Mandolin Song Breakdown: Panhandle Rag

In this weeks Mandolin Song Breakdown, I’m tackling Panhandle Rag – a great tune by Leon McAuliff who was in Bob Wills’ Country Playboys for a while. In my experience, this tune is rarely called at jams and therefore has been in the “why haven’t I learned this yet?” camp. It’s time to change that.

Panhandle Rag is the instrumental original that apparently derives its name from the Oklahoma & Texas panhandles. New Panhandle Rag is a later version by Webb Prince that has lyrics to it. Panhandle Country is the Bill Monroe tune that may or may not be heavily influenced by Panhandle Rag.

Note: there’s no harmony ideas on this breakdown. If you’re interested, let me know in the comments.

Charts

Below are the charts for this breakdown. I’m going to focus on playing this song in the key of D, but since the original is in E, I’ve provided a chart in E as well. Note that there are a few different voicings for the chord progression. Some recordings will use slightly different changes which I’ll discuss more below. These charts are based off the original Leon McAuliff recording.

• Melody in D
• Melody in E

Listen

The first step of learning is always listening. With that in mind, here’s a few options:

• Leon McAuliff (in E)
• Bob Wills’
• Chris Thile (in D)
• Vasser Clements

What’s a rag anyway?

Good question. A Rag is essentially short for Ragtime music which is syncopated, often has a piano as the main instrument, and are generally dance tunes. In the bluegrass world, there are a few common rags with Beaumont Rag perhaps being one of the more popular ones. In the bluegrass context, a rag simply is borrowing some of the ideas of Ragtime music but adopting them for string bands rather than piano & horns etc. In this context, rags are just syncopated tunes that often have a swing feeling to them. This style got more popular in the 1890 – 1920s or so.

Form

Panhandle Rag is a straight forward AABA song. The first and second A parts are slightly different so treating it as A1 A2 B A2 may be more appropriate. This is pretty common for jazzy / swing tunes like Panhandle Rag.

Chords

Generally speaking, the song follows a very similar pattern to songs like Lady Be Good and other swing jazz style tunes

• A Part – 1 4 1 1 progression for the first phrase followed by 5 1 for the second phrase.
• B Part – 4 4 1 1 progression for the first phrase followed by 4 4 5 5 for the second phrase.

As mentioned above, some recordings have some slight variations in the chord progression. This is not uncommon for jazz and western swing style songs. A common substitution is play the major 4 to the minor 4 in the B part – which would be playing G to G minor in measures 18 and 19.

You can incorporate those chord changes over the same basic melody I’ve provided.

Melody

I’ve included two variations on the basic melody model after the original recording from Leon McAuliff. Since this tune is pretty commonly played in D, I’m using that as the base for the below. That said, playing it in E is really fun, so definitely check out that chart too!

These are basic and fairly unembellished melodies so you can get the idea down. The idea here is you’ll add a lot more too it with some embellishments. For example, I commonly add a few triplets in at measure 6 to walk down to my target note in measure 8.

Often the last D chord in the A1 phrase as well as the last A on the B1 phrase are dropped when playing the melody the first time through (and sometimes the last time). By not playing those chords, you give a bit of a push to the next part (A2). After the first time through usually you’d play all the chords.

Voicing 1 – Open

For the slide in on the pickup for each phrase, you can start the slide either on the 3rd fret as notated or on the 4th fret. It’s not super important which fret really – just that you slide in.

In the 14th measure (A2), instead of playing the open D, you could just play the D at the 7th fret on the G string.

The pedaling on the first two measures you can either play the F natural as written or the F# on the 4th fret of the D string. Either work, though I like the sound of the F there personally.

Voicing 2 – Closed

I often prefer playing in this position for solo breaks.

Wrap up

Panhandle Rag isn’t a super common bluegrass jam tune (at least in Seattle) but it’s a ton of fun to play and fairly easy to learn. I hope you bring this tune to your jam soon! If you do, please LMK in the comments below. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know in the comments too – I’m always happy to connect.

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