Entertaining History-title and subtitleby Chris Mackowski

For my Entertaining History piece on the song “The Kennesaw Line,” I had the pleasure to interview musician Bobby Horton. I’ve interviewed Bobby before, and he’s always a lot of fun to talk with because it’s obvious he’s having so much fun doing what he’s doing. While I excerpted from that interview for my feature, you can listen to the entire interview on the ECW YouTube page.

If you’ve not heard Bobby play “The Kennesaw Line,” you can listen to it on YouTube.

And while you’re at it, if you’d like, here’s more of Bobby’s great music on a Bobby Horton YouTube playlist.

In the interview, he mentions a performance he did of “Dixie” at the Lincoln Memorial during the Civil War Sesquicentennial. You can watch that performance on C-SPAN’s website.

Here’s a live version of “The Kennesaw Line” by the Claire Lynch Band.

“The Kennesaw Line” is based on the memoir Co. Aytch by Sam Watkins. Several excellent print editions exist, but it’s also available for free online at Archive.org.

If you’d like to read more about the 1864 battle of Kennesaw Mountain, from which the “Kennesaw Line” gets its name, check out these Emerging Civil War blog posts: