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Drunken Hiccups
Old-Time, Texas Style; Air, Waltz, Jig, and Song Tune (3/4 time). USA; Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Arizona.
ARTIST: From Hobart Smith;
Listen: Hobart Smith
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes; DATE: Early 1900’s;
RECORDING INFO: County 519, Reaves White County Ramblers - "Echoes of the Ozarks, Vol. 2." County 723, Tommy Jarrell - "Down at the Cider Mill" (appears as "Jack of Diamonds"). County 756, Tommy Jarrell (N.C.) - "Sail Away Ladies" (1976). Rounder 0421, Bruce Molsky - "Big Hoedown" (1997. Appears as "Clyde's Hiccups" as version was from Clyde Davenport). Voyager 304, Ora Spiva- "More Fiddle Jam Sessions" (appears as "Rye Whiskey"). County 724, Benny Thomasson (Texas) - "Country Fiddling." Tradition Records TLP1007, Hobart Smith - "Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians" (1956). Recorded for Victor in 1928 by Jilson Setters (as Blind Bill Day) {b. 1860, Rowan County, Ky.} under the title "Way Up on Cinch Mountain." Cahan, Andy. Tribute to Tommy Jarrell, Heritage (Galax) 063, LP (1986), cut# 14; Jarrell, Tommy. Sail Away Ladies, County 756, LP (197?), cut# 1; Jarrell, Tommy. Folk Music in America, Vol.14: Solo & Display Music, Library of Congress LBC-14, LP (1978), cut#B.02; Ledford, Lilly Mae. Banjo Pickin' Girl, Greenhays GR 712, LP (1983), cut# 12 (Hiccup, Oh Lordy); Leftwich, Brad; and Linda Higginbotham. Young Fogies, Heritage (Galax) 056, LP (198?), cut# 21a; Lloyd, A. L.. English Drinking Songs, Riverside RLP-12-618, LP, cut# 10; Molsky, Bruce; and Big Hoedown. Bruce Molsky and Big Hoedown, Rounder 0421, CD (1997), cut#16 (Clyde's Hiccups); Molsky, Bruce. Lost Boy, Rounder 0361, CD (1996), cut#14; New Lost City Ramblers. Moonshine and Prohibition, Folkways FH 5263, LP (1962), cut#A.06; Reaves White County Ramblers. Echoes of the Ozarks, Vol. 2, County 519, LP (1970), cut# 10; Smith, Hobart. Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, Tradition TR 1007, LP (196?), cut# 17; Smith, Hobart. Banjo Songs, Ballads and Reels from the Southern Mountains, Prestige International INT 25004, LP (196?), cut# 8; Smith, Hobart. Southern Journey. Vol. 6: Sheep, Sheep, Don'tcha Know the Road, Rounder 1706, CD (1997), cut# 5; Stepp, W. M.. American Fiddle Tunes, Library of Congress AFS L62, LP (1971), cut# 15; Thomasson, Benny. Country Fiddling from the Big State, County 724, LP (1970), cut# 8;
OTHER NAMES: "Drunkard's Hiccups," "Drunken Hiccoughs," "Rye Whiskey," "Jack of Diamonds," "Way Up on Clinch Mountain," "Clinch Mountain," "The Mocking Bird" (Pa.), "My Name is Dick Kelly" (Ireland), "The Lame Beggar" (Ireland), "The Cuckoo" (Ford).
