Bluegrass Messengers

TITLE, TEXT, AND TUNE INTERRELATIONS IN AMERICAN FIDDLE MUSIC
Stephen Green, Archivist
Western Folklife Center
Elko, Nevada
v.90
I know no reason but that this harmless riddle
May as well be printed as sung to a fiddle.

I. INTRODUCTION
During the opening decades of American folksong scholarship, the combined interests and training of personnel in the language arts resulted in the widespread collection and publication of traditional song texts– many of them lacking the music to which they were sung. Phillips Barry and George Herzog were among the first to recognize the inherent limitations of a folksong scholarship which neglected to treat musical aspects, and in 1937, Herzog made a case for studying song texts and tunes together as an organic whole. He felt strongly that "...the investigation of the relationship of text and melody is bound to yield insights, perhaps the most intimate, into the life-history and dynamics of folk songs." In this paper, I adopt Herzog's stance and advocate a holistic approach to the study of American fiddle tunes.
In the academic community, fiddle music generally has been treated as a genre somehow distinct from other domains of traditional music. This can be explained in part by the fact that the study of folk music in the United States began and remained for nearly half a century rooted in literary– not musical– academic traditions. Few folksong collectors in the early days were trained to take on-the-spot "dictation" of musical performance, and those who could do so apparently were preoccupied with predominantly literary interests.
Today, there is considerable interest in the fiddler's art both as popular entertainment and as a forum for various kinds of research. We are seeing a growing number of collectors and scholars contributing to the study of America’s instrumental folk music through articles, book length studies, published tune collections, documentary sound recordings, films, and hypermedia documents. It is surprising to discover, however, after reviewing the available literature, that the least studied aspect of fiddling seems to be fiddle music itself. Regional surveys of fiddling, individual life histories of fiddlers, career histories of professional fiddlers and string bands, and studies focusing on institutional settings of fiddle music (including fiddlers' associations, contests, and conventions) are all available. In addition, years of painstaking work by discographers has contributed enormously to our general knowledge of fiddlers and fiddle music in relation to the fields of radio and commercial recording. Taken together, these studies and others have covered the contexts and social dynamics of the music well. Other researchers have used the historic-geographic method to try to better understand the distribution of fiddling styles and fiddle music, and analytical studies of performance technique have also been done. Several doctoral dissertations examine and attempt to define broad regional styles, but these studies focus primarily on performance traits and techniques rather than repertories and musical interrelations. Some studies of repertory have appeared, but these have tended to report on the interaction of musicians with their musical influences rather than probe the interrelations of tunes and texts gathered over a broad territory. But this may soon change with the increased activity in the area of computer based tune indexes. Indexing and annotation of earlier published tune collections is being undertaken by individuals both in and out of the academic realm, although more often than not, these projects appear to be motivated by a desire simply to make locating printed tunes more convenient for performing musicians. While publications and recordings issued over the last twenty-five years have added immeasurably to the available documentation of regional folk music repertories, few projects involving broad comparative analysis of fiddle music have been carried out.
Before proceeding further, some clarification is needed of the term "American fiddling" as used in this essay. While acknowledging the obvious (and not so obvious) contributions of many cultures to the national music, I nevertheless use "American" in a generic sense to refer to music which historically has been associated mostly with the Afro-Celtic-Anglo-Scots diaspora and which is usually found in regions where those cultural streams have converged over many generations. Geographically then, the music under discussion is primarily from southern and western states though shared repertory can be found in the mid-Atlantic, northeast, Great Lakes, and northern plains regions as well.
II. ISSUES AND PROBLEMS
RELATING TO THE STUDY OF FIDDLE TUNES
Fiddle Tunes vs. Fiddle Music
The wide usage of the phrase "fiddle tune" is itself indicative of a collective tendency to characterize fiddle music on the whole as instrumental. But in spite of the obvious fact that many tunes are indeed rendered instrumentally, a sizeable percentage of the American fiddler’s repertory derives from or is associated with rhymes and songs, specifically those "lyric" type folksongs whose poetic features and lack of narrative plots distinguish them from ballads and other traditional music genres. America's instrumental dance music is intimately bound up with its song traditions, and consideration of texts and melodies together is necessary in any attempt to determine cultural and musical influences, origins, strains of development– in short, to appreciate the organic phenomenon that is fiddle music. For this reason, I favor the broadly encompassing phrase "fiddle music" over "fiddle tunes" whenever possible, though admittedly it is hard to get away from the "tune" concept altogether.
Comparative Study
The monumental groundwork for tune scholarship laid down by the late Samuel P. Bayard since 1928 must be acknowledged. Few scholars can claim, as Professor Bayard could, to have immersed themselves over a lifetime in the lore and music of Scottish, Irish, British, and American instrumental traditions. The work of the "tune comparativist" (to use Bayard's term) demands not only a thorough knowledge of the specific idiom being studied– in his case, fiddle music of Pennsylvania and the North Atlantic states– but a good working knowledge of and access to materials from numerous tangential repertories as well. For studying American fiddle tunes, familiarity with the combined repertories of nineteenth century minstrelsy and stage music, roustabout and sailing songs and shanties, and children's play-party games is indispensable. An awareness of Scottish, Irish, and British historical repertories is also a basic prerequisite for such study. If one truly wishes to spend a lifetime and become expert, then exposure to Native American, French, and West Indian musical streams should likewise be considered.
The complexity of American fiddle music as a genre and the inherent challenges of studying it have been aptly (perhaps unwittingly) outlined by Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer (1982) in the preface to their work on Catskill mountain song tunes. Describing the corpus of folksongs in their study, they point to their examples as "widely disparate in their ages, their sources, and their types, yet all belonging to a more or less unified oral culture that may be delimited in time and space...." Although the authors may not have intended it, this statement characterizes American fiddle music admirably.
While many people have directed their efforts toward devising workable systems for the classification of melodies, it seems to me that any such system should, as Herzog suggested, be "as open and unpretentious as possible" and furthermore, it should emphasize relationships over category labels. In my opinion, technical studies involving scale analysis, modal groupings, and the like generally have been overvalued in the past. Such exercises are rarely useful for establishing "relatedness" between fiddle tunes, depending, of course, on what is seen as the basis of "relatedness." Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer point out that "what constitutes 'relatedness' is a matter of judgement and thus prone to challenge and to error." It is not at all uncommon for Scholar A to view two pieces as variants of a single piece while Fiddler B regards them as two distinct tunes, or vice versa.
Many of the ideas presented in this essay are the formal outgrowth of what is usually an informal pastime of listening to, learning to play, and habitually comparing tunes. The usual "method" of comparison is by hearing tunes internally, in the "mind's ear," as it were. I do not– nor does anyone I know– approach the comparison of tunes in a "scientific" or systematic way. Chris Goertzen has remarked elsewhere about the time consuming nature of such study. Similarities and differences between two tunes can call attention to themselves at any time– when one is listening to, learning to play, or even just thinking about the music. If there is a "method," it is one which involves sifting through stacks of recordings and printed materials following up various trains of thought which themselves are prompted by the effects of certain musical phrases on the ear. The presumed objective, for many researchers, has been tracing a tune to some antecedent by way of the tune's "variants," though, as mentioned earlier, this immediately raises the issue of what constitutes a "variant," a problem by virtue of its subjective definition. And, as Cazden, Haufrecht, and Studer noted, the recognition of variants is itself subjective. "If two tunes just do not sound the same, there is no way to convince the musical ear that they are in fact variants of each other." Thus, in this essay, while I hope to point out certain underlying similarities for a cluster of fiddle tunes (in order to argue for a multidimensional methodology), I hereby leave each reader-fiddler to make his or her own pronouncements concerning whether the tunes are in fact "related."
Comparative study in American fiddle music is hindered as well by a general lack of notated examples, with only a handful of substantial regional collections having been published since 1940– notably, those of Ford, Bayard, Thede, and Christeson. The tunes presented in these works represent but a small portion of the documented repertory of the American fiddler, with the vast majority of titles (and whatever tunes they represent) remaining at large in raw form as sound recordings. The published compilations made by the collectors just named are a good start, but it must be realized that a full picture– if one is possible– of the American fiddler’s music is nowhere near complete.
The Problem of Transcription
The mention of printed scores in a folk music study is likely to prompt questions from some quarters about whether fixed-print notation depicting essentially ephemeral performances can be considered reliable enough for a study of tunes. In this vein, Linda Burman-Hall (1968) has already remarked on the general absence of complete performance transcriptions that are admittedly necessary for studies involving fiddlers' techniques of variation. But Hertzog felt that simplicity would aid in analysis of a tune’s architecture and facilitate comparing it with other tunes. He suggested that "a grouping which gives only bare and general traits is preferable to more detailed and ambitious ones." While it’s true that many tune transcriptions represent only part of a performance by a specific individual on a specific occasion it is apparently felt by Bayard, Christeson and others that a "basic tune" is something that can be distilled from performance and presented in print for use by other players and researchers. I share that view.
Problems of Identification and Classification
With regard to the popular and widely used phrase "tune family," Samuel Bayard offered the following definition:
"... a group of melodies showing basic interrelation by means of constant melodic correspondence, and presumably owing their mutual likeness to descent from a single air that has assumed multiple forms through processes of variation, imitation, and assimilation."
As it stands, this definition seems to me unworkable because melodic correspondence does not have to be constant for variants to be recognizable, and it is also impractical (in many cases impossible)– as Cazden and associates have pointed out– to trace variants of variants of variants back to a single ancestral air.
So far as I know, tune family studies have focused almost exclusively on ballad tunes. Fiddle tunes, however– if and when they are derived from song material– are usually associated, not with ballads, but with the category previously identified as "lyric songs," a group which might be said to be considerably less stable (both melodically and textually) than ballads. Of texts in the folk lyric genre, Henry Belden wrote:
Not held together by any definite story but employing a number of images, symbols, tropes...they combine, resolve, and recombine these images with such freedom that it is often impossible to say definitely that two songs are variants of a single song. One is connected with another by the use of the same image in one place, and with another by the use of another image in another place, until a whole series is concatenated no one of which is a clearly defined unit.
Belden was neither the first nor the only dedicated scholar to despair at trying to unravel the tangle of free floating verses and tunes associated with lyric folksongs. Goertzen, speaking of fiddle tunes, noted that "20th century examples resist being sorted in any straightforward manner." Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer– if I may quote them once more– articulate why earlier tune classification systems and characterizations of "constant melodic correspondence" do not work well for such material:
Mode alone will not do; scale degree frequency will not do; and cadence points prove variable. Typical contours of a tune may change; its meter may be adapted to accommodate a new text; the sequence of phrases may be altered; and either half of a tune may disappear or lead an independent life.
It falls outside the scope of this essay to examine in detail the various projects undertaken in recent years by people using computer technology to enhance sorting and classification of melodies. These explorations are interesting and may ultimately yield better than hoped for results, but I doubt that programs employing pattern matching systems (which look for correspondence between pitch, rhythm, and other features) will be able to match adequately the subjective human ability to recognize "relatedness" especially given the conditions outlined by Cazden, Haufrecht, and Studer above.
