Going Down the Road Feeling Bad
traditional American folk song
"Going Down The Road Feeling Bad" (also known as the "Lonesome Road Blues") is a traditional American folk song, "a white blues of universal appeal and uncertain origin". The song is catalogued in the Roud Folk Song Index as No.4958.
Recording history
The song was recorded by many artists through the years. The first known recording is from 1923 by Henry Whitter, an Appalachian singer, as "Lonesome Road Blues". The earliest versions of the lyrics are from the perspective of an inmate in prison with the refrain, "I'm down in that jail on my knees" and a reference to eating "corn bread and beans." The song has been recorded by many artists such as Woody Guthrie, Doc Watson, Bob Dylan, Skeeter Davis, Elizabeth Cotten, and the Grateful Dead, with Grateful Dead performing it 294 times live in concert. The song is featured in To Bonnie from Delaney, "Mountain Jam", Born and Raised World Tour, The Grapes of Wrath, and Lucky Stars.
Others who recorded it include Cliff Carlisle (also as "Down in the Jail on My Knees"), Woody Guthrie (also as "Blowin' Down This Road" or "I Ain't Gonna Be Treated This Way"), Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Roy Hall, Elizabeth Cotten and the Grateful Dead, Delaney and Bonnie, Canned Heat and Dillard Chandler.
Lyrics and chords
Lyrics
There are many versions of the song's words. The following are the lyrics sung by Bill Monroe. They are nearly the same as in the 1933's version of Cliff Carlisle with string bass and harmonica.
The public source identifies “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” as traditional American folk song. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Going, Down and Road.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q96379655. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1923 and 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.