Did You Know “Wagon Wheel” Was Originally An Unfinished Bob Dylan Song From The 1970s?

So we have Bob Dylan to blame.

There’s no denying that “Wagon Wheel” is one of the biggest country songs of all time. It’s one of only 13 country songs to be certified Diamond by the RIAA, after Darius Rucker’s version surpassed 10 million units back in 2022.  And the original version by Old Crow Medicine Show, which was released back in 2004, has since become the band’s signature song.

It also happens to be the bane of my existence. Not because I hate it (or at least didn’t at first) but because living in Nashville I’ve heard it so much that it’s pretty much impossible to escape. The first article that I ever wrote for Whiskey Riff way back in 2018 was one hoping that 2019 would finally be the end of “Wagon Wheel,” and here we are nearly 7 years later with no end in sight.

The song is so frequently requested in bars and music venues across the country that many places have actually banned it from being played. Here in Nashville, especially downtown on Broadway, many bands charge $100 to play “Wagon Wheel” because if they didn’t, they would never be able to play anything else. Drunk bachelorettes LOVE them some “Wagon Wheel.”

But as much as the song haunts me, even I’ve got to admit that it’s got a pretty cool backstory.

If you look at the songwriting credits for “Wagon Wheel” you’ll see two names: Ketch Secor, the lead singer of Old Crow Medicine Show, and the legendary Bob Dylan. But they didn’t exactly sit down and put pen to paper together in an attempt to write the most overplayed song on the planet.

As it turns out, Secor actually got the chorus of “Wagon Wheel” from an unfinished demo of Dylan’s called “Rock Me, Mama” from 1973. The song was made during Dylan’s recordings for his “Billy The Kid Sessions,” and though it was never officially released (or even finished), bootleg versions made their rounds and eventually into the hands of Secor.

During an appearance on Charlie Worsham’s Mississippi On The Map podcast, Secor recalled hearing the demo of Dylan’s song as a teenager:

“About 1994, I’m 17 years old and I hear this Bob Dylan song in which he kinda mumbles out a chorus that’s kind of semi-intelligible. It’s like, oh that sounds like, ‘Rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama like a southbound train,’ that’s beautiful, I want to write the rest of that.”

Well he eventually wrote the rest of the song, and somehow got Dylan to agree to let him release it – with Dylan getting half of the songwriting credit, of course.

But as it turns out, even Dylan’s version wasn’t the original:

“Then an email comes…saying, ‘Now, Bob says he agrees to publish it with you, but he wants you to know, he didn’t write that song. In fact, he learned it from Arthur Crudup.”

Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup was a blues singer from Mississippi, who had several songs that were later recorded and made popular by Elvis Presley. And one of his songs was “Rock Me Mama,” a blues song that gave Dylan the inspiration for his unfinished tune with the same phrase.

But then Secor found out that it actually went back even farther than that: Crudup got the song from Big Bill Broonzy, an African American blues singer who was born in Mississippi but moved with his family to Chicago in the 1920s as part of the Great Migration. Broonzy got his start playing country music to mostly African American audiences, and one of his biggest songs was “Rockin’ Chair Blues,” which would later become “Rock Me Mama” for Big Boy Crudup, which would become “Rock Me, Mama” for Bob Dylan, which would become “Wagon Wheel” for Old Crow Medicine Show nearly 90 years later.

A pretty interesting history, for sure.

If you want to hear the evolution of what would eventually become “Wagon Wheel,” here’s Big Bill Broonzy’s “Rockin’ Chair Blues.”

And here’s Arthur Crudup’s “Rock Me, Mama.”

Then came Dylan’s unfinished “Rock Me, Mama.”

And finally, Ketch Secor put the final touches on what would become “Wagon Wheel” for Old Crow Medicine Show.

The post Did You Know “Wagon Wheel” Was Originally An Unfinished Bob Dylan Song From The 1970s? first appeared on Whiskey Riff.