On top of the difficulties outlined so far, fiddle tunes might be said to occupy a unique position in that many of them lie somewhere between instrumental music, song, and chant. Chant, in particular, with its narrow pitch compass, causes problems in the search for well-defined melodic families. Many fiddle tunes are connected to ring games, play-parties, and social dance calls whose vocal expression is frequently midway between speech and song. "Tunes" which repeat short passages of narrow melodic compass reflect the chant-like rhymes of these games. Low tessitura strains played on a fiddle comprised of no more than a tonic, third and fourth below, and second and third above are rather common. Recorded examples of the former abound, though it should be said that melodies of this sort generally do not reflect those which Bayard collected where the overall range is usually much greater.
In 1937, George Herzog suggested that printed collections of folk songs should henceforth explore arranging contents based on musical relations rather than strictly on textual relations such as ballad plots. In the case of collections of fiddle tunes, virtually all that have appeared in this country since the late nineteenth century have been arranged on the basis of something other than melodic features. Most often, tunes are found to be grouped according to their function for dancing. Even Samuel Bayard's thick compilation, Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife (which does present clusters of perceived "variants" for each numbered item), is arranged overall by the type of dance with which the tunes are most often associated. Likewise, R. P. Christeson's Old Time Fiddlers' Repertory is arranged at the highest level according to dance tune type (breakdown, quadrille, waltz, etc.) and within each sub-group by key signature. Thede's The Fiddle Book groups tunes variously by theme ("Nature Tunes," etc.), geographic region ("Oklahoma Tunes..."), and relative chronology ("Old Times" and "Fiddling Since World War II"), while Ford's Traditional Music in America reveals no apparent underlying organization at all. M. M. Cole Publishing Company's One Thousand Fiddle Tunes– affectionately referred to by many players as "the fiddler's Bible"– is the largest collection in terms of sheer numbers of tunes, and again, the internal arrangement is based primarily on whether a tune functions as a reel, jig, hornpipe, strathspey, clog, etc. No study or collection of American fiddle tunes produced thus far, then, sets as its end goal the demonstration of musical relationships between tunes or groups of tunes.
The Vocabulary of Tune Comparison
If sound recording liner notes are any indication, there is considerable interest in the concept of tune interrelations. But although frequently written by the most knowledgeable people in the field, these same notes underscore not only the inherent difficulty of discussing tune similarities and differences, but the subjective nature of observations concerning "relatedness," and the lack of any cohesive or comprehensive model for labelling and comparing fiddle tunes. Witness the following, extracted from a record jacket:
The first part of Clark's Sixteen Days in Georgia is a fancy version of the first part of Fourteen Days in Georgia (as played by the Blue Ridge Highballers, for example). West Virginia Special (in C and G) is similar to Richmond (usually played in D and A). Rat Cheese Under the Hill is not the better known Natchez Under the Hill or Turkey in the Straw. Clark's Rat Cheese Under the Hill (also recorded by Bob Wills as Prosperity Special) has a raggy sound to it, and some very nice variations. The low part of Old Jake Gillie is similar to the low part of Eighth of January, but the high parts are much less closely related. Old Jake Gillie has been collected in Missouri and Nebraska under the title Jake's Best Reel. Oscar Wright's banjo tune Jake Gillie on County [LP] 717 is also the same tune. The second part of Kanawha County Rag sounds a little bit like Sally Gooden, and Clark plays around with it alot, both the notes and the bowing.
In citing this passage, I mean no criticism of the writer, but only wish to point to the vague, subjective, and unwieldy way in which fiddle tunes are often discussed– not out of weak scholarship, but out of necessity owing to the problems of discussing musical performance in terms of a semantically based language. In the literature, as in the above passage, there is a heavy reliance on comparison of one performed (or printed) piece with another, yet no standard reference point (such as a Laws or Child number for ballads) exists, nor is the creation of a "canon" of lyric folksong really feasible since as Belden pointed out, there are no clearly defined units. The "high part / low part" remarks in the quote above hint further at the challenges of applying labels to tunes which may combine and recombine melodic strains, giving them new identity. Not least, researchers must confront the fact that source materials such as field recordings, out of print and locally produced records, and historically relevant tunebooks remain widely scattered in private hands and public institutions across the country and are thus difficult to obtain for study.
I would add that one major obstacle in this kind of exercise is that most of us do not approach tune comparison with the tools of "structural hearing"– or rather, our tools may not be all that sharp. In order to carry out deep level analysis one must be comfortable in recognizing musical devices such as inversions, octave shifts, interval substitutions, mode changes, tonal centers, weighted pitches, altered cadence points, and so forth. Schenkerian analysis– the specialized domain of musicologists– relies on such recognition, yet most of us have never even heard of Schenkerian analysis much less know how to employ it. Consider that native speakers of English usually are able to decipher the meaning or intent of sentences uttered by a non-native speaker though they may be grammatically less than perfect. Relying heavily on unconscious extrapolation, the listener is able to "error correct" and decipher the intent. Similar unconscious techniques used by tune comparativists are extremely difficult to articulate and are what make sharing casual analysis of fiddle tunes with others often frustrating. Belden, faced with the raw materials of lyric folksong, began to grasp the complexity of the problem, and Bayard surely realized the possibilities for deep level analysis when he referred to tunes themselves as "basic units" (see below). Cazden et al pointed to the subjectivity of recognition of variants– subjectivity resulting because we are all using different analytical tools in different ways and because our frames of reference are so fragmented. So, while they may not be all that sharp, the few analytical tools offered in this essay may get us closer to a shared understanding of the kinds of interaction that occurs between fiddle tunes, their titles, and their associated texts.
Melodic Themes and Units
In his article, "A Miscellany of Tune Notes," Bayard (1957) stated his belief that the compilation of a "workable melodic-thematic index of national or international tunes" would probably never be possible, for the reason that "the tune items we collect seem themselves to be our basic units, which have to be examined as wholes or in sections of such length that the relation of parts is not obscured." In the 1980s, James Cowdery echoed Bayard’s doubt about the prospects of a definitive classification system for archetypal folk melodies. At the same time, he noted the deficiencies in Bayard’s definition of "tune family" and went on to suggest that principles rather than imposed categories would be more useful for comparative study of folk songs and tunes. Cowdery’s melodic principles included "outlining," "conjoining," and "recombining," with each principle demonstrating ways in which a folk tune can draw from a pool of melodic possibilities. Bayard's statement that whole tunes or sections can function as basic units for comparative purposes is an important observation while Cowdery’s articulation of the ways that these units can interact has contributed to the explorations of tune "relatedness" in the sections that follow.
III. TITLE AND TEXT INTERRELATIONS
Significance of Fiddle Tune Titles
Few scholars have paused to consider fiddle tune titles as anything more than picturesque labels reflecting the quaintness of American folk imagination. Writers and folklorists including Howard Odum (1930), Carl Carmer (1934), J. Olcutt Sanders (1941), and Vance Randolph (1954) have published substantial lists of fiddle tune titles, but these appear to have been spawned by the authors' fascination with folk imagery and language rather than by any deep interest in musical content. Samuel Bayard once suggested that because so many titles are "floaters" (i.e. assigned by the musician according to whim or imperfect memory) "they are therefore useless for identifying or tracing melodies." While I do not disagree that such "floaters" are widespread, I have come to regard the titles of fiddle tunes as sometimes affording more than what Bayard felt was "an amusing insight into the fiddler's fancy." In spite of Bayard's additional belief (albeit many years ago) that "names by which the tunes go are the most casual, least permanent things about them," I have found that titles can be– and often are– useful signifiers pointing the way toward potential melodic, textual, and conceptual connections between pieces.
Fiddle tune titles have a long history of being orally transmitted and aurally perceived, and as such they are subject to truncation and transformation in much the same way as the tunes themselves. Such metamorphosis is, of course, basic to the stuff of folklore. Thus, the titles of fiddle tunes should be regarded not as fixed labels but as possible fragments of some larger body of verbal expressiveness appended freely (but not altogether randomly) to musical entities. Certainly one cannot depend on titles alone and expect to make much headway identifying melodic variants, but with a great many fiddle tunes, the title is related in some way to some text which at some time was sung to some part of the tune. The inherent challenge lies in being able to recognize when a title (or text) is merely a "floater" and when it in fact reflects a more meaningful link to a larger song / tune complex.
To illustrate this, three titles and some associated texts are offered for consideration: a) Miss Sally at the Party, b) I Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife, and c) Barlow Knife. On the surface, the three titles bear no connection to each other, but when some of their lyric couplets are compared their kinship on at least one level becomes apparent:
a) I asked Miss Sally to be my wife
She took at me with a bowie knife
b) I asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She run at me with a carving knife
c) I asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She cut my throat with a Barlow knife
Further examination of these items reveals that their tunes as well as their words are similar, but we will consider their musical aspects separately later on.
Structural Patterns of Title and Text
It has been widely observed that fiddle tune titles frequently exhibit patterns of syntax, the most common being x in the y, y on the z, and so forth where the title is built around a prepositional phrase. A few examples are Lightning in the East, Monkey in the Dog Cart, Soapsuds Over the Fence, Ladies on the Steamboat, Billy in the Low Ground, Natchez Under the Hill, Hell Among the Yearlings, etc. In addition to the prepositional phrase, however, some titles show an even closer structural alignment as illustrated by the following: Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On, Pretty Little Girl with the Blue Dress On, Walk Chalk Chicken with a Necktie On, and Granny Went to Meeting with Her Old Shoes On. Such constructions offer themselves as possible signifiers and the tune comparativist is wise to take note of them when encountered.
Other structural patterns can be identified as well. In annotating the fiddle tune Run, Nigger, Run, Alan Jabbour (1971b) related it to "an old and widespread dance and play-party tune appearing variously under the titles Jim Along Josie, Fire on the Mountain, Betty Martin, Granny Will Your Dog Bite, and others." While Jabbour did not say how he arrived at identifying these variants, it is interesting to note that each of the named pieces commonly contains text lines featuring a discernable rhythmic pattern, namely, three accented syllables at the end of the line, as in:
"Hi Jim, Ho Jim / Jim along Joe..."
"Fire on the mountain / run, boys, run..."
"Hey Betty Martin / tip toe fine..."
"Granny will your dog bite? / No, child, no...."
Other patterns are sometimes evident in the versification of couplets. One that is frequently encountered is modeled on the pattern A b; A c / A xyz. It is easier to grasp in context than as a formula, so here are some examples:
Juba dis, Juba dat
Juba kill a yaller cat
De boatman dance; de boatman sing
De boatman up to ebryting
De jawbone walk, and de jawbone talk
And de jawbone eat wid a knife and fork
A permutation follows the basic pattern but the second line is simply x,y,z:
Nigger run; nigger flew
Why in the devil can't a white man too
Come a little rain and come a little snow
The house fell down on Cotton Eyed Joe
Wind blowed high; wind blowed low
Blowed some sugar in my coffee-o.
In the following example, the subject-action formula (A:b; a:c) is missing but as with the previous items, two terse phrases, balanced and complete in themselves, are followed by a third of longer length:
My name is Sam; I don't give a damn
Druther be a nigger than a poor white man
While it’s true these structural patterns may sometimes be nothing more than generic conventions or devices, noting them can help the researcher discover melodically "related" pieces as well as other kinds of variants.
Rhythmic Patterns
Patterns of versification and title construction lead us to consider other types of devices which can function as signifiers. Professor Bayard noted the interesting and important connection between many titles and certain rhythmic patterns which are themselves common stock of the tunes. I have come to view these rhythmic patterns as crucial for comparative purposes since they tend to retain their stability to a much greater degree than do specific words in a title or text. In the case of the tunes and titles treated later in this study, a basic rhythmic pattern can be outlined thus:
 
The natural speech rhythm in titles like Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On is easily matched to this pattern, and the same rhythm functions as a cadential phrase in the melody as well. As it turns out, there are many titles that match this speech rhythm. The list of titles and text phrases in Figure 1 is not intended to be exhaustive, but it hints at the extent to which this rhythmic pattern and its permutations occurs in the music under discussion. It will be noticed that the great majority of these lines end with three distinct syllabic beats reflecting the final three quarter notes illustrated in the rhythmic pattern above. Judging from the list of examples in Figure 1, this trait is characteristic of a large body of music, and once the tune comparativist becomes aware of this pattern it becomes difficult to ignore. In the musical analysis section that follows, this two-measure pattern emerges as a cornerstone– one of Bayard’s "basic units"– in the tunes being discussed.
FIGURE 1. RHYTHMIC PATTERNING
The natural "barline" between "measures" has been indicated with a slash.
Old Aunt Jenny with the / Nightcap On
Up Jumped Jinny with her / Shirt Tail Torn
Walk, Chalk Chicken with a / Necktie On
Big Buck Nigger with his / Sea Boots On
Cornstalk Fiddle and a / Shoestring Bow
Jaybird Sittin’ in a / High Oak Tree
I Like Sugar in My / Coffee-o
Hey Aunt Katie There’s a / Bug on Me
Asked That Pretty Girl to / Be My Wife
Whose Been Here Since / I Been Gone
Swing Nine Yards of / Calico
Going Down to / Georgie-o
I'll Come Back and / Be Your Beau
Sift the Meal and / Save the Bran
Rich Man Stole a / Poor Man's Wife
Hawk Caught a Chicken and / Flew Upstairs
Granny Went to Meeting With Her / Old Shoes On
Want to Go to Meeting and I / Got No Shoes
Sailing Down the River on the / Ohio
Druther Be a Nigger Than a / Poor White Man
Pretty Little Girl With the / Blue Dress On
What You Gonna Do With the / Baby-o
Prettiest Little Girl in the / County-o
Granny Will Your Dog Bite / No, Child, No
Pick a Little Cotton and / Spin Some Too
Goin' to the Weddin' to / Get Some Cake
Big Footed Nigger in the / Sandy Lot
Sail Away, Ladies, / Sail Away
Sally's Upstairs With a / Hogeyed Man
Gonna Take Sal to the / Party-o
Goin' to the Weddin', / Sally Ann
Had a Little Fight in / Mexico
Fire on the Mountain / Run, Boys, Run
Grease That Wooden Leg, / Sally Ann
Shake That Wooden Leg, / Dineo
Great Big Taters in / Sandy Land
Jingle at the Window, / Tideo
Susan Loller on / Judio
Nebber Seen De Like Since / Gettin' Upstairs
Wheel About and Turn About, / Jump Jim Crow
Lay Around the Kitchen Til the / Cook Comes In
Can't Track a Rabbit When There / Ain't No Snow
Where Did You Come From / Cotton Eyed Joe
Never Lost Nothin' but a / Barlow Knife
Dandy Jim of / Caroline
Homemade Sugar and a / Puncheon Floor
Pretty Little Horse and / Buggy-o
Parallel title and text constructions and rhythmic patterns may lead the researcher to other kinds of similarities as well, and while we have to keep in mind that these similarities are not necessarily evidence of "biological" tune kinship (whatever that might be), they nevertheless make us aware of certain kinds of conventions. Such conventions may mirror an underlying "grammar" that can be helpful in understanding our material.
Keyword Continuity
The continuity of certain words or phrases sustained across multiple examples indicates that these words or phrases sometimes have a higher degree of stability than others. Take the words "fiddle" and "bow" for instance. It matters not whether the phrase or title involves a "cornstick fiddle and peavine bow" or a "cornstalk fiddle and buckeye bow." The keywords themselves are retained while the modifiers are changed. A knife can be a "Bowie knife," "Barlow knife," "carving knife," "butcher knife," "old case knife," and so on. In some cases, the keywords are retained while the sentence context is changed completely, as with the following two couplets:
Hold my fiddle and hold my bow
Til I knock the devil out of Cotton Eyed Joe
Selled my fiddle and selled my bow
To buy my wife a little calico.
Sometimes the keyword is the only obvious link between phrases, for instance, with "calico":
All dressed up in calico...
Can't get around for the calico...
Swing nine yards of calico....
This continual reappearance of keywords and phrases is one type of "signpost" by which to navigate from piece to piece in search of "relatives."
Retention of Morphemes and Phonemes
In perusing the list of titles and text phrases in Figure 1, it will be noticed that the speech sound of the closing syllable seems to be a point of relative stability, for instance, the phrases ending with the long "o" sound (Joe, beau, calico, snow, baby-o, coffee-o, county-o) and also words ending with "n" (on, gone, in, torn, run). Such behavior is easily explained since the lines in tradition function interchangeably in the context of rhyming couplets. Additionally, though, factors of speech sound sometimes offer subtle but important links between pieces. It is difficult to describe and easier to cite some examples. The titles Sandy Land and Sally Ann share certain sounds, namely S, L, Y, short A, and N. Even though the correspondence is not strictly parallel, the most important sounds have been retained. And it so happens that musical similarities between Sally Ann and Great Big Taters in Sandy Land are readily accepted by most people familiar with the tunes. Furthermore, Sail Away Ladies, an additional member of the same tune cluster likewise retains the S, A, L, and Y sounds. Another example of this sort of phoneme-morpheme parallel occurs in the titles Fire on the Mountain (often pronounced "mounting" in earlier times) and Flowers of the Morning. Another example of shared sounds at the title level is Thumping Bug and Jumping Buck. There is also Dineo, Darneo, Horneo, Tideo, and Toddy-o. The transformation of some sounds and the retention of others can be seen in Betty Martin, Betty Larkin, Betsy Likens, and Becca Lawton. At times the parallels can be rather general, as between Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On and Up Jumped Jinny with Her Shirt Tail Torn. Admittedly, the retention of phonemic and morphemic sounds can be a very subtle type of signifier but it is nevertheless a useful tool in some instances.
Conceptual Relatedness
Conceptual links go a step further than keywords and phrases by encompassing themes and ideas. While a specific word or phrase may retain some continuity, this is not essential. Similarity of some thematic thread can sometimes be enough to steer the researcher to other relevant items. For instance, many of the titles and text lines cited in Figure 1 have to do with wearing an article of clothing: Granny Went to Meeting with her Old Shoes On, Old Aunt Jenny with a Nightcap On, Pretty Little Girl with the Blue Dress On, and so forth. It's true that these examples also show stability in the prepositional phrase structure, but such would not have to be the case. For instance, "Shake that wooden leg, Dineo..." might show up in title form as Wooden Leg Diana or Kate's Got a Wooden Leg. Consider both the structural and the conceptual links between the following:
I asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She came at me with a Bowie knife.
Asked that girl to be my beau
She hacked at me with a grubbing hoe.
The combination of specific words within a conceptual framework is the one of the most commonly encountered kind of signifiers linking two items to each other.
Thus far, I have tried to show that titles and texts associated with fiddle music offer some potential for establishing various kinds of relatedness between entitities. The most convincing evidence that these elements can and do function as signifiers lies in the comparison of the tunes themselves. In the next section, a number of transcribed pieces are presented along with explication of their "kinship" factors– that is, the keywords and text phrases, rhythmic patterns of texts and tunes, conceptual constants, patterns of versification, and correlations of melodic material that taken individually and together suggest an organic bond.
In attempting to organize titles, texts and tunes, the comparativist quickly finds that the complex interrelations do not lend themselves easily or well to presentation in a linear printed format. A web-based model with random access links is probably a more effective means to study this type of material. Be that as it may, it is hoped that the examples presented will illustrate the ways that the patterns and tools just outlined can be used to recognize musical interrelations. Essentially, my purpose is to show that a sizeable number of "fiddle tunes" (far more than might be supposed) are manifestations or extensions of a single unified musical idea. In grossly oversimplified terms, the tune items presented in this study might be said to be all "the same tune." The examples (culled from a substantially larger pool) have been selected to illustrate a perceived continuity, but ideally, a larger body of material should be organized and analyzed further to help us learn more about how this continuity might be supported or challenged.
IV. MUSICAL EXAMPLES AND ANALYSIS
The activity of tune comparison can be likened to a skip rope game in progress. There is no real starting place– one just jumps in. Beginning with one tune as performed or printed (the "reference tune"), the "comparativist" works toward uncovering "relatives" of the reference tune by noting the various kinds of "signifiers" outlined in the previous section. While there is a certain element of deliberateness about such activity, many discoveries are just as likely to emerge serendipitously from listening and browsing. It is worth mentioning again that these examples are drawn from across the historic and geographic spectrum reflecting the genre of "American Fiddle Music" defined earlier:
1. Old Miss Sally (Mississippi, 1930s)
2. Miss Sally at the Party (Mississippi, 1930s)
3. Prettiest Little Girl in the County-o (Georgia, 1920s)
4. Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoestring Bow (Kentucky, 1990s)
5. Sugar in the Coffee (Missouri, 1950s?)
6. Cotton Eyed Joe (presumed Midwest, 1930s)
7. Cotton Eyed Joe (See Christeson)
8. Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife (Oklahoma, 1960s)
9. Rich Man Stole a Poor Man's Wife (Kentucky, 1980s)
10. Where's That Nigger With the White Man's Wife (Illinois, 1970s)
11. Sugar in the Coffee (Illinois, 1970s)
12. Barlow Knife (Kentucky, 1940s)
13. Tideo (Oklahoma, 1930s)
14. Sail Away Ladies (Tennessee, 1920s)
15. The Josie Girl (Tennessee, 1980s)
16. Old Aunt Jenny With Her Nightcap On (Kentucky, 1990s)
17. Old Aunt Jenny (presumed Midwest, 1930s)
18. Susan’s Gone to the Ball with Her Blue Dress On (Kentucky, 1970s)
19. Susan’s Gone (Kentucky, 1970s)
20. Sweet Susan (Kentucky, 1930s)
21. Goin’ Down to Georgie-o (West Virginia, 1970s)
22. What You Gonna Do with the Baby (Virginia, 1920s)
23. Horse and Buggy-o (Kentucky, 1970s)
24. I’ve Got a Gal Named Susie (Kentucky, 1970s)
The Cadential Phrase
In Figure 1, we saw examples of a widespread two-measure pattern for various titles and text phrases. In this section, we will briefly revisit some of those text phrases and see how they function as cadential phrases in the context of a tune. The cadential phrases in Figure 2 are given to provide the reader with a handy reference point which may be kept in mind as our analysis unfolds. The cadential phrase occupies the final two measures of either the "fine" or "coarse" strain, always descending from somewhere in the vicinity of D’ or G’ to the strain's conclusion on the tonic G.
FIGURE 2. CADENTIAL PHRASES
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Having pointed out the fundamentally similar nature of the cadential phrase in our study tune examples, we can now proceed on a tune by tune journey discovering further melodic and textual connections. Rather than verbalize every aspect of melodic movement for each tune– which would be tedious for the reader– I will simply mention points of interest along the way. Readers can determine for themselves whether the tunes are "the same" or "different."
The Reference Tune
The first two examples were collected in Mississippi in 1939. A cursory comparison of the tunes and texts of Old Miss Sally and Miss Sally at the Party should satisfy the reader that the two pieces are transformations or "variants" of each other. For the sake of simplicity in the analysis that follows, I may at times use an abbreviated title Miss Sally in order to refer to them collectively as "the reference tune."
1. OLD MISS SALLY
 
