Four chords, three verses, and a chorus that sat unfinished for twenty years. That is the whole song. Two writers built it more than two decades apart, and neither one planned for it to become the song every open mic in America hears twice a night. It is one of a small group of country singles certified Diamond by the RIAA. It is also the song some venues post signs against.
Where it came from
Bob Dylan cut a rough sketch in 1973 during the sessions for the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack. Roger McGuinn, Jim Keltner, and Terry Paul played on the take. Dylan left it off the record. He later called it a sketch rather than a song, with a stomping boot, a clear chorus, and a mumbled verse. Collectors named the track Rock Me Mama after the one line they could make out. It spread through bootleg collections of the Pat Garrett outtakes.
Chris Fuqua carried a copy of that bootleg home from a family trip to London. He passed it to his friend Ketch Secor. Secor was 17 and away at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, homesick for the South. He kept Dylan’s chorus and wrote three new verses around it. The verses trace a hitchhike out of New England and down to Raleigh, North Carolina.
Old Crow Medicine Show played the song on the street and on stage for years before anyone tried to publish it. Secor went after the copyright in 2003 so the band could put it on a record. Dylan’s camp answered, and Dylan pointed out that the “rock me mama” line was not his either. He traced it back to Arthur Crudup. The two men signed a 50-50 co-writing agreement. The credit reads Dylan and Secor, and it has read that way since.
The song landed on O.C.M.S., the band’s major label debut, released in 2004 on Nettwerk America. David Rawlings produced it in Nashville. The album reached number 1 on the Billboard Top Bluegrass Albums chart and number 68 on Top Country Albums. The band got there by a lucky break. Doc Watson heard them busking outside a pharmacy in Boone, North Carolina, and invited them to MerleFest.
How it works
The record sits in A major. The main pattern runs A, E, F#m, D, which is 1, 5, 6 minor, 4 in Nashville numbers. The second half of each phrase drops the six minor and runs 1, 5, 4. Four chords cover the entire song. Nothing else appears.
Most pickers meet it in G. A capo on the second fret puts the guitar shapes at G, D, Em, C while the band stays in A. That is why the song shows up under both keys. Jam circles that skip the capo play it in G outright.
The feel is a swung two, close to 150 beats per minute in cut time. Old Crow is a string band, so the fiddle and banjo trade the lead figures between vocal sections. The form alternates verse and chorus across three verses. There is no bridge and no key change.
That simple shape explains both the love and the fatigue. A new picker can hold down all four chords inside a week, which makes it a common first song at a jam, the way Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms has served for generations. The same shape means a room can hear it four times in one night. Venues pushed back. Some post signs reading “Absolutely No Wagon Wheel.” The New England Americana Festival sold merchandise marking a no-Wagon-Wheel zone. Bluegrass Today ran a humor column proposing a rule that no band play it without a twenty dollar tip. Saving Country Music argues the backlash says more about the size of the hit than the quality of the song.
One note on rights. Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor share this copyright, and both writers are living. This page gives history, form, and chord numbers. It prints no lyrics, notation, or tab. For tunes with no such limit, see the songbook.
Recordings worth hearing
Start with the Old Crow Medicine Show track from O.C.M.S. in 2004. It is the version that set the template, with fiddle up front and a shouted group chorus. The RIAA certified that single 3x Platinum on November 7, 2023.
Darius Rucker released his cover as a single on January 7, 2013, ahead of the album True Believers, which arrived May 21, 2013 on Capitol Records Nashville. The three members of Lady Antebellum sang backing vocals. Rucker has said he first heard the song at his daughter’s high school talent show, played by faculty members. His version hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart dated April 13, 2013, and peaked at number 15 on the Hot 100. It won the Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance in 2014. The RIAA certified it 11x Platinum on October 27, 2022, which put it past the Diamond mark.
The song traveled further than country radio. Nathan Carter’s 2012 recording had a long run on the Irish Singles Chart. Old Crow played it for NPR’s Tiny Desk in 2024, twenty years after the album. Few modern songs have crossed from string band to country number 1 the way this one did, and the closest comparison in this songbook is Man of Constant Sorrow.
Sources
Facts on this page come from the Wikipedia entry for the song, the Wikipedia entry for the album O.C.M.S., the Discogs listing for O.C.M.S., the RIAA Gold and Platinum database, Rolling Stone on the Dylan outtake, and American Songwriter on the song’s lineage.
Chart details come from Billboard’s chart rewind on the Rucker single, the Wikipedia entry for True Believers, and the Diamond certification announcement on Darius Rucker’s official site. Background on the band comes from the official Old Crow Medicine Show bio, the Songfacts page for the song, and Saving Country Music on the backlash.