Orange Blossom Special ~ ~ ~ Gene Gamble Jr

Orange Blossom Special ~ ~ ~ Gene Gamble Jr
Cover as recorded version by: Johnny Cash
Songwriter: Ervin T. Rouse
Cover by Gene Gamble Jr ~ Singer/Songwriter 1976-2024
Recorded in 2011 on SingSnap Gold Membership Studio Format
Audio & video produced by McCarty Ln Studio 2011/3-20-2024
in Rochester, IN.

Shure Beta 58 Microphone
Fostex Multi-Tracker Recorder (4)
Pioneer CT-W504R Stereo Cassette Player/Recorder
Windows Media Digital Conversion
Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 16 (Editing & Mixing)
YouTube Movie Maker 13

"Orange Blossom Special" is a fiddle tune about the luxury passenger train of the same name. The song was written by Ervin T. Rouse (1917–1981) in 1938 and was first recorded by Rouse and his brother Gordon in 1939. Often called simply "The Special" or "OBS", the song is commonly referred to as "the fiddle player's national anthem".

Johnny Cash named his 1965 Orange Blossom Special album after the song. While bluegrass performers tend to play it as strictly an instrumental, Cash sang the lyrics, and replaced the fiddle parts with two harmonicas and a saxophone. Cash would play both harmonicas himself, as heard on At Folsom Prison and seen on The Johnny Cash Show. In live performance, prior to the "do-die-do-die-do" transition, Cash tended to insert some spoken-word jokes that changed in later performances of the song (in his Tennessee State Prison and Prague performances, he incorporated dialogue from his 1972 song "City Jail").