Orange Blossom Special (song) - Authorship

Authorship

Other musicians, including Robert Russell "Chubby" Wise, have claimed authorship of the song. As Chubby tells the story, he and fellow musician Ervin decided to visit the Jacksonville Terminal in Florida to tour the Orange Blossom Special train.

. . even though it was about three in the morning we went right into the Terminal and got on board and toured that train, and it was just about the most luxurious thing I had ever seen. Ervin was impressed, too. And when we got done lookin' er over he said, 'Let's write a song about it.' So we went over to my place . . and that night she was born. Sitting on the side of my bed. We wrote the melody in less than an hour, and called it Orange Blossom Special. Later Ervin and his brother put some words to it.

Rouse copyrighted the song in 1938 and recorded it in 1939. Bill Monroe, regarded by many as "the father of bluegrass music," recorded the song (with Art Wooten on fiddle) and made it a hit. Since then countless versions have been recorded, among them Chubby's own, as an instrumental in a 1969 album, Chubby Wise and His Fiddle. And that version, said Chubby, "is the way it was written and the way it's supposed to be played."