Sung to fine strain:
Oh Miss Sally, Sally; Oh Miss Sally Sally
Oh Miss Sally Sally; Goin’ to the party-o.
Sung to coarse strain:
I asked Miss Sally for to be my wife
She run at me with a butcher knife.
Asked Miss Sally for to be my wife
She said she wouldn’t for to save my life.
2. MISS SALLY AT THE PARTY
 
Sung to fine strain:
I asked Miss Sally for to be my wife
She stuck at me with a bowie knife…
Sung to coarse strain:
Miss Sally, Miss Sally
[Goin’?] to the party-o.
Before continuing, a brief review of the "signifiers" that enable us to establish a credible link between Old Miss Sally and Miss Sally at the Party may be helpful. Textually, the retention of the keyword "Sally" in the titles is one such link. Of course, "Sally" is such a commonly encountered name in black and white folk tradition that it can’t be assigned much weight as a signifier on its own, but here– when considered along with the lyric couplets– it is an obvious link. The sharing of the keyword phrases regarding "Miss Sally" and the conceptual link of "goin' to the party" is worth noting, as are the lines about asking Sally "to be my wife." In Old Miss Sally, the couplet "Asked Miss Sally to be my wife / She stuck at me with a bowie knife" is sung to the coarse strain, whereas in Miss Sally at the Party, the corresponding line is sung to the fine strain. Rhythmically, either of the strains can support such lyrics and the folk fiddler merely inserts them wherever they seem to fit, so we need not be too concerned with the interchangeability of the coarse and fine strains in that regard. A general melodic comparison of the two pieces reveals that their fine and coarse strains each follow very similar contours– the principle Cowdery calls "outlining." Together, all these factors point to the two pieces being extensions of the same musical idea. With these as reference tunes then, we can begin to bring in other material for comparison.
Other Examples
In the 1920s, a north Georgia fiddle band, Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers, made a commercial 78 rpm record of a song called Prettiest Little Girl in the County-o.
3. PRETTIEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE COUNTY-O
 
Their rendition included the following couplet sung to the fine strain:
Cornstalk fiddle and a pea-vine bow
Gonna take Sal to the party-o.
The keywords "Sal" and "party-o" in the second line make us think of Miss Sally at the Party and suggest that further textual-melodic connection might exist between Prettiest Little Girl in the County and our reference tune, Old Miss Sally. Additionally, the rhythmic speech pattern present in the Skillet Lickers’ couplet echoes the rhythm found in the words sung to Old Miss Sally:
 
Corn - stalk fid - dle and a | pea - vine bow
Gonna take Sal to the par - ty, o
(I) | asked Miss Sal-ly for to | be my wife
(She) | run at me with a but - cher knife
A cursory comparison of the transcribed tunes of Miss Sally at the Party and Prettiest Girl in the County shows little note for note correspondence, but if literal comparison is suspended, the fine strains at least are perceived to have strikingly similar melodic contours. Both tunes start in the vicinity of G’ and cadence in the second measure on D’. The third measure returns to the vicinity of G’ then descends to cadence in the fourth measure an octave lower on G. The "snap" rhythm in the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th measures of Prettiest Little Girl in the County reflects the fiddle rendering but is of no consequence since the words, when sung, are rendered in straight time. Though the two melodies seem to show little correspondence beyond cadence points and general contour, I reemphasize the words of Professor Bayard, quoted earlier: "...the tune items we collect seem to be our basic units, which have to be examined as wholes or in sections of such length that the relation of parts is not obscured." (1957: 151) For comparison then, the entire four bars must be grasped and considered as a unit, without giving excessive weight to the pitches of individual notes within it. Although the surface level melody may seem different, when grasped at the level of the four-measure unit, the similarity is much easier to perceive.
With Prettiest Little Girl in the County, we begin to expand our stock of "signifiers" starting with the couplet from the Skillet Lickers:
Cornstalk fiddle and a pea-vine bow
Gonna take Sal to the party-o.
A variation of that phrase is discovered in the title Cornstalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow, a tune played by Kentucky fiddler, Clyde Davenport.
4. CORNSTALK FIDDLE AND A SHOESTRING BOW
 
