Song of the Day 5/3: David Bromberg, “Dehlia”

David Bromberg, who’s called Wilmington home for the past 22 years, announced that he’s moving to New York City – for a quieter life.

Bromberg relocated from Chicago to Wilmington in 2002, during a long hiatus in his recording career. He only learned about the city because his manager took a job running the Grand Opera House. He leaves downtown a much more vibrant place than he found it. His wife, artist Nancy Jacobsen, told the News Journal’s Ryan Cormier they’re ditching the bustling Wilmington scene – “we’ve aged out of it” – for a New York apartment they bought. “It sounds ridiculous,” she said, “but it’s so much quieter in our apartment than it is here.”

Bromberg made his name in Greenwich Village folk circles in the ’60s. When that scene began to dry up, his proficiency on guitar, fiddle and dobro got him plenty of work as a sideman for heavy hitters like Jerry Jeff Walker and Bob Dylan. He didn’t release an album of his own until 1972. This song closed side 1 of the eponymous LP, and it demonstrates a quality Bromberg doesn’t get enough credit for.

Though the song, usually spelled “Delia,” takes the form of a conventional murder ballad and is considered traditional, it’s not all that old. A musicologist in the late ’20s sorted through many variants of the tune, some from the Bahamas, to trace the tale to its origins: a turn of the century murder in Savannah, Ga., springing from a lovers’ quarrel that made the papers mainly because both the killer and his victim were just 14 years old.

There were two main versions of “Delia,” and both were frequently played during the mid-century folk revival. One, known as “Delia’s Gone,” is so upbeat it’s almost a drinking song. The variant Bromberg plays is more somber, but Bromberg’s is the only version I’ve ever heard that treats it like the tragedy is surely was.