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Pateroller Song/ Run, *Johnny Run/ Run, Boy Run
Old-Time, Song & Breakdown
ARTIST: from Kuntz.
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes DATE: 1800s; printed in 1851 (Serenader's Song Book)
RECORDING INFO: Victor 40205 (78 RPM), Eck Robertson (Texas) {1929}. Dr. Humphrey Bate & His Possum Hunters, (Brunswick 275, 1928)
Fiddlin' John Carson, (OKeh 40230, 1924)
Sid Harkreader & Grady Moore, (Paramount 3054, 1927)
Uncle Dave Macon, (Vocalion 15032, 1925)
Mose "Clear Rock" Platt, (AFS 196 A1, 1933; on LC04)
Gid Tanner & his Skillet Lickers, (Columbia 15158-D, 1927)
Clint Howard, Gaither Carlton, Fred Price & Doc Watson, "Run, Jimmie, Run" (on WatsonAshley01)
RELATED TUNES: Fire on the Mountain; Rattlesnake Bit the Baby
OTHER NAMES: *The original title, with the N word, is no longer acceptable, and has been replaced by variety of alterative titles. "Run, Smoke, Run," "Run, Boy, Run" "Pateroller Will Catch You" "Pateroller'll Catch You;" "Run Jimmie, Run (Watson)"
SOURCES: Ceolas; Folk Index; Pete Sutherland [Phillips]. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, Vol. 1), 1994; pg. 181. Tradition TLP 1007, Hobart Smith - "Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians" (1956). Kenny Baker [Brody]; Bruce Hutton [Kuntz]; Tommy Jackson [Phillips]. Brody (Fiddler's Fakebook), 1983; pg. 238. Kuntz (Ragged but Right), 1987; pg. 203-204. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, Vol. 1), 1994; pg. 204. Cassette C-7625, Wilson Douglas - "Back Porch Symphony." Folkways 2402, Bruce Hutton- "Old Time Music...It's All Around." County 750, Kenn.
NOTES: G Major. Standard. AABB. *The original title, with the "n" word, is no longer acceptable, and has been replaced by variety of alterative titles. There is documentary evidence that this was a popular song amongst African-Americans and should be considered an African-American folk song.
The song is reported to be about pre-Civil War times when plantation owners hired men to patrol for runaway slaves or slaves out after curfew without a pass. See also related tune "Rattlesnake Bit the Baby." The song has been dated by some to pre-Civil War times when patrols were formed in nearly every Southern county with a sizable slave population to ensure the slaves stayed on the plantation and did not "wander;" this was especially so after the scare of the slave insurrections of the 1820's and 1830's. Hutton says it goes back to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 when frontiersmen revolted against government regulation. [Kuntz]
The title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. In the repertoire of the John Lusk Band, a black string band from Cumberland Plateau region of Ky./Tenn.
In Lomax we find the following explanation (quoted at several hands' remove):
"Just after the Nat Turner Insurrection in 1832 the Negroes were put under special restrictions to home quarters, and patrolmen appointed to keep them in, and if caught without a written pass from owner they were dealt with severely then and there; hence the injunction to 'Run, *Johnny, Run, the Patter-roller Git You' to the tune of 'Fire in the Mountain....'"
From "The Southern workman, Volumes 23-24 - Page 46 Hampton Institute - African Americans - 1894":
Excluding then from further consideration, the minstrel songs, let us see what classes of songs we can find that seem actually to hwve grown up out of the conditions of the slave life. We find that all plantation Negroes have one common means of expression. Throughout the South, Corn-Songs, Dance-Songs, and Shouts or Spirituals, are the three main divisions of Negro music, and most of the songs indigenous to the soil may be classified under one or another of these heads. Words mav differ, terms may differ in different localities or in the same locality from year to year, but the Negro must sing as he works, as he plays, and as he worships, and so these three classes of songs are always found. The Corn-songs are so named because they were used largely to expedite the labor at the great annual corn shuckings, where the slaves from several plantations were gathered together after the harvest, to shuck the corn already garnered in a great heap in front of the corn crib But the name Cornsong applies to all work songs, and, in its broadest meting, to all secular music.
Corn-songs have, in common with the spirituals, the characteristic of the solo or shout, often extemporized to express the thought of the moment by the leader, and the great chorus which answers with its burst of harmony from many voices. In the work-songs the rhythm sets the time of the work on which all are engaged, and the beating of feet, the swaying of the body or the movement of the arm may be retarded or accelerated at will by the leader. They thus formed a useful anxiliary to the plantation discipline and maybe said to have had an economic value in carrying on the productive labor of the South.
Here the quartet gave the two following songs: (1st is Corn shucking song)
*RUN, JOHNNY, RUN. DE PATTEROLER 'LL KETCH YER.
Run, Johnny, run
Patteroler'll ketch yer.
Hit yer thirty-nine
And sware 'e didn' tech yer. (Repeat several times.)
Poor man out in de night
Huntin' fer sinners wid all deir might.
Dey don' always ketch deir game
D'way we fool 'um is er shame.
My ole gal promus me
When she died she'd set me free,
Now d' ole lady's dead an' gone,
Lef dis sinner er shellin corn. CHORUS:
My ole boss promus me
When he died he'd set me free.
Now he's ded an' gone er way
Neber'll come back tell Judgement day. CHORUS:
I seed a patteroler hin' er tree
Tryin to ketch po' little me,
I ups wid my foots an' er way I run,
Dar by spilin dat genterman's fun. CHORUS:
*edited
"Pateroller Song" from Kuntz:
Johnny came down to the mooshine still in the bottom of the holler at the foot of the hill;
He woke up about the break of day and he thought he heard his grandpa say:
Refrain: Run, Johnny, Run, the Federals'll get you,
Run, Johnny, Run, you'd better get away.
Johnny stopped at the top of the hill and he saw them Federals around his still;
They busted his coil and his boiler too, started drinking his mountain dew.
The Feds caught Johnny makin' a run and they took him up to Washington;
Set him to work for the government makin' moonshine for the President.
Johnny got rich at the government stills and he run away to his home in the hills;
Now the Federals are on his tracks, he still owes a dollar on the whiskey tax.
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