Smith was born and raised on a farm near Bold Springs, Tennessee. He learned to play the fiddle at an early age, his first influence being the fiddlers Grady Stringer and Walter Warden. He married in 1914 at the age of sixteen. Initially he began performing at local dances and fiddlers' conventions. He teamed up with his wife Nettie, his cousin Homer Smith and fiddler Floyd Ethredge. In 1921, Smith began working as a logger and a linesman for a railroad company in Dickson, Tennessee. In his work he had to make extensive travels and that enabled him to meet other musicians along the way. He attended several fiddle contests across Tennessee winning the bulk of them.

Smith made his solo debut as a fiddler on the Grand Ole Opry on December 23, 1927. Within weeks he was accompanied by his cousin Homer Smith. In the meantime, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith continued to work on the railroad. In the 1930s, Smith formed "The Dixieliners" together with the McGee Brothers and his daughter Lavonne who played the piano. They became a regular act on the Opry in May 1932 performing popular songs such as Walking In My Sleep, Pig In the Pen and Blackberry Blossom. The Dixieliners toured the countryside featuring Uncle Dave Macon and the Delmore Brothers on some of these tours. In January 1935, Smith made his first recordings with the Delmore Brothers on the Bluebird label.[1] In 1936, Smith began to sing on his recordings on songs such as, Chittlin' Cookin' Time in Cheatham County, There's More Pretty Girls Than One and his signature song Beautiful Brown Eyes. That particular song, recorded in August 1937, led Smith to take action in court against some cover artists who had recorded the song as if it was in the public domain. He ended up winning the suit.

Because of the hard work it took to maintain two full time jobs, on the railroad and as a professional musician, Smith fell into hard drinking. In February 1938, it led to a temporary three-month suspension from the Opry. With assistance from Roy Acuff, Smith returned to the music circuit.

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The Wabash Cannonball" is an American folk song about a fictional train, thought to have originated sometime in the late nineteenth century. Its first documented appearance was on sheet music published in 1882, titled "The Great Rock Island Route" and credited to J. A. Roff. All subsequent versions contain a variation of the chorus:

Now listen to the jingle, and the rumble, and the roar,
As she dashes thro' the woodland, and speeds along the shore,
See the mighty rushing engine, hear her merry bell ring out,
As they speed along in safety, on the "Great Rock-Island Route."

A rewritten version by William Kindt appeared in 1904 under the title "Wabash Cannon Ball".[1]

The Carter Family made one of the first recordings of the song in 1929, though it was not released until 1932. Another popular version was recorded by Roy Acuff in 1936.[1]

It is a signature song of the Kansas State University Marching Band, the University of Texas Longhorn Band, and of the Indiana State University Marching Sycamores, as ISU is close to the Wabash River. It was also used as the theme song by the USS Wabash (AOR5).

City of New Orleans is a folk song written by Steve Goodman, describing a train ride from Chicago to New Orleans in bittersweet and nostalgic terms. Goodman got the idea while traveling on the train of that name for a visit to his wife's family. He performed the song for Arlo Guthrie in the Quiet Knight, a bar in Chicago, and Guthrie agreed to add it to his repertoire. The song proved a hit for Guthrie in 1972 on his album Hobo's Lullaby, and is now more closely associated with him, although Goodman continued to perform it until his death in 1984. The song has also been covered by Willie Nelson, John Denver, Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, Jerry Reed, and others.

The trees are bending over The cows are lying down The atumn's taking over You can hear the buckshot hounds The watchman said to Reba the loon Was it pale at Manzanita Or Blind Bob the raccoon? Pin it on a drifter They sleep beneath the bridge One plays the violin And sleeps inside a fridge There was a murder in the red barn A murder in the red barn Someone's crying in the woods Someone's burying all his clothes Now Slam the Crank from Wheezer Slept outside last night and froze Road kill has its seasons Just like anything It's possums in the autumn And it's farm cats in the spring There was a murder in the red barn A murder in the red barn Now thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house Or covet thy neighbor's wife But for some Murder is the only door through which they enter life Now they surrounded the house They smoke him out They took him off in chains The sky turned black and bruised And we had months of heavy rains Now the raven's nest in the rotted roof Of Chenoweth's old place And no one's asking Cal About that scar upon his face 'Cause there's nothin' strange About an axe with bloodstains in the barn There's always some killin' You got to do around the farm A murder in the red barn Murder in the red barn Now the woods will never tell What sleeps beneath the trees Or what's buried 'neath a rock Or hiding in the leaves 'Cause road kill has it's seasons Just like anything It's possums in the atumn And it's farm cats in the spring A murder in the red barn A murder in the red barn Now a lady can't do ntohin' Without folks' tongues waggin' Is this blood on the tree Or is it autumn's red blaze When the ground's soft for diggin' ANd the rain will bring all this gloom There's nothing wrong with a lady Drinking alone in her room But there was a murder in the red barn A murder in the red barn

Welch was born in Manhattan and was adopted when she was three days old. She moved to Los Angeles at the age of four. On her eighth birthday she wished for and got a guitar and lessons, and learned soon to play the guitar. Studying at the University of California, Santa Cruz,[3] Welch discovered bluegrass music through the "mountain soul" stylings of The Stanley Brothers.[4] After a short stint playing bass in a local camp band called Söfa, Welch moved to Boston and studied at the Berklee College of Music.

In Boston, Welch met and began dating David Rawlings, who would become her long-time musical partner. In 1992, they moved to Nashville and began building a career. In Nashville, she met T-Bone Burnett,[5] producer to such artists as Los Lobos, Sam Phillips, Bodeans, Counting Crows, and Elvis Costello. In 1996, Welch released her first album, Revival, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1997.[2] Since then, she has recorded other albums and collaborated on the songs "Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby" and "I'll Fly Away" on the Grammy-winning soundtrack of the Coen Brothers hit film O Brother, Where Art Thou?.[6] Welch also had a cameo in the film, as a woman in a record store trying to obtain a copy of the Soggy Bottom Boys' recording of "Man of Constant Sorrow".

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