The melodic contour of Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoe String Bow differs in the first two bars of the fine strain, but it follows the descent to G at the fourth measure cadence as in both Miss Sally and Prettiest Little Girl in the County. For the moment, this cadence and the title/text connection are the main visible means by which Davenport’s Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoestring Bow can be linked to Prettiest Girl in the County. The case for a connection is strengthened, however, by a text appearing in a WPA field collection made in Kentucky in 1936. While no music notation was provided, the following couplet contained in a piece entitled Corn Stalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow gives us a tangible "link" to Prettiest Girl in the County.
Cornstalk fiddle and a shoestring bow
The best old fiddle in the county, Oh.
If we return momentarily to trace a few text threads of Prettiest Little Girl in the County we will be better armed to hunt for variants. For instance, the Skillet Lickers’ sang one couplet thus:
Prettiest little girl in the county-o
Mammy and daddy both say so.
This rhyme hearkens back (conceptually at least) to the mid-nineteenth century as evidenced by the following couplet from the song, The Gal in the Cabbage Line, found in Elton's Songs and Melodies for the Multitude; or Universal Songster (1864: 35).
My old Mommy told me, Oh,
The best looking gal in the city, Oh.
The organic nature of such couplets and their tendency to drift and mutate is well illustrated by a similar couplet from Dandy Jim of Caroline in the same volume:
Yes, my old massa told me so,
"You'm de handsomest Nigger in de country, oh!"
I look in de glass, it's true I fine [sic]
None like Dandy Jim ob Caroline.
Dandy Jim of Caroline is generally credited to the famous minstrel showman and composer, Daniel Decatur Emmett. While the origins of this piece are not definitive, Nathan (1962, 1977) suggests that it first appeared as "a Popular Negro Melody" in 1843. The tune with and without text has been printed many times. The Oliver Ditson Company of Boston published Minstrel Songs, Old and New in 1910 and gave the following refrain to Dandy Jim of Caroline:
For my ole massa tole me so,
I'm de best looking nigga in de county oh,
I look in de glass, an I found it so,
Just as massa tell me, oh.
While an exploration of variants and progeny of Dandy Jim of Caroline would no doubt prove interesting in and of itself, that title does not generally figure in the repertories of 20th century fiddlers so no transcription is offered here. Instead, we will use the above couplets to lead us to another tune item that does have a high profile in living tradition as Sugar in the Coffee-o.
A text version called Sugar in Coffee [sic] appears in Thomas Talley’s valuable compendium Negro Folk Rhymes (1922). There we find yet another variant of the two couplets cited above from Elton's songster merged with a transformed second couplet from the Oliver Ditson printing of Dandy Jim of Caroline.
I'se de prettiest liddle gal in de county-o
My mammy an' daddy, dey bofe say so
I looks in de glass, it don't say "No;"
So I'll take sugar in de coffee-o.
Talley's recombining of "prettiest liddle gal in de county-o" with the phrase "sugar in de coffee-o" is particularly important. A careful listening to the Skillet Lickers’ rendering of Prettiest Little Girl in the County reveals the phrase "sugar in the coffee-o" incorporated in the song. Sugar in the Coffee is a frequently encountered title and text phrase in American fiddle music, with numerous recorded examples and several notated versions available to examine. Possibly the Skillet Lickers drew their version directly from the minstrelsy tradition documented in Talley and the earlier songsters. At any rate, we can now use the phrase "sugar in the coffee" as a signifier, and sure enough, we find the following separate piece entitled Sugar in the Coffee collected from the late Frank Reed of Missouri printed in a collection by R. P. Christeson (1984:80).
5. SUGAR IN THE COFFEE
 
Comparing the melody of Frank Reed’s Sugar in the Coffee with Clyde Davenport's Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoestring Bow, we find they are so close that there can be no doubt that a single tune has become associated with these two titles. While the printing of Reed’s tune does not carry any text, other versions of Sugar in the Coffee do, and these will be introduced a little later on. For now, though, we can accept Sugar in the Coffee as a member of our study complex by virtue of it’s melodic similarity and the text connections cited above.
Returning for a moment to Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoestring Bow, we can explore further the use of that title and text phrase as a signifier to locate other possible "relatives." In Lomax & Lomax (1934) we find an item with the following couplet:
Cornstalk fiddle and cornstalk bow
I'm gwine to beat hell out of cottoneyed Joe.
The Lomaxes also give the following couplet, which retains the keywords "fiddle" and "bow" but varies the context in which they appear:
Hol' my fiddle an hol' my bow,
Whilst I knocks ole Cotton Eyed Joe.
As suggested by the second line in each couplet, the Lomax’s song-tune item is called Cotton Eyed Joe. By extension, then, we can expand our investigation to include not only the "cornstalk fiddle" phrase, but also the phrase or title "Cotton Eyed Joe." American traditional music abounds with references to the latter so one need not look far to find examples. Marion Thede (1967) printed the following couplet for a tune she collected under the title Cotton Eyed Joe:
Cornstalk fiddle and shoestring bow
Come down gals on Cotton Eyed Joe.
This second example mixing the "cornstalk fiddle" and "cotton eyed joe" text motifs strengthens the possible connection between Davenport’s Cornstalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow and a new entry called Cotton Eyed Joe, the latter a well-known title with a wide circulation among folk fiddlers. Collectors encountering Cotton Eyed Joe have remarked at the variety of "versions" in tradition. In Traditional Music of America, Ira Ford (1940: 60) prints Cotton Eyed Joe and I have given his version next for it is unmistakably the melody played by Clyde Davenport as Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoe String Bow and Frank Reed as Sugar in the Coffee.
6. COTTON EYED JOE
 
One aspect of Ford’s tune that calls attention to itself is the distinctive cadence on C’ in mm. 2 and 6 of the coarse strain. This cadence is an important feature and one that would figure prominently in a spur study of the Cotton Eyed Joe tune "family," but for sake of space, we will simply acknowledge it here as a "variation" since the cadence on B (as in the Reed and Davenport versions) seems to be more widely distributed. The familiar final cadence encountered in the fine strain of Miss Sally at the Party is still with us in Ford’s Cotton Eyed Joe, though the typical three beat phrase– a trademark of the tune complex being discussed– has been modified slightly by permutation. Finally, Ford's text for Cotton Eyed Joe echoes one of the Lomax verses given above.
Hold my fiddle and hold my bow
Till I knock the devil out of Cotton Eyed Joe.
Thus we now have several links between Cornstalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow, Sugar in the Coffee, and Cotton Eyed Joe. In seeking out other versions of Cotton Eyed Joe, we find a tune by that name in the Christeson collection (1973: No. 27).
7. COTTON EYED JOE
 
In Christeson’s example, the melody is embellished in such a way that recognition of similarity depends heavily on mm. 2 and 6 in the fine strain. The C’ cadence variant found in the Ford version (coarse strain mm. 2 & 6) has restabilized to its position on B bringing it more in line with our reference tune. But we find that the Christeson version introduces yet a different variation, namely the final cadence of each four measure phrase is shifted from the tonic G to the dominant D, reminding us of Cazden, Haufrecht, and Studer’s observation cited earlier that "cadence points prove variable." Rather than pursue the distinctive melodic features of these cadences– which might well serve as signifiers in themselves– we will leave them as spur studies to be undertaken at another time.
Thus far, we have been following various threads which establish credible links between the Miss Sally tunes, Prettiest Little Girl in the County, Cornstalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow, Sugar in the Coffee-o, and Cotton Eyed Joe. At this juncture, our investigation shifts briefly back to one of our reference tunes, Old Miss Sally, to pick up another thread of inquiry, this time beginning with and moving outward from the text
I asked Miss Sally to be my wife
She run at me with a butcher knife.
The first line becomes a signifier when we discover that Marion Thede (1967:86-87) has printed a tune called I Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife with couplets offering a close textual link to our two Miss Sally tunes.
8. I ASKED THAT PRETTY GIRL TO BE MY WIFE
 
Asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She wouldn't do it to save my life.
Asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She run at me with a carving knife (or old case knife).
The melody presented in the example is derived from the vocal part given by Thede rather than the fiddle transcription which is erratic in ways that would only confuse matters here. Since we are interested in the song (as manifest in the fiddle context) the vocal melody is an appropriate means by which to show the tune's resemblance to the coarse strain of Old Miss Sally. Comparing the coarse strain second measure cadences in each tune, we find that they are inversions of each other– I Asked That Pretty Girl... going up a third from B to D’ and Old Miss Sally descending D’ to B– but the third and fourth measures are so close as to be easily grasped as permutations of the same melodic idea.
 
