"Washboard Blues" is a 1926 popular song written by Hoagy Carmichael, Fred B. Callahan and Irving Mills and released by Paul Whiteman's orchestra in 1927, featuring piano and lead vocals by Carmichael.
Paul Whiteman recorded the song on November 18, 1927, in Chicago with Hoagy Carmichael on piano. Two takes were recorded. Paul Whiteman recorded and released a new recording of the song in 1956.
The song is an evocative washerwoman's lament. Though the verse, chorus, and bridge pattern is present, the effect of the song is of one long, cohesive melodic line with a dramatic shifting of tempo. The cohesiveness of the long melody perfectly matches the lyrical description of the crushing fatigue resulting from the repetitious work of washing clothes under primitive conditions.
Alec Wilder first heard the song on a Paul Whiteman twelve-inch record on which Carmichael both played and sang with the large orchestra, Victor 35877-B.
Credits
A copy of the lyrics from the Indiana University archives of the Hoagy Carmichael collection credits F. B. Callahan with the words to "Washboard Blues".