, oftentimes in wonderfully blunt or creative verses.
As I was investigating these recordings and their artists, I ran into information discussing the early years recording Salty Dog Blues, including times from before it was recorded. Jazz musician Bill Johnson (1872-1972) had his band playing this song circa or prior to the 1910s, and in an excerpt from the book Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar, I read:
Papa Charlie’s follow-up release, the ragtimey, eight-bar “Salty Dog Blues,” made him a recording star. . . . Old-time New Orleans musicians from Buddy Bolden’s era recalled hearing far filthier versions of “Salty Dog Blues” long before Papa Charlie’s recording.
Papa Charlie Jackson recorded his version of Salty Dog Blues in 1924 and Buddy Bolden (1877-1931) was popular with his band in New Orleans from 1900-1907. So... what were these filthier lyrics from the early twentieth century?
I want to go back to the lyrics I quoted at the beginning of this post... “Two old maids laying in the grass / One had her finger up the other one's ass. Honey, let me be your salty dog!” The individual who shared these lyrics on a forum said they heard Sam Bush sing that at Rockygrass in 2002. Maybe that was a recent permutation. However, I found variations on this lyric submitted independently by others, indicating this wouldn’t have been Sam creating lyrics out of nothing. Some posts, I don’t know if they were serious or not... “Two necrophiliacs lying in a bed / Each one a-wishin' that the other was dead,” but there’s too many similarities across what I’m seeing. Other individuals said they sang lyrics like these in college parties: “Two old maids, laying in bed / One rolled over to the other and said / Honey, let me be your salty dog.” And the Kingston Trio, whose music was folk-oriented and part of the Folk Revival movement, in 1964 sang in their version of Salty Dog Blues, “There were two old ladies sitting in the sand / Each one wishing the other was a man.”
Digging deeper, I found other folk songs contained variations on the “Two old maids laying in a bed / sand” concept. This discovery is in line with authentic folk lyrics. Remember that folk music is a game of telephone, and sometimes the same verses are found in two or more songs. I found several variations of Brown’s Ferry Blues with this couplet, some of them coming from Folk Revival musicians.
These lyrics give a starting point both to how Salty Dog Blues can contain bawdier concepts, and what a salty dog is.
But lyrics from Salty Dog Blues recordings in the 1920s and 1930s give even more reliable indication. Clara Smith’s 1926 version includes:
Oh, won't you let me be your salty dog?
I don't want to be your gal at all.
You salty dog, you salty dog.
Oh honey babe, let me be your salty dog,
Salty dog, oh, you salty dog.
It's just like looking for a needle there in the sand
Trying to find a woman that hasn't got a man.
Salty Dog oh you salty dog.
Her lyrics also include a couplet I found in many of the early versions:
God made a woman, he made her kinda funny
Lips around her mouth sweet as any honey,
Oh, you salty dog, oh, you salty dog.
It says a lot: a verse about romantic love was one of the most oft repeated couplets across Salty Dog Blues variations. Papa Charlie Jackson included that verse, as well as these others:
Lord, it ain't but the one thing grieve my mind,
All these women and none is mine.
Now, scaredest I ever been in my life,
Uncle Bud like to caught me kissing his wife.
And for those of you who aren’t familiar with the sentential construction, “liked to” means “almost.” Uncle Bud almost caught me kissing his wife. This is a song about a lover, and in one of these verses, the lover’s doing something taboo.
Some forum dudes claimed Mississippi John Hurt and his friends sang a line like this one below, even though they also said it didn’t make any recordings:
Well, your salty dog, he comes around
When your sugar daddy's outta town
Baby, let me be your salty dog
And there’s yet more elaboration about what a salty dog is in verses in Afro-Creole singer Lizzie Miles’s 1952 recording, which we do have:
Mardi Gras is a dream
You can meet all those Creole queens
They’re salty dogs, yes, salty dogs
If you want to blow your cares away
Just walk on in the Vieux Carré
You’ll find salty dogs, yes, salty dogs
Never had no name, never went to school
But when it comes to loving, I ain’t no fool
I’m a salty dog, yes, a salty dog
I’ve got sixteen men in love with me
But the man I love ain’t legally free
He’s a salty dog, yes, he’s a salty dog
Granted, I *am* sifting through a huge storm of verses and intentionally picking ones that match this narrative. But these are all lyrics that show a wonderfully off-color, sexual side to Salty Dog Blues. This song sure as hell ain’t singing about soda pop or sailing.
The Earliest Recordings of Salty Dog Blues
Click the gif to hear an mp3 compilation of Salty Dog Blues from recordings between 1924 and 1950 (ending with the Flatt & Scruggs version). Below the cut I will provide more details of each selection you hear. This is not a comprehensive compilation; for instance, I don’t have Lead Belly’s 1948 audio here. However, what’s incredibly fun about this recording is how DIVERSE the music is. And how incredibly NOT bluegrass it is.
Between the 1920s and 1940s, “race records” were records from African-American musicians. The term would be used to describe the blues, gospel, etc. that these musicians performed. OKeh Records was the first company to use that term in 1922. Also during the 1920s, another line of records, “hillbilly” records, began; this was used to describe what was perceived as rural white musician fiddle and string band music.
These record companies, however, were separating music by race somewhat artificially. It's not that different demographics didn't bring up different musical ideas and styles. But there were plenty of Black musicians playing string band music, for instance, during these times. The early history of American country music involves an amalgamation of musical ideas from many demographics sharing and adopting ideas from one to another and back again. When you listen to the compilation I made of early versions of Salty Dog Blues, you may hear a difference between the white and Black musicians, partially amplified by that artificial distinction I mentioned.
