“The Old Gray Mare” is an American folk song, more recently regarded as a children’s song. Some authors have said that the song originated from the performance of the horse Lady Suffolk, the first horse recorded as trotting a mile in less than two and a half minutes. It occurred on 4 July 1843 at the Beacon Course racetrack in Hoboken, New Jersey, when she was more than ten years old. One author attributed the song to Stephen Foster, although the composer is usually listed as unknown. The archival evidence, however, is that the song originated a few decades later in the nineteenth century as a campaign ditty, composed as an epithet of seven-term Baltimore mayor Ferdinand Latrobe by Democratic political operative and appointee Thomas Francis McNulty. Popular early recordings were by Prince’s Orchestra (1917) and by Arthur Collins and Byron Harlan (1918).[6] Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album On the Sentimental Side (1962).
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