Now begins a rounding up and examination of other couplets which share material with our growing stock of titles, words, and phrases. One piece which incorporates both the "be my wife" phrase and "knife" keyword is the tune known over a wide area as Barlow Knife. Examples for comparison are easily come by, but before we examine a transcription of Barlow Knife per se, we might note a few tangential items– text references mostly– which help link Barlow Knife to the items examined so far.
Sometimes the mischievous sentiments expressed by the narrator in the Miss Sally and I Asked That Pretty Girl... verses above are carried to a gruesome extreme, as in the couplets for Barlow Knife sung by Ballard "Pappy" Taylor, a fiddler from Rabbit Hash, Kentucky:
I asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She cut my throat with a barlow knife.
I asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She just kept cuttin' with a barlow knife.
And other equally keen edged versions have turned up. Bruce Greene once heard the following verse sung by a fiddler in Kentucky in the 1970s:
Rich man killed a poor man's wife
Cut her in two with a barlow knife.
Though the textual tone of the piece has shifted dramatically from amusing to deadly, the transformation is nevertheless useful. Following the signifier of the first text line from Bruce Greene, we can cite a piece played by Estill Bingham, an elderly fiddler in Bell County, Kentucky. In the 1980s, Bingham played for collector Bob Butler a piece he called Rich Man Stole the Poor Man's Wife.
9. RICH MAN STOLE THE POOR MAN'S WIFE
 
Although Mr. Bingham did not pass along any words, the first three measures of his tune’s coarse strain contain prominent melodic material found in the fine strains of Christeson’s Sugar in the Coffee, Davenport’s Cornstalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow, and Ford’s Cotton Eyed Joe. Mr. Bingham’s fine strain melody seems relatively unlike others so far in our study complex, and this may represent the "outer fringe" where tunes lose their recognizability as belonging in a certain tune family. Still, the cadential phrase seems in keeping with our group, and the tentative link between the title and the "barlow knife" motif suggests that the tune belongs in our pool.
Drawing on "poor man’s wife" as a signifier, we bring in another piece. In 1979, Garry Harrison recorded from Ethel "Red" Abbott of Coles County, Illinois, the fine and coarse strains of a piece Abbott called Where's That Nigger with the White Man's Wife.
10. WHERE'S THAT NIGGER WITH THE WHITE MAN'S WIFE
 
The source field recording for the above tune provides only a brief (perhaps fragmentary) rendition, and again, though we have no lyrics other than the title spoken by Mr. Abbott, there are clear melodic links to other tunes in our study complex. The fine strain of Where’s That Nigger With the White Man’s Wife is nearly identical to the fine strain of Clyde Davenport's Cornstalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow. The coarse strain of Abbott’s piece appears to be melodically truncated with only the final four (of an implied eight) measures being played. Even so, those measures closely match the final four coarse strain measures of Christeson's Sugar in the Coffee and Ford’s Cotton Eyed Joe.
 
While the previous two examples do not feature texts, the next one does– under a name that is already familiar. Another field recording made by Garry Harrison features Harvey "Pappy" Taylor of Effingham County, Illinois (not to be confused with Ballard "Pappy" Taylor of Kentucky). Mr. Taylor played this piece which he called Sugar in the Coffee.
11. SUGAR IN THE COFFEE
 
After concluding the tune, Mr. Taylor told the collector "That there’s the old– well, we call it about three names. We call it Sugar in the Coffee but some people calls it the old Barlow Knife."
The tune is fairly representative of "generic" versions of Sugar in the Coffee and it is interesting to note that Mr. Taylor varied the cadence in the coarse strain, sometimes resting on the tonic G and sometimes on E. This reinforces the idea that cadence points can be "live," that is, subject to change at the whim of the player rather than being a fixed feature of a given tune. If we acknowledge this flexibility (recalling that "cadence points prove variable"), it makes it easier to accept tunes featuring different cadential phrases as potentially "related." What is particularly significant about this rendition are the lyric couplets provided by Mr. Taylor :
Nigger was a-walkin' with a white man's wife
Killed that nigger with a barlow knife.
Best old knife that ever was made
Buckhorn handle and a Barlow blade.
Certainly, that Illinois item collected in 1979 bears some connection to two verses that Appalachian scholar Cratis Williams recalled in print in 1937. Williams heard these words while growing up on Caines Creek in eastern Kentucky earlier in the century:
The nigger stole the white man’s wife,
The white man stabbed ‘im with a Barlow Knife.
The Barlow knife, a dangerous knife,
To cause that nigger fer to lose his life.
Rhymes like these– collected over time and space– begin to hint intriguingly at a larger story, a narrative that might possibly be reconstructed if the disjointed fragments scattered in archival field recordings, published collections, and musicians' memories could somehow be reassembled. Be that as it may, a piece called Barlow Knife is now squarely in our study complex, and an instrumental version is presented next for melodic comparison (especially with Miss Sally at the Party).
12. BARLOW KNIFE
 
In the fine strain of John Salyer’s Barlow Knife notated above, we discern echoes of the Miss Sally reference tunes, especially in the final cadential phrases. Salyer’s piece, however, introduces some interesting alternatives such as a cadence on E’ in the second measure instead of the D’ we find in most of our study tunes. Salyer’s fine strain lingers in the higher register with forays up to B’, a feature that is also uncharacteristic of the pieces we’ve been considering. The coarse strain is found to mirror the fine strain of Davenport’s Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoestring Bow, Christeson’s Sugar in the Coffee, and Ford’s Cotton Eyed Joe, except that Salyer’s piece contains an inversion of the cadence in mm. 2 and 6. While most of our other examples ascend from D’ to G’ for the second measure cadence, Salyer’s drops from D’ to G. Given the other links establishing Barlow Knife as a member of the tune complex under study, Salyer’s rendering would seem to show just how much a tune can be "stretched" and still remain recognizable. It’s clear that we are seeing the emergence of quite a large complex of signifying phrases, titles, and melodic motifs, giving us many avenues to explore.
Moving out from Barlow Knife and picking up again the thread of Thede’s I Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife we find the following couplet printed in B. A. Botkin’s American Play Party Songs (1937: 333):
Asked her if she’d be my wife
She said she wouldn't for a barlow knife.
This verse– ostensibly a childrens’ rhyme– is given with a play party song, Tideo. Seeking out other sources for Tideo, we find a very close variation of the text printed in Wolford’s The Play Party in Indiana (1916:96).
I asked that girl to be my wife
She said "No, not on your life.
This is reminiscent of Thede’s verse:
Asked that pretty girl to be my wife
She wouldn’t do it to save my life
Possibly, Bayard and others might call these examples "floating verses" but that term implies a somewhat random association, and I hope to show that the connection, while subtle, is not merely random. For one thing, there is the suggestion made by John Lair (1931) that the title Tideo is a corruption of "Toddy-o" as found in "an old fiddle tune" called "I Love Sugar in My Toddy-o." Regardless of whether or not this theory has a basis in fact (I have not located the latter title), it does bolster the likely connection to Sugar in the Coffee-o. There is also melodic evidence.
 
13. TIDEO
Botkin’s tune notated above, because of it's function for a specific game, contains two measures (mm. 7 & 8) which are extraneous to our comparison. But if one hums the melody and simply skips from m.6 to m.9, the contour can be seen as a rough correlation with the melody of Thede's I Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife which in turn is melodically related to the coarse strain of our reference tune, Old Miss Sally. Tideo also features the distinctive cadential phrase which has by now become the hallmark of tunes in our study complex.
A Digression: Tideo and Sail Away Ladies
The introduction of Tideo into this corpus marks the entry point to another very large tune complex involving such widely known titles as Sally Ann, Great Big Taters in Sandy Land, Sail Away Ladies and offshoots of the Tideo name– Dideo, Dineo, Darneo, Dolly-o, Horneo, Toddy-o, and others. The connection may be difficult to see for a number of reasons. One is that the Sally Ann family of tunes is usually rendered in the key of D in the southern mountains or in A (cross tuned) in the midwest, whereas tunes in our complex are predominantly centered around the key of G. The key a piece is played in directly affects the "sound" of the tune owing to the relationship of open strings and two note chords to the melody being played. A more substantial obstacle to recognition of Sally Ann tunes as essentially transformations of Miss Sally at the Party et al has to do with the way most musicians have heard the underlying chord progression for the Sally Ann complex. Generally, the tune is rendered with considerable emphasis on the IV chord (or the substituted relative minor) to create a "tension" which is "released" by resolution to the tonic. The presence of the IV chord affects the overall sound of the tune so greatly that it assumes a musical identity seemingly unrelated to our cluster of G examples, which would rely almost exclusively on I and V chords for underlying harmony. While the vast majority of recorded performances of Sally Ann type tunes involve an implied or explicit harmony based on I, IV, V chords, there is a very good example of Sail Away Ladies which uses only the I (and possibly V) chord and brings in lyrics which are a direct link to the texts we have been examining.
The fiddler, Henry Bandy (1876-1943), was originally from Macon County, Tennessee and later moved to Kentucky and was one of the early fiddlers to perform on the Grand Old Opry in the mid 1920s. The tune of Sail Away Ladies transcribed below comes from a test record Bandy made in 1928 for the Gennett Record Co. in Richmond, Indiana. As Charles Wolfe (1983) has noted, Bandy was among the earliest born fiddlers to have been commercially recorded. His rendering of Sail Away Ladies therefore stands a good chance of being the oldest recorded version available to us. I like to think that Bandy’s lack of implied IV chord harmony (the recording was a fiddle solo played in standard tuning using key of G fingering) predates the impact guitars came to have on fiddle music generally.
14. SAIL AWAY LADIES
 