SOURCES: Benny Thomasson (Texas) [Brody]; 'old man' Houston Galyen (Low Gap, N.C.) via Ben Jarrell via his son Tommy Jarrell (Mt. Airy, N.C.) [Reiner & Anick]; Louise and W.S. Collins (Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma) [Thede]; Kenner C. Kartchner (Arizona) [Shumway]; Emery Martin (Dunbar, Pa., 1946) [Bayard]; John Wolford (elderly fiddler from Fayette County, Pa., 1944) [Bayard]; Mary Ann Rogers (elderly fiddler from Greene County, Pa., 1930's) [Bayard]. Bayard (Dance to the Fiddle), 1981; No. 646, pgs. 566-567. Brody (Fiddler's Fakebook), 1983; pg. 92. Ford (Traditional Music in America), 1940; pg. 126. Reiner & Anick (Old Time Fiddling Across America), 1989; pg. 93. Ruth (Pioneer Western Folk Tunes), 1948; No. 17, pg. 8. Thede (The Fiddle Book), 1967; pg. 54-55. Traditional Music in America, Folklore Associates, Bk (1940/1965), p126; Collins, W. S. and Louise. Fiddle Book, Oak, Bk (1967), p 54; Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc;
NOTES: A Major. AEAC# (Brody, Jarrell, Reiner & Anick, Shumway): AEAE (Ford). AABCC (Brody, Ford, Thede): AA'BB'CC'DD' (Reiner & Anick, Shumway). Paul Clayton identifies the tune as "old and of English origin." Arizona fiddler Kartchner called it a "favorite from the South." The tune was recorded for the Library of Congress from Ozark Mountain fiddlers in the early 1940's by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph. It was listed by the Tuscaloosa News of March 28, 1971, as one of the specialty tunes of Tuscalosa, Alabama, fiddler "Monkey Brown," who frequently competed in fiddlers' contests in the 1920's and 30's (Cauthen, 1990), and it was recorded by Herbert Halpert for the Library of Congress in 1939 on two separate occasions by Mississippi fiddlers Charles Long and W.E. Claunch. Mt. Airy, North Carlolina, fiddler Tommy Jarrell knew the melody as a show piece in a repertoire heavy with dance tunes, having learned it from his father, Ben Jarrell (who recorded it with Frank Jenkins in 1927). Ben Jarrell, according to Tommy, had the tune from "old man" Houston Galyen at Low Gap, North Carolina. (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc).
Bayard (1981) states it was a vocal piece before it was an instrumental one, and identifies the following songs from the British Isles and America as using the tune: "Johnnie Armstrong," "Todlen Hame," "Bacach," "Robi Donadh Gorrach," "The Wagoner's Lad," "Clinch Mountain," "The Cuckoo," "Rye Whiskey," "Jack of Diamonds," "Saints Bound for Heaven," "Separation," "John Adkins' Farewell." Instrumental variations from the British Isles he has identified include "Drunk at Night and Dry in the Morning" (noted variously in 3/4 and 6/8 time) and "Lude's Lament." Two and a half pages of the song can be found in "The Oxford Book of Light Verse." (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc).
“Drunken Hiccups” can be traced back to one of its early sources, “The Cuckoo.” You can find background info for the different versions of “The Cuckoo” in this collection. "The Wagoner's Lad," "Clinch Mountain," "The Cuckoo," "Rye Whiskey," "Jack of Diamonds," are the related melodies and text in the US. Most American versions include a part that is supposed to suggest hiccups. On the fiddle this part is played pizzicato, a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of the fiddle with a finger or fingers.
BIOGRAPHY- Hobart Smith was born on Little Mouton, Saltville, VA on May 10, 1897. Smith was the oldest of four brothers in a family of eight children born to King and Louvenia Smith. Both his parents were banjo pickers; his sister, Texas Gladden, a noted ballad singer.
Hobart began playing the banjo when he was seven, later the guitar and the fiddle. His repertoire of instruments also included piano, organ, harp, mandolin and most any other stringed instrument.
Recording magnate, folk and country music authority Alan Lomas of New York was the first to record Hobart. Lomas called Smith "the best mountain instrumentalist that I've ever found, and the forty-two recordings in the Library of Congress will always stand as proof of that."
Later in his life, Smith performed in two movies to be used in a cultural exchange program with other countries. During his lifetime, Hobart Smith performed at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Constitution Hall, Washington, D. C., Radio City Music Hall and for Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also gave performances and seminars at many colleges in the Eastern part of the United States.
Throughout his life of entertainment, he performed with such well-known people as Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez; Judy Collins; Doc Watson; Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Music critics across the country praised Smith's work as being "the best that they had ever heart" (Chicago Daily News).
"One can learn so much about the Southern Mountain instrumental style by listening to Smith's banjo and fiddle...his singing is in a hard-cider rural voice, alive with feeling" (New York Times).
Hobart once said, "I grew up with music and I'm still trying to play". His last performance was on October 11, 1963 in Chicago, IL for which he received a standing ovation. On January 11, 1965, Hobart Smith went home to rest on Little Mountain. His music lives on!
"I GREW UP INTO IT" as told by Hobart Smith
I started playing the banjo when I was seven years old. When I was three, I commenced playin' on an old fire shovel. I was raised in an old log house that had a fireplace and my mother had a bar that went across the fireplace with hooks that came down to cook her stuff in the pots and then she had a big oven and lid and she'd bake her bread and pull out those coals with that shovel — cover it up with red-hot coals, you know — and bake her bread thataway. We didn't have any cook-stove at that time. They said I was just three years old, I'd get that fire shovel and just pick on it; and they asked me what I was pickin' and I just said "Sour Colics!"
Now, I call my style of banjer pickin' the old-timey rappin' style. I learned it from my daddy. When I was seven years old, I could play a tune on the banjer. So, my daddy, seein' I was interested in it, he ordered me a little, small, short-necked banjer from Sears-Roebuck and I commenced pickin' on the banjer when I was seven years old.
Well, after that, I got onto a gittar — I commenced playin' that. Now, the first guitar I ever owned, I worked in a corn field and bought it. I gave four dollars for it. I was fourteen years old then. So, then I liked the fiddle. I got on the fiddle after that. I got to playin' 'em all and all of 'em sounded pretty good to me.
My father and mother was both banjer pickers. I started the banjer at home. I didn't learn the gittar at home; I learned it from different men. Now, the first of the gittar playin' that I really liked was when a bunch of colored men came in there, oh, way back yonder. I was just about fourteen or fifteen years old. It was along about that time that Blind Lemon Jefferson came through and he stayed around there about a month. He stayed with the other colored fellers and they worked on the railroad there, and he'd just play and sing to entertain the men in that work camp. I think right about there I started on the gittar. I liked his type of playin'. I just watched his fingers and got the music in my head and then I'd thumb around till I found what I was wantin' on the strings.
The way it was with me, I just grew up and it seemed like I had a feelin' in me when I'd hear this old-time music. Well, I didn't hear anything else, you know, for years and years. I didn't know anything about this fingering the banjer (Scruggs-style three-finger picking). That hadn't come out yet. Everybody rapped the banjer. I'd get around old folks that played a banjer and I'd listen to that and was just as full of music as I could be. It'd just register on me up and down like a thermometer. And, you see, I'd get that in my ear and then I'd get ahold of that banjer.
You've first got to get the tune in your mind and then find it with your fingers — keep on till you find what you want on that neck. But keep that tune in your mind just like you can hear it a-playin'. I've been to the cornfield many of a time when I was a farmer and I'd hear a good fiddle tune or a good banjer pieces and I'd commence whistlin' it. And I'd whistle that till my mouth got so tired, and I'd go home keepin' it on my mind. I'd go pretty fast and I'd whistle all the way into the holler on the mountain and my banjer would be hangin' on the wall. Sometimes I'd forget where it was at, and I'd whistle right loud and that banjer would answer me on the wall and I'd go get her. I'd keep that tune right on my mind and I'd find that tune on the strings before I'd quit.
There was a feller I was raised up with by the name of John Greer. The fact about it — all of my banjer pickin' is John Greer's type. Now, my daddy picked a banjer; he picked the old-timey rap. I can play it just like him. He kept his thumb on the thumb string and that thumb string was just a-goin' all the time. Now, John Greer come along and went from thumb string to the bottom, double-notin', and he was the best man I ever heard on that banjer. And I patterned after him. "Coo-Coo Bird" and "The Banging Breakdown" I got from John Greer.
Now the first fiddle that ever I heard in my life, when I was a kid — there was an old colored man who was raised up in slave times. His name was Jim Spencer. He played "Jinny Put the Kettle On" and all those old tunes like that, you know. And he would come up to our house and he'd play one night for us, and he'd go over to my uncle's and play one night for them, and then go down to my aunt's in the other holler — we lived in three different hollers in the mountains, you know. He'd make a round. Now, that was the first fiddling I ever heard in my life, although both my grandaddies were fiddlers. But my granddaddy on my mother's side died of TB in the old Civil War and my other grandaddy, I never did hear him but saw a little bit on it, buy my daddy said he used to be a good fiddler. So, I'd hear old-timey fiddlers in different places and I"d just get it in my head and work it out with my fingers.
We'd have a square dance in the community twice a week. We'd have one on Wednesday night and Saturday night. But then, in my home, all of my kinfolk would meet and my daddy would pick the banjo and we'd dance to twelve o'clock every night of the week. We'd go to the mountain and get us some back-logs to throw on this fireplace to throw the heat out. The boys would all help us drag wood off'n the mountain and then we'd fire up that fire and your legs'd be burnin' off and your back a-chillin', but we really enjoyed it. The way they would do the square dance in them days, they'd have one in one person's house, say tonight – say"Where'll we have the next 'un?" – "In my house, tomorrow night." Just like prayer meetin'; catch it around from house to house. There was square cancan every night. They'd work pretty hard during the day, but they'd get ready for it. They'd come in and get washed and they were ready for it.
My first life was farming. My daddy'd farmed all his life and I went into farming. And I went into wagoning long before the trucks came around, you know, or any cars at all. My daddy had a team and I had a team and we'd haul coal for people and move people and go to the station and get trunks out. And then I'm a pretty good painter; I used to paint a whole lot. And I was a butcher; I worked with the Olin-Mathieson people for twelve years, a-butchering for 'em. At the time of the first World War, I had got married and was lookin' for my first kid. Well, I got fourth class and the war never lasted but sixteen months and I never was called.
Me and my sister, Texas, went on Whitetop for the festivals. I met Horton Barker and Richard Chase at Whitetop. We played for Mrs. Roosevelt there in '36. Then, after she went back, she sent a telegram to Roanoke, to my sister, wantin' to know if we'd come up to the White House and sing some of those old songs. She wanted her husband to hear 'em. And so we did go. We went up there and spent a couple of nights with them and we had a program.
I had a band. I had two boys that played with me. I played with Tom (Clarence) Ashley thirty or thirty-five years ago. I played in a minstrel show for two years. I played my own music and danced my own music — that's one curiosity that everybody thought so much about. No, I wasn't makin' a livin' out of it. We'd just go places and play and maybe they'd give us so much. I played in dance halls back along in Hoover's time, you know, when you couldn't get ahold of a dollar nowhere. I played the fiddle the most — tunes like "Golden Slippers" and "Coming Around the Mountain" — for dances.
The fact about it — I went into this pop'lar stuff and got to playin' on that and then when I got in with Alan Lomax in 1942, he wanted me to pull back into the old folk music. And he said, "Don't you ever leave it no more!" I had just about left it. I hadn't owned a banjer in twenty-five years till the Vega people sent me that banjer from Boston as a gift several years ago. Pete Seeger got 'em to send it. I hadn't owned one in twenty-five years. Maybe I'd go to somebody's house and there'd be a banjer sittin' there and maybe I'd pick it up and play just one tune and set it down. I'd been playin' the fiddle and the gittar and the piano. And, you see, all of those old pieces on the banjer was just gettin' away from me and I didn't fool with 'em. But after I got this new banjer, why it came back to me in just a little time. In thirty days I was back just as good as I ever was.
So, I've had a life in music ever since I was a kid. I grew up into it and I'm still tryin' to play it.
DRUNKEN HICCUPS- Hobart Smith
Listen: Hobart Smith
Jack of diamonds, Jack of diamonds Jack of diamonds of old,
You've robbed my old pockets of silver and gold.
Hiccup oh Lordy how bad I do feel
[Pizz. 1st, then 2nd then 3rd strings- then play melody]
[Brief Instrumental]
You've robbed my old pockets you've taken my old purse,
You've made my old clothes look worse and worse
Oh Hiccup oh Lordy how bad I do feel
Oh Hiccup oh Lordy how bad I do feel
[Pizz. 1st, then 2nd then 3rd strings- then play melody]
[Instrumental]
I'll drink and I'll gamble, my money's my own,
It's nobody's business how much I do owe.
[Brief Instrumental]
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