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Hawk’s Got a Chicken
Old-Time, Breakdown. USA; Kentucky, Texas.
ARTIST: Doc Roberts
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes; DATE: Early 1900’s;
RECORDING INFO: County 202, "Eck Robertson: Famous Cowboy Fiddler." County 773, John Ashby and the Free State Ramblers - "Fiddling by the Hearth." County 412, "Fiddling Doc Roberts." Gennett 7110 (78 RPM), Doc Roberts (1930).
OTHER NAMES: "Hawk's Got a Chicken and Flew in the Woods;" "Hawk Got a Chicken And Gone;" "Little Betty Brown;" "Did You ever See the Devil Uncle Joe?"
SOURCES: Meade: Country Music Sources; Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc; Eck Robertson (Texas) [Phillips]. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), Vol. 1, 1994; pg. 108.
NOTES: "G Major (the 'A' part starts on an E Minor chord). Standard. ABACC. A tune indigenous to east-central Kentucky, according to Charles Wolfe (1982). It was recorded by Kentucky fiddler Doc Roberts, and though he recorded many sides, he was supposed by Wolfe to have paid little attention to music outside his home region. Roberts' son James remembered playing the tune with his father in the mid-1920's, thus dating it early in Roberts' repertoire. Musically, Wolfe thinks the end phrases resemble the Kessinger Brothers' "Little Betty Brown." Texas fiddler Eck Robertson, who recorded in the 1920's, seems also to have known a tune by this name, as did north Virginia fiddler John Ashby (1915-1979)." (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc).
According to Meade the Fiddlin Powers family's "Did You ever See the Devil Uncle Joe?" is the first recorded version of "Hawk Got a Chicken And Gone" in 1927.
LYRICS:
Sung to the 'A' part:
Old man, old man, get your gun,
The hawks got a chicken and away he run.
Old man, old man, get your gun,
The hawks got a chicken and away he run.
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