Still, there’s a fascinating amount of overlap. I think it’s particularly interesting to pay attention to how the melodic material varies; it’s the same core melody, but there’s certainly differences. Listening to the variations can get you a sense of how folk music is a wild world of branching versions. There’s different strains, with both the melody morphing as it gets passed person to person, and the lyrics morphing as it gets passed person to person.
Specifically, I took my samples from the following recordings:
1. Charlie Jackson - Released 29 Nov 1924. Papa Charlie Jackson was the first commercially successful male blues artist who played both fingerstyle and with a flatpick on his guitjo. He was born in 1887 in New Orleans. Even when he was producing his records in the early twentieth century, his music would have been old-fashioned to listeners and given people an ear to what African American music sounded like before the turn of the century. He’s similar to Lead Belly in this regard, whose 1948 recording of Salty Dog Blues I did not include in the audio compilation. Jackson’s music was also in that vague area that leaned toward hillbilly in the early days before the race records / hillbilly records division became distinct.
2. Lem Fowler’s Washboard Wonders - Released 30 Dec 1925. Between 1922 and 1932 this jazz musician recorded 57 songs and 23 player piano rolls in New York and Chicago. A composer, most of his recordings feature his own work; Salty Dog Blues is one of three pieces recorded with his band that is not his own. I love this recording.
3. Clara Smith - Dated 26 May 1926. The first commercially successful blues singers were women. Clara Blues was an early classic female blues singer, a genre sometimes also referred to as vaudeville blues that combined traditional folk blues and urban theater music. This native of South Carolina excelled at emotional slow drag blues.
4. Freddie Keppard and His Jazz Cardinals - recorded July 1926. Freddie Keppard was a New Orleans musician. Interestingly enough, Papa Charlie Jackson is in this version as well, this time played with a full band, and you can hear someone declare “Papa Charlie done sung that song!” at the end.
5. Allen Brothers - Recorded 7 April 1927. I think this is the first recording of Salty Dog Blues by white musicians we have. Born and raised in Tennessee, Austin and Lee Allen were an early hillbilly duo popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Austin played banjo; Lee played guitar and kazoo. They were influenced by local jazz and blues artists as they were growing up. It’s interesting to note that Salty Dog Blues came out of their first recording session and became a hit, selling over 18,000 copies. And this band, the first white hokum blues musicians (so I’ve seen claimed), were issued first as a race record by mistake.
6. McGee Brothers - Recorded 11 May 1927; released Jul 1927. Sam and Kirk McGee were white old-time / hillbilly musicians from Tennessee who performed on the Grand Ole Opry starting in 1926. Sam learned blues techniques from Black railroad workers and street musicians, and the duo would adapt blues and ragtime pieces into string band music. I LOVE this version of Salty Dog Blues; while it squarely hits the “hillbilly” genre, some of the minor melodic fragments mirror what Black blues musician Kokomo Arnold sang.
7. Stripling Brothers - Recorded 10 Sep 1934. Fiddler Charlie Stripling and guitarist Ira Stripling were born in the 1890s in Alabama. They’re an old-time hillbilly music duo and Charlie Stripling is considered an important old-time fiddler. Their earliest recordings reflect what they learned at home; later recordings contained increasing pop influences. Salty Dog Blues is one of their later recordings; their last release was from 1936. I would love to know more about where they got this version of the song, as I feel its melody is diverges more than the others recordings in this time period.
8. Kokomo Arnold - 1937. Mentioned above. Kokomo Arnold was a left-handed slide blues guitarist from Georgia.
9. Morris Brothers - First recorded 29 Sep 1938; released 21 Dec 1938. Second version recorded 1945. I’ve already mentioned the Morris Brothers, but there’s more information you need to know. Zeke, Wiley, and George Morris were hillbilly musicians from North Carolina popular in the 1930s. The Morris Brothers was also the band in which now-famed banjo picker Earl Scruggs had his first professional job. Scruggs played with them about eight months in the late 1930s or early 1940s. If you listen to the full Morris Brothers 1945 version, you hear close parallels to the Flatt & Scruggs version, down to lyrics, harmony choices, and instrumental break points. But the Morris Brothers’s version of the song is original compared to everything else in this compilation, which may be why they managed a writer’s credit for it.
10. Flatt & Scruggs - Recorded 20 Oct 1950; released 1 May 1952. Earl Scruggs would have brought Salty Dog Blues to the band he was now heading, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. This song was often sung as a trio in concerts when their usual lead vocalist, Lester Flatt, was taking a break. Their band rotated singers, performers, and other forms of variety in their radio, television, and stage shows, but such repertoire never made it onto official Flatt & Scruggs records. This record is, as far as I remember, the only instance in which another musician besides Lester Flatt sings both the verses and lead. That singer is their fiddler, Benny Sims. In later performances and recordings of Salty Dog Blues by Flatt & Scruggs, Lester Flatt took his usual role singing.
I find it interesting to also note the early musicians’ origins. Everyone came from the South. New Orleans especially appeared to have old widespread use of the song. I haven’t had time to listen to see if the musicians’ home location correlates to similarity in lyrics and melodic structure, but that would be hella fun to do sometime, too.
But! I have already fished through the song enough and given you a giant essay. Maybe at a later point I’ll have to entertain myself more and keep digging into Salty Dog Blues.
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