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Duet argued over who penned lyrics BY BRAD BARNES--Wherever they met, it's not hard to guess out how the two started talking. They shared an interest in music, and both grew up on farms. Their history is well-documented in the liner notes accompanying the complete collection of the duo's recordings. Tom Darby was born in Columbus in 1884. He was a farmhand and picked up other odd jobs as he could, finger-picking music on his guitar more or less as a hobby. Jimmie Tarlton, a drifter and son of South Carolina sharecroppers, was eight years Darby's junior. He'd already seen much of the country, traveling with his guitar and buskin' music on sidewalks when he ended up in Columbus, in 1927. Tarlton had played guitar since he was very young. He was 10 when he got the idea to set the instrument in his lap and use a knife handle to make his guitar melodies warble and weep. More than a decade later, he'd meet a Hawaiian guitarist named Frank Ferera who played similarly, and the two shared their tricks. When a man at that music store suggested Tarlton and Darby team up together, they were 35 and 42, respectively. That same music store fellow took them to Atlanta with other promising Columbus musicians for an audition with Columbia Records. Those audition recordings yielded two songs for Darby and Tarlton's first single on Columbia's country and hillbilly music imprint. One tune was a needling yarn called "Down in Florida on a Hog," backed with a tune called "Birmingham Town." The duo returned to Atlanta in November 1927 for a full-fledged recording session, and Columbia issued "Birmingham Jail" backed with "Columbus Stockade Blues" on a 78, right between releases by the Macon Quartet ("Yodel"/"Uncle Joe") and Chris Bouchillon ("Bullfight in Mexico"/"Chris Visits the Barber Shop"). The label expected "Birmingham Jail" to be the big hit. But both songs became smashes, and "Stockade" is the one that proved to have staying power. Staying power Why did the song strike such a chord with folks? "My gut feeling is, it's a good, sad song," Arlo Guthrie said. "Songs of abandonment -- where you're stuck in a place you don't want to be -- that's as relevant today or more relevant today than it ever was." In the days before bar codes and Soundscan, record sales numbers were estimates, but bluegrass expert Dick Spottswood says the record sold close to 200,000 copies. "It was one of the largest-selling country music records that was ever recorded," said Ricky Whitley, a musician who, as Tom Darby's nephew, got to spend time with the old guitar picker when Whitley was a child. The record's sales were notable considering the day, the price (about 75 cents a copy), and the limited market for country music. "This series overall sold modestly," said Peter Shambarger, executive director of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, a nonprofit organization. Columbia didn't expect much, as the series was aimed at a specific niche: namely whites in the rural South. It's easy to hear the blues influence in some of those early "hillbilly" country records, particularly Darby and Tarlton's, with its prominent slide guitar. bbarnes@ledger-enquirer.com