Maybelle Rag

I found this nice little background story for this piece on TuneArch, quoting from The Devil’s Box:

"The song comes from the 1912-1914 era, when Jess Young's {1925 S.E. Tenn. fiddling champ} band played on a showboat on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga; Jess often jammed with a Black guitar player named Howard Barnes. One night Barnes introduced Jess to another guitar player, May Lee Bell, who played a raggy guitar solo that Jess liked. He took it up on the fiddle, and called it, in honor of Bell, "Maybelle Rag." (Charles Wolfe, The Devil's Box, Dec. 1981, vol. 15, #4)

Now I have a great image for this tune. Late in the evening on a summer night, down by the river, two jamming buddies meeting a new one, and out of an inspired bit of riffing a tune is born.

Here is the Bruce Molsky recording from which I transcribed.