sung to fine strain
I asked that gal to be my wife
She up’d at me with a butcher knife
sung to coarse strain
Sail away ladies, sail away
Sail away ladies, sail away
sung to fine strain
I asked that gal to be my beau
She hacked at me with a grubbing hoe
sung to coarse strain
Sift the meal and save the bran
Shake that wooden leg, Sally Ann
Bandy’s piece incorporates some dotted phrases but these should not obscure the overall contour of the melody which is quite similar in both strains to the two Miss Sally reference tunes. To test this, the reader is encouraged to play or hum over the three pieces one after another in random order. Do not look for literal note for note matching, but instead regard the fine and coarse strains as units unto themselves. Pay particular attention to the fine strain cadential phrases.
In addition to melodic links, there are rhythmic speech pattern connections between these examples. The most obvious pattern occurs in the form of the three quarter-note beats at the end of text lines, thus:
a) Sail away ladies / Sail a-way
b) Shake that wooden leg / Shir-ley Ann
c) Oh Miss Sally / Sal-ly-[o]
d) Goin’ to the / par-ty-o
e) All go jingling / Ti-de-o
Bandy’s verse incorporating "I asked that gal to be my wife" links us to several of our previous study tunes including Miss Sally at the Party, I Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife, Barlow Knife and Tideo. Another tangential but important textual link is discovered in the refrain sung to some versions (not Bandy’s) of Sail Away Ladies: "Don't you rock on, dideo." The possible derivation of "tideo" from "toddy-o" was mentioned earlier but another possible connection exists between the words "tideo" and "dideo." The term "dideo" referring to an African-American dance party was explained in the early 1970s by Mary Wright, an elderly black woman from Gracey, Kentucky:
"Wen we were young we uster hev parties called ‘Dideoos,’ de banjo would play en den de girls would line up on one side of de cabin en de boys on de tother side while the folks war a clappin en er playing why de boys en girls wuld choose dar parrners...." (Harrison 1971:53).
Scarborough (1925:115) also printed the word "dideeo" in a "dance song" that her assistant, Ola Lee Gulledge, collected from two North Carolina black women who explained that the word "indicated the dance movements rather than anything else." Mary Wheeler (1944:45) published a roustabout song, John Gilbert, with the refrain "John Gilbert is the boat, Di De Oh, Di De Oh / John Gilbert is the boat Di De Oh, / Runnin' in the Cincinnati trade..." Given these references, one could speculate that "tideo" (a dance step?), "sail away ladies" (a dance motion?), and "gonna take Sal to the party-o" may all hearken back to rural picnics ["parties"] enjoyed in African-American social settings.
To recap thus far, Henry Bandy’s Sail Away Ladies is joined to our study complex through a) melodic similarity to Miss Sally at the Party et al, and b) text connections to Miss Sally at the Party, Old Miss Sally, Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife, Barlow Knife, and Tideo. The digression concerning "dideo" suggests that some underlying concept or practice based in real life (i.e. African-American parties or picnics) may provide a logical (but not exclusive) foundation for the title, text, and tune interrelations being discovered. END OF DIGRESSSION
We return now to Frank Reed’s Sugar in the Coffee to pick up on a new point of departure. The first four measures of Reed’s Sugar in the Coffee were played note for note by Tennessee fiddler Charlie Acuff in a piece he learned from his grandfather. His grandfather called the tune The Josie Girl, but according to Acuff "some people call it The Girl with the Blue Dress On." The latter title is encountered frequently in the eastern U.S. and, as with Cotton Eyed Joe, there are quite a number of distinguishable tunes which have become attached to the title. These tunes are tied into the present study by virtue of title and text connections, but are largely deserving of their own study which is beyond our scope here. The title The Josie Girl derives from the couplet sung by Mr. Acuff:
Where's that girl; where's she gone
Where's that girl with the josie on?
Note the A:b / A:c / A:x,y,z verse construction pattern cited in an earlier section.
15. THE JOSIE GIRL
 
My reason for introducing The Josie Girl is that while the tune ties in nicely with our other examples, Mr. Acuff’s couplet given above leads us to another of Clyde Davenport's fiddle tunes, Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On.
16. OLD AUNT JENNY WITH HER NIGHTCAP ON
 
Clyde sings to the fine strain:
Who's been here since I been gone
Old Aunt Jenny with her nightcap on.
We have been led to Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On by a signifying couplet, but an examination of the tune reveals a melodic connection as well. The coarse strain of Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On coincides neatly with the fine strain of The Josie Girl and is even closer to the coarse strain of John Salyer's Barlow Knife. Following the title from Davenport's piece it is a logical step to the possibly truncated title printed in Ford's collection (1940:48) as Old Aunt Jenny.
17. OLD AUNT JENNY
 
The first thing to observe is that the lyrics given by Ford mirror those sung by Clyde Davenport.
Who's been here since I been gone (x 3)
Old Aunt Jenny with her nightcap on.
Melodic comparison of the fine strain of both pieces reveals considerable similarity in contour, the only obvious deviation occurring in Ford’s m.4 which avoids descending to the tonic G but restates the D’ seen in m.2. Notice that both fine strains feature a slight rise in the 7th measure before the final descent to the tonic. As for the coarse strains, Davenport's closely resembles the coarse strain of Salyer's Barlow Knife while Ford's echoes the coarse part of Prettiest Little Girl in the County-o. The principle which James Cowdery (1984) has designated melodic "conjoining" is shown to be at work. "Conjoining" describes cases when two tunes share similar material in only one of their strains. It is interesting and significant that the non-similar strains of Old Aunt Jenny and Old Aunt Jenny with her Nightcap On are also each found to share melodic material with other members of our tune "complex."
Some readers familiar with fiddling repertoire in the upland south may notice that the text line "Who’s been here since I’ve gone..." is a signifier itself, pointing to various tunes which use that line as a title. Because of the complexity of comparison and analysis of those tunes, and because like Sail Away Ladies, Who’s Been Here Since I’ve Been Gone draws us into yet another large tune complex, it is best to leave that avenue unexplored in this essay. However, it was mentioned earlier that Charlie Acuff sometimes referred to The Josie Girl as The Girl with the Blue Dress On. Taking the phrase "blue dress on" as a signifier, we are pointed toward some other pieces. One from northeastern Kentucky is Susan’s Gone to the Ball with Her Blue Dress On.
18. SUSAN’S GONE TO THE BALL WITH HER BLUE DRESS ON
 
The transcription above presents only a representative portion of the piece. As played, it features no repeated sections. Throughout, we find small reminders of tunes examined earlier. Sections b, c, and f are very reminiscent of the fine strain of John Salyer’s Barlow Knife while section g follows the coarse strain contour of Clyde Davenport’s Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On and also Charlie Acuff’s Josie Girl.
Given Charlie Kinney’s title Susan’s Gone to the Ball with Her Blue Dress On, it would seem plausible that Susan’s Gone– a tune played by Morris Allen– might represent a truncated version of the longer title. Allen was recorded by Guthrie Meade and Mark Wilson in the same geographical region as Charlie Kinney, raising the possibility that the two musicians may have shared a common heritage for the tune.
19. SUSAN’S GONE
 
The fine part of Susan’s Gone as played by Morris Allen appears to diverge somewhat from the familiar motifs we have been dealing with right along. For instance, the half notes in mm. 1 and 3 of the fine strain are uncharacteristic of any of our other pieces, and the cadence on E’ in the 4th and 8th measures is not typical. The cadence on E’ however, does show up prominently in John Salyer’s Barlow Knife, and if we compare further, we find that the entire coarse strain aligns well with Barlow Knife and also Clyde Davenport’s Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On.When prompted for some words to Susan’s Gone, Mr. Allen laughed:
Susan’s gone to the ball with her old shoes on!
Allowing ourselves to be swept along from one signifier to the next, the universe of "related" fiddle tunes continues to expand. Cratis Williams obtained the following text (without a tune) in 1937 from Mrs. Curtis Williams in Lawrence County, Kentucky.
Hey, O my love,
Sweet Susan’s gone;
She’s gone to the ball
With her new shoes on.
From this verse we are prompted to check out a piece called Sweet Susan that has been recorded from several eastern Kentucky fiddlers including J. W. Day in the 1930s and Sanford Kelly in the 1960s.
20. SWEET SUSAN
 
Day’s fine strain is highly individualistic with bowed "triplets" inserted. Interestingly, these "triplets" occur in the first, third, and fifth measures, just where Morris Allen’s half notes occur in Susan’s Gone. This suggests that some of the tune’s interest for fiddlers derives from setting these measures off from the rest of the tune. Day’s coarse strain gives a clearer link to our study complex through the characteristic cadential phrase, but even there we begin to see how any individual fiddler can transform a tune into something nearly unrecognizable from its "relatives."
Adding a few final pieces to our "family" will bring this guided tour of title, text and tune interrelations to a close. In an earlier section, it was noted that many of the titles end in the long "o" sound. So far, we have seen Sugar in the Coffee-o, Prettiest Little Girl in the County-o, Cornstalk Fiddle and Shoestring Bow, Tideo, and Cotton Eyed Joe. By watching for other titles with the "o" sound, we can find quite a few to test. For instance, West Virginia fiddler Melvin Wine has been recorded playing a piece he sometimes calls Goin’ Down to Georgie-o.
 
21. GOIN’ DOWN TO GEORGIE-O
Notice that the 7th and 8th measures in the fine strain are quite low. If these measures are transposed an octave higher the resulting cadential phrase sounds familiar to say the least! Closer comparison with our previous examples reveals that it very nearly matches the fine strain cadence of John Salyer's Barlow Knife. Both begin the 7th measure descent from D’-D (an octave apart) whereas most of the other examples start from E’ or G’. The entire coarse strain of Goin’ Down to Georgie-o follows closely the coarse strain of Miss Sally at the Party as well as the vocal melody of I Asked That Pretty Girl to Be My Wife. Thus, we find that a combination of melodically conjoined material plus the retention of the long "o" sound links Goin’ Down to Georgie-o to our list. However, Mr. Wine also knew the tune as Who’ll Take Care of the Baby-o (which is actually a more widespread title for this melody). "Baby-o" then, becomes yet another signifier pointing us toward a 1920s 78rpm recording of G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter's What You Gonna Do with the Baby.
 
22. WHAT YOU GONNA DO WITH THE BABY
Examining melody and text of the Grayson and Whitter piece, we easily find connections to our tune pool. In the fine strain, for instance, we find the cadential phrase to be nearly identical to the fine strain cadence of W. E. Claunch's Miss Sally at the Party. Given the title of Melvin Wine’s tune, Goin’ Down to Georgie-o, it hardly seems coincidental that Grayson and Whitter bring in the words
Wrap it up in Calico
Send it back to Georgie-o
The melody is very much like the tune to Tideo cited earlier. Note too that near the close of the song, the singer calls out a phrase that hints at Charlie Acuff's Josie Girl which, it will be recalled, had an alternate title: Girl with the Blue Dress On:
"...Swing that gal with the red dress on."
If we seek corroboration from other examples of this piece, we can turn to a printed version of What’ll I Do With the Baby-O published in a souvenir song folio by 1930s radio artist Bradley Kincaid. While not notated here, the Kincaid version confirms the clearly recognizable melody and brings in words from another member of our complex, Sugar in the Coffee:
How in the world did the old folks know
I like sugar in my coffee-o?
Since the Melvin Wine and Grayson and Whitter examples both feature the phrase "Georgie-o" we can incorporate this as a signifier pointing to a field recording of Hiram Stamper of Knott County, Kentucky. In his eighties at the time collector Bruce Greene visited him, Mr. Stamper played a piece to which he sang the following:
What’ll we do with the baby-o
Rock all the way to Georgie-o.
Pretty little horse and buggy-o
And I’ve got a gal called Susie-o.
The stability of the "Georgie-o" and "baby-o" keywords helps us identify the piece Who’ll Take Care of the Baby-o– or whatever title we wish to use– but Mr. Stamper’s second little rhyme above leads us to the recognition of yet two other items.
Horse and Buggy-o seems to be a regional name for a piece collected primarily in northern and eastern Kentucky, though some Missouri versions have also been found. Charlie Kinney played Horse and Buggy-o using a string of unrepeated four measure phrases from which a simplified version has been distilled for the transcription below. Many of the four measure "units" played by Kinney contain consistent motifs, but no two renderings of the same motif are identical. Instead, the rhythmic patterns are altered and incidental notes are added or dropped to create interest. By transcribing and comparing all the four measure phrases, it is possible to distinguish a "fine" and "coarse" part, though technically, Kinney’s version did not cluster or repeat these parts with any uniformity. Since our purpose is to note the presence of melodic material that overlaps with members of our study complex, a faithful descriptive transcription is forsaken in favor of one that best represents the shared melodic motifs.
23. HORSE AND BUGGY-O
 
Melodically, the tune seems familiar but not readily identifiable as a reflection of any one particular member of the cluster we’ve been looking at. However, there is considerable motif swapping going on. Note for instance that the first four measures of the fine strain of Kinney’s Horse and Buggy-o seems to be a permutation of the fine strain of Charlie Acuff’s The Josie Girl. The ending cadence in both sections of Horse and Buggy-o matches the coarse strain cadence in The Josie Girl. The coarse strain measures of Horse and Buggy-o align well with the tune of Tideo and the fine strain of Grayson and Whitter’s What You Gonna Do with the Baby-o. The combination of shared melodic material and the textual link to Goin’ Down to Georgie-o and What You Gonna Do With the Baby-o lands Horse and Buggy-o squarely in our tune complex.
Hiram Stamper’s second verse to Horse and Buggy-o (cited earlier) signifies yet another piece– a tune known among fiddlers under the title I’ve Got a Gal Named Susie. That title was used by Fiddlin’ Dock Roberts during the 1920s when he recorded the piece on a commercial 78rpm disc. Later, in the 1970s, Bruce Greene found several fiddlers in Kentucky who played I’ve Got a Gal Named Susie. One was Paul Goodman.
24. I’VE GOT A GAL NAMED SUSIE.
 
At this point, it seems best to conclude the demonstration. There appears to be no end to how long this process of moving from one piece to another might continue.
V. CONCLUSION
Many other titles could be brought into this discussion and demonstration, but like the skip rope game's beginning, there is likewise no end– one simply jumps out when tired. While a demonstration of tune families and variants is hardly groundbreaking, I have hoped to show that many of America's most distinctive and best known fiddle tunes are connected in ways not previously articulated.The overlapping of melodic material between them as well as the relationship of tunes to texts and titles has been demonstrated. We can see that by considering titles, texts, and tunes together, many interesting relationships between pieces can be uncovered.The linearity of this demonstration is an illusion, however. Each discovery of similar title, text, or tune occurences presents a potential pathway to follow, with additional pathways leading outward from each of those. What becomes apparent through it all is that the interrelations of title, text, and tune are such that no single one of them will serve as a referential baseline for classification. Definitions and boundaries, so often sought through classification systems, may actually be less important in the study of fiddle tunes than the understanding of changing, organic relationships. The group of tunes assembled for this presentation is only the tip of a musical iceberg. Whose Been Here Since I've Been Gone, for instance, leads us toward Give the Fiddler a Dram, Boatman, Hog Eyed Man, and Fire on the Mountain, to cite a few large complexes which remain to be explored.
I have been misunderstood if the reader perceives this activity as an exercise in reducing all fiddle tunes to a single archetypal tune. The point is more that oral tradition has been and continues to be a living tradition and that fiddle music is never static. A real understanding of organic relationships among fiddle tunes– their history and dynamics– can only be reached, it seems to me, through a holistic approach that draws from the combined evidence of titles, texts, and tunes.
A Note on the Transcriptions
Issues of musical transcription have been discussed at great length among ethnomusicologists. One very useful distinction was made by Charles Seeger when he distilled the terms "prescriptive" and "descriptive" to label two contrasting aims of transcription [citation]. In this paper, I have transcribed tunes with a third aim in mind that might be termed "comparative." The approach taken has been to transcribe giving particular attention to clarity of melody and basic rhythm. Since ease of comparison is essential to the task at hand, I have purposely kept transcriptions free of unnecessary performance markings, including ornamentation. In each case, I have exercised judgement concerning what to include and omit, with clarity and simplicity always the guiding factors. The hope is that a skeletal transcription will convey something of the basic tune concept, i.e. "how the tune goes" (Cazden et al: p.?). Ideally, some middle ground is sought between elements of actual performance and archetypal ideal, but with liberties freely taken in the direction of the ideal.
I have chosen to set all tunes in 4/4 time and use the quarter note as the basic unit of measure as I believe this provides the clearest visual picture of rhythmic relationships at a basic level. In most places where the note value is longer than a quarter note, I have used two quarters tied together to show the internal rhythmic pulse. In some performances, for example, the final pitch carries two or three distinct beats (the beats are achieved through a pulse of the bow). In that case, I have indicated the internal pulse with small crescendo markings under the tie.
Uniformity has been sought by transposing tunes from their original keys so that the new tonal center falls on G. In most cases, this is the final, but as a few tunes do not cadence on G, I have kept them consistent with the rest, and the final is not G. I have not indicated "in between" tones in this study (again for sake of clarity) but have made a "rounding off" judgement instead. As stated before, these transcriptions are not intended as directions for playing nor as descriptions per se of performance, but are intended merely as statements of basic tune elements.
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Tribe, Ivan. Mountaineer Jamboree: Country Music in West Virginia. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.
Tyler, Paul. Lonesome Homesteader: Old Time Fiddling in Wyoming. Laramie: Wyoming Arts Foundation, 1987. [2 cassettes and booklet].
Quigley, Colin. Creative Process in Musical Composition: French Newfoundland Fiddler Emile Benoit. Ph. D. dissertation. UCLA, 1987.
Wheeler, Mary. Steamboatin’ Days: Folk Songs of the River Packet Era. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1944.
Wiggins, Gene. Fiddlin’ Georgia Crazy: Fiddlin’ John Carson, His Real World and the World of His Songs. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
____________. "Popular Music and the Fiddler." JEMFQ 15:55 (Fall, 1979) 144-152.
Williams, Cratis. Ballads and Songs. Masters Thesis. University of Kentucky, 1937.
Wolfe, Charles. The Devil’s Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997.
_______________. "The Oldest Recorded Fiddle Styles" Devil's Box 17:1 (Spring, 1983) 21-27.
____________. Kentucky Country. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982.
____________. Tennessee Strings. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977.
____________, ed. Talley, Thomas. Negro Folk Rhymes. Reprint of 1922 publication with notes. Knoxville: University of Tennesse Press, 1991.
Wolford, Leah Jackson. The Play Party in Indiana. Indianapolis, 1916.
Woolf, Andrew G. "The Fiddling Festival: Revivalist Old-Time Music Jam Sessions at Southern Fiddle Conventions." Ph. D. dissertation. Tufts University, 1990.
SOUND RECORDINGS
Blaustein, Richard, ed. Down Around Bowmantown, Then and Now: A Portrait of a Musical Community in Northeast Tennessee. Johnson City: East Tennessee State University Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, 1989.
Cauthen, Joyce, comp. Possum Up a Gum Stump: Home, Field, and Commercial Recordings of Alabama Fiddlers. Alabama Traditions CD 103.
Fulcher, Bobby, comp. Traditional Music from the Cumberland Plateau (2 vols.) County 786 & 787. No date [ca. 1986].
Griffith, Jim et al. Gu-Achi Fiddlers: Old Time O’odham Fiddle Music. Canyon Compact Disc CR 8082. 1997.
Harrod, John & Mark Wilson, comps. & eds. Traditional Fiddle Music of Kentucky (2 vols.). Rounder CD 0376 & 0377. 1997.
Heth, Charlotte, prod. Wood That Sings: Indian Fiddle Music of the Americas. Smithsonian Folkways CD SF 40472.
Kynerd, Byrle A. and Eddie Echols, prods. Mississippi Sawyers: A Collection of Old Time Mississippi Fiddling. Sawyer LP 101. (1980).
Leroy, Lance. Progam notes to Paul Warren w/ Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass: America's Greatest Breakdown Fiddler on CMH LP 6237.
Perlman, Ken, comp. The Prnce Edward Island Style of Fiddling. Rounder CD 7014 & 7015.
Marshall, Howard Wight, Amy Skillman et al. Now That’s a Good Tune: Masters of Traditional Missouri Fiddling. Columbia: Missouri Cultural Heritage Center, University of Missouri, 1989. [