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Come Here Son/Fire On the Mountain
See: Betty Martin/Tip Toe High/Johnny Get Your Haircut
Traditional Old-Time, Bluegrass; Breakdown. USA, widely known.
ARTIST: Come Here Son- Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 1947
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes.
EARLIEST DATE: Early 1800’s; Tune: "A. Shattuck's Book" p. 59 circa 1801; Mother Goose for Grown Folks- 1860
OTHER NAMES: "Sambo," "Hog-Eye," "Betty Martin," “Johnny Get Your Hair Cut (Bayard)” “Granny Will Your Dog Bite” “I Betty Martin-tiptoe fine,” “Far In The Mountain,” “Free on the Mountains,” “Chicken in the Bread Tray,” “Tip Toe, Pretty Betty Martin,” “The Butcher's Dog,” “Old Daddy Bowback,” “West Virginia Girls/Gals” “Run, Boy, Run” (Also confused with "Sally Goodin” and the NC version of "Cotton-Eyed Joe").
RECORDING INFO: A standard old-time country tune, recorded by a large number of performers, including Riley Puckett and Clayton McMichen, and Gid Tanner & his Skillet Lickers: Carlin, Bob. Banging and Sawing, Rounder CD 0197, CD (1996/1985), cut# 5 (Far In The Mountain); Connor, Sam. Old Originals, Vol. 1, Rounder 0057, LP (1978), cut# 7; Crase, James. Mountain Music of Kentucky, Smithsonian/Folkways SF 40077, CD (1996), cut#2.56; Creed, Kyle; and Fred Cockerham. Good Time Music. National Folk Festival, Philo 1028, LP (1975), cut#A.04; Dixie Ramblers. 37th Old-Annual Old-Time Fiddlers Convention, Folkways FA 2434, LP (1962), cut# 18; Dutch Cove Old Time String Band. Sycamore Tea, June Appal JA 0023, LP, cut# 18; Fuzzy Mountain String Band. Summer Oaks and Porch, Rounder 0035, LP (197?), cut# 2a; Haley, Ed. Grey Eagle (Vol. 2), Rounder 1133/1134, CD (1997), 2.12; Hall, Leland. Old-Time Fiddling of Braxton County, Augusta Heritage AHR 012, Cas (1992), cut#A.02; Hooven, Greg. Tribute to Fred Cockerham, Heritage (Galax) 079C, Cas (1993), cut#B.07; Hughes, Delbert. Home Recordings., Augusta Heritage AHR 015, Cas (1994), cut#A.03; Jabbour, Bradley and Thompson. Sandy's Fancy, Flying Fish FF-260, LP (1981), cut# 9a; Kentucky Colonels. Livin' in the Past, Briar BT 7202, LP (1975), cut#A.01; Red Headed Fiddlers. Folk Music in America, Vol. 3, Dance Music, Breakdowns & Waltzes, Library of Congress LBC-03, LP (1976), cut#A.08 (Far In The Mountain); Red Headed Fiddlers. Yearlings in the Canebrake, Musical Traditions MTC 103, Cas (1994), B.05 (Far In The Mountain); Rivers, Jerry. Country-Western Radio. Rare Radio Recordings of Famous Count..., Radiola MR-1069, LP (1977), cut#A1.5; Shelor Family. Eight Miles Apart, Heritage (Galax) 022, LP (1979), cut# 8; Adams, Chuck. 15th Annual Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Contest, Black Mountain Mi 7775, LP (197?), cut# 15; Bird, Elmer. Elmer's Greatest Licks, Bird, Cas (1980), cut# 5; Brickman, Weissberg & Company. New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass, Elektra EKS-7238, LP (197?), cut# 12; Camp Creek Boys. Camp Creek Boys, County 709, LP (1967), cut# 9; Carson, Fiddlin' John;'s Virginia Reelers. Fiddlin' John Carson. Vol 4, Document DOCD 8017, CD (1997), cut# 2 (Fire in the Mountain); Dutch Cove Old Time String Band. Sycamore Tea, June Appal JA 0023, LP, cut# 19; Feldmann, Peter. How to Play Country Fiddle, Vol.1, Sonyatone STI-101, LP (1975), cut# 2; High Strung. High Strung, Loose Noose ASM-489, LP (1981), cut#A.04a; Highwoods String Band. Fire on the Mountain, Rounder 0023, LP (1973), cut# 1; Homer and the Barnstormers. Blue Grass Banjos - Flaming Banjos, Alshire 2-120-1/2, LP (197?), cut#1A.02; Hutchins, Esker. Old Time Fiddling at Union Grove. The 38th Annual Old-Time Fi..., Prestige 14039, LP (1964), cut#B.06; Jarrell, Tommy. Rainbow Sign, County 791, LP (198?), cut# 7; Mainer, Wade. From the Maple on the Hill, Old Homestead OHTRS 4000, LP (1976), cut#C.04; Wanzer, Loyd. Famous Country Fiddling, American Heritage AH-401-19C, LP (197?), cut#A.01; Watson, Doc; Clint Howard and Fred Price. Old Timey Concert, Vanguard 107/8, Cas (1987), cut#B.03;
SOURCES: Alan Lomax's Check-List of Recorded Songs in the English Language in the Archive of American Folk Song to July, 1940 (Library of Congress, 1942), a tune called "Fire in the Mountain" was included as a line in a nursery rhyme. Krassen, Miles. Appalachian Fiddle, Oak, sof (1973), p72; Bell, David. Learning the Fiddler's Ways, Penn State, Sof (1980), p146; Kaufman, Alan. Beginning Old-time Fiddle, Oak, sof (1977), p76; Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc).
NOTES: "A Major ('A' part) & D Major ('B' part). Standard, AEAE or ADAE. AAB (Brody, Krassen): AABB (Lowinger): AABB' (Phillips/1994); Henry Reed- key A(abac ab'de dqd'e). The tune usually goes at breakneck speed, giving rise to popular folklore for the reason for its name: the fiddler plays so fast the fiddle catches on fire and lights up the woods (Lowinger, 1974). The title may be Celtic in origin: Scottish clans often used blazing bonfires on highland hills as gathering signals (ironically, this also may be the origin for the Ku Klux Klan's blazing crosses). Krassen (1973) notes his 'B' part has similarities with a 78 RPM recording of Pope's Arkansas Mountaineers' "Hog-eyed Man," and Bayard (1981) also recognizes the similarity between the second parts of the same tunes, though a closer match to "Fire On the Mountain" he believes to be "Betty Martin," which is "reminiscent all through." Guthrie Meade (1980) links the Kentucky version of the tune (which also goes by the name "Big Nosed Hornpipe") to the "Sally Goodin'" family of melodies. Winston Wilkinson, in the Southern Folklore Quarterly (vol. vi, I, March, 1942), gives a bar-for-bar comparison of the tune with a Norse 'halling' tune, set by the Norwegian composer Greig and published in Copenhagen in 1875 (Norges Melodier, 1875 & 1922, iv, pg. 72). The tunes are so close as to be almost certainly cognate. Bayard records the tune's earliest American publication date is 1814 or 1815 in Riley's Flute Melodys (where it appears as "Free on the Mountains"), and as "I Betty Martin" in A. Shattuck's Book, a fiddler's manuscript book dating from around 1801. The piece was recorded in the early 1940's from Ozark Mountain fiddlers by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph for the Library of Congress. Lowe Stokes (1898-1983), one of the north Georgia band 'The Skillet Lickers' fiddlers, remembered it as having been fiddled by his father." (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc).
Library of Congress: Henry Reed's "Fire on the Mountain" is a fine set of a tune that is well-documented from early America down to the present, yet seems not traceable to the British Isles. It is thus (along with a number of other tunes in this collection) evidence that by the late eighteenth century there was already a distinctly American repertory of fiddle tunes. The tune seems to be associated with a cluster of playful rhymes and jingles used in children's songs, play-party songs, and courting songs across the early frontier. The jingles in turn give rise to many of the bewildering array of titles that have turned up for this tune. Some representative examples are "A. Shattuck's Book [ca. 1801]," p. 59 "I Betty Martin--tipto fine"; Riley's Flute Melodies (ca. 1814), p. 87 "Free on the Mountains"; Winner's Choice Gems, p. 66 "Granny Will Your Dog Bite. (Jig.)"; Brown, The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore vol. 5, 119 (#158) "Chicken in the Bread Tray"; Wilkinson, "Virginia Dance Tunes," p. 9 "Fire on the Mountains," played by J. H. Chisholm, Greenwood, Virginia; Ford, Traditional Music of America, p. 58 "Tip Toe, Pretty Betty Martin"; Adam, Old Time Fidders' Favorite Barn Dance Tunes #62 "The Butchers' Dog"; Moser, "Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians," pp. 5-6 "Old Daddy Bowback (Fire on the Mountain)," played by Marcus Martin, Swannanoa, North Carolina. As in Henry Reed's case, Southern sets are inclined to begin with the high strain, while Northern or Midwestern sets (and hence most printed sets) begin with the low strain.
MORE NOTES: Verses are sometimes sung to the melody, especially in the variants by other names such as "Betty Martin," "Pretty Betty Martin" and "Hog-eye." Wilkinson (1942) says that the following verse made its way into some editions of Mother Goose (See Lyrics below).
"The Devil Went Down to Georgia," a song and fiddle tune by Charlie Daniels Band has floater lyrics from “Fire on the Mountain.”
From Mike Yeats: Fire in the Mountains is one of a broad family of early nineteenth century (or earlier) tunes that shades into one another and are as old as Hey Betty Martin, Tip Toe.
It has been suggested that the tune originated from eastern European migrants, some of whom made commercial recordings in New York in the early part of the 20th century. There is also a Norwegian tune, printed in Southern Folklore Quarterly vol. vi, number 1 (March, 1942) p.9, that shows some similarity. A L 'Red' Steeley and J W 'Red' Graham - known as the Red Headed Fiddlers - made a spirited fiddle/banjo recording in 1929 (reissued on Document DOCD-8038) that is well-worth hearing. For some reason, the engineers titled this recording Far in the Mountain. (Chances are they were Yankees from the North, unaccustomed to Steeley & Graham's accents). The Camp Creek Boys, from the area around Galax, VA, play a good version on County CD 2719, as did Theron Hale (reissued on County CD 3522).
Sam Connor and Dent Wimmer also used to play a version similar to the lines sung by Fiddlin' John Carson in his 1926 recording of the tune (Okeh 45068, reissued on Document DOCD-8017), but under the title Ten Little Indians and Sam had the following verse to the tune:
All my little Indians don't drink liquor,
All my little Indians don't get drunk.
Fire in the Mountain is closely alligned to Betty Martin/Pretty Petty Martin songs:
High Betty Martin Tip toe, tip toe
High Betty Martin Tip toe, tip toe fine.
The same tune was used for both songs which dates back circa 1801 when it was published in "A. Shattuck's Book" p. 59.
Other lyrics were attached to this tune including:
Johnny get your hair cut, hair cut, hair cut,
Johnny get your hair cut, just like mine.
Sometimes heard and recorded (Dutch Coleman for Brunswick) as "Granny Get your Hair Cut" these lyrics became popular around 1900 [Louise Rand Bascon JOAFL 1909) and were used in place of the much older Betty Martin lyrics.
The Annotated Mother Goose has this version
also in Mother Goose for Grown Folks- 1860:
Hogs in the garden, catch 'em, Towser;
Cows in the corn-field, run, boys, run!
Fire on the mountain, run, boys, run boys!
Cats in the cream-pot, run girls, run!
Come Here Son- Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 1947
Sow in the garden, sow in the sand
Sow making love to a walleyed man
Fire in the mountain come here son
Sal let me chew your rosin son
Two little Indians one old squaw
Sitting on a rock in Arkansas
Fire in the mountain come here son
Fire in the mountain run boy run
Hold my fiddle and hold my bow and
I'll slap heck out of cotton eye Joe
Fire in the mountain come here son
Sal let me chew your rosin son
I've got candy, I've got gum
Sal let me chew your rosin son
Come here son, come here son
Sal let me chew your rosin son
Curly Fox and Texas Ruby were one of Country music’s great husband-wife teams of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Curly ranked as a premier hillbilly fiddler for some four decades while Ruby stood as one of the pioneer women in the trade. Arnim Fox grew up in the East Tennessee community of Graysville learning to cut hair and play fiddle from his father the town barber. He also learned some fiddle techniques from James McCarroll of the Roane County Ramblers, one of the truly great fiddlers of the roaring 20’s. Fox served something of an apprenticeship with McCarroll’s band. Curly also got an early taste of professionalism by joining an “Indian” medicine show run by a “Chief White Owl” with whom young Arnim journeyed as far north as Indiana. According to one familiar story, the youth yearned for a professional career in music from the time Gid Tanner’s Skillet Licket Lickers came through Graysville playing a show and stopped in the elder Fox’s barbershop. Not long afterward, Curly set out for WSB Atlanta, where he joined Claude Davis and the Carolina Tar Heels (not the Victor recording act), acquired the nickname “Curly” and later started his own band called the Tennessee Firecrackers.
About 1934, the Shelton Brothers came to Atlanta and Curly joined forces with them, going to WWL New Orleans. He remained with the Sheltons long enough to do a pair of Decca sessions in 1935 and 1936, including six sides recorded under his own name. Leaving the Sheltons in 1936, Curly traveled for a while with promoter Larry Sunbrock, who staged a series of fiddling contests featuring Curly, Natchee the Indian (aka Lester Vernon Storer), and other noted fiddlers. At the Texas centennial celebration in 1937, Curly met the husky-voiced, cowgirl singer known as Miss Texas Ruby. Ruby Owens entered radio a few years earlier as the younger sister of radio cowboy Tex Owens who wrote and introduced the song “Cattle Call” to the commercial music world. Her niece was Laura Lee Owens McBride, who sang with Bob Wills.
In 1930, Ruby had gone with her father and brothers to Fort Worth on a cattle drive. The younger Owenses began harmonizing and were heard by one of the cattle buyers who was also a stockholder of KMBC Kansas City. Ruby was offered a job at the station and over the next three years, she broadcast over stations in Detroit, Philadelphia and Cincinnati. In 1933, Ruby joined-up with Zeke Clements and His Bronco Busters. They soon began making appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. However, Ruby wanted to return to Texas and on their way, they heard about the barn dance on station WHO Des Moines, Iowa. Ruby and Zeke auditioned and ended up staying on the program for two years. Their announcer on the show was an aspiring actor named Ronald “Dutch” Reagan. Curly and Ruby soon married and worked extensively on major radio stations. They worked at WSM Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry from 1937 to 1939 and again from 1944 to 1948, and spent about three years at WLW Cincinnati and the Boone County Jamboree, from 1941.
In between times, they had shorter stints at other major stations. Curly and Ruby did some recordings, but not as much as might be expected. According to her husband, Ruby’s deep contralto voice was difficult to capture on disc. They cut some MacGregor transcriptions in California in 1945 and 1946. Ruby recorded what may have been her best efforts for King in the fall of 1947, with the legendary Mose Rager, teacher of Merle Travis, playing lead guitar on his only commercial session. Curly also recorded a fine pair of fiddle tunes, “Black Mountain Rag” and “Come Here Son,” the latter more commonly known as “Fire on the Mountain.” The couple went to Houston, Texas, in 1948, where they remained for a decade helping to pioneer Country music on local television. In 1956, they played a performance for the King and Queen of Greece, Paul and Fredrika, who made quite a hit with the American public that year when they toured the U.S. After traveling around the country for a time, Curly and Ruby returned to WSM in the early 60’s, where Curly usually worked the Opry alone as Ruby’s health was not good in this period. They did cut an album for Starday in mid-March 1963. Several days later, while Curly was performing on the Friday Night Opry, Ruby died in a tragic mobile home fire, allegedly; she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette and it burned her bed. After Ruby’s death, Curly continued on the Opry by himself for a time, but eventually went to Chicago, where one of his daughters by his first marriage resided. In this period, he too had some health problems, but recorded a couple of albums for Rural Rhythm and made an appearance now and then. In 1976, Curly returned to his hometown of Graysville. For a few years, he worked with Tom and Mary Morgan, who had a family type Bluegrass band that appeared throughout the region. He shared a residence with an elderly sister and led a quiet life, contented that he had made his mark in the show business and Country music world. Over the years, several of his and Ruby’s recordings have appeared on various anthology albums, including a couple of the 1940 transcriptions in addition to the memorial Harmony and King albums.
Texas Ruby (June 4, 1908[1] - March 29 1963), born Ruby Agnes Owens, was a pioneering country music female vocalist of the 1930s through the early 1960s.
Ruby was born on a ranch in Wise County, Texas, near Decatur. When she was three years old she started to sing, often together with her two brothers. Her career began when a Kansas City radio station owner heard her sing in Fort Worth, Texas. In early 1937, she recorded for Decca Records. Later that year, she met Curly Fox in Fort Worth. They were married in 1939.
Ruby was dubbed "radio's original cowgirl". The husky voice star was something of a cross between Sophie Tucker (whom she was often compared to) and Dale Evans and with her husband, fiddler Curly Fox was an enormously popular radio and personal appearances star in the 1940s although she failed to have any hit records. Her best-known song, "Don't Let Your Man Get You Down" predates Loretta Lynn's famous stand-up-to-your-man hits by twenty years. This sassy persona was adopted on most of Ruby's recordings, "Ain't You Sorry That You Lied" and "You've Been Cheating on Me", songs perhaps too trailblazing to have been record hits in that very conservative era of country music. Most of Texas Ruby's recordings were done for the King Records and Columbia Records labels. Her first sessions were for Decca Records in 1937.
Texas Ruby made her first breakthrough in the music industry working with country bandleader Zeke Clements but by the mid forties she and husband Fox had developed their own stage act and were much in demand, including a stint as regulars on the Grand Ole Opry from 1944 to 1948. The Foxes left the Opry and moved to Texas, where most of their concert dates were, in late 1948. The move seemed to pushed national stardom further away from the duo who eventually in the early 1960s moved first to Los Angeles (appearing on the Town Hall Party country music television series) and then back to Nashville in attempts to get back into the limelight.
Fox, widely considered one of country music's greatest fiddlers, worked the Opry more frequently as background instrumentalist than as a star and tragedy struck one night as he was appearing on the Opry in 1963, Ruby fell asleep smoking in their mobile home and was killed in the resulting fire. It was the most grim month in Opry history as Ruby was the fifth Grand Ole Opry star to die that month, following Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, and Jack Anglin. Curly Fox was reinstated as an official Grand Ole Opry member shortly afterwards but he retired by 1970.
Ruby was the sister of Tex Owens, who composed Eddy Arnold's hit "Cattle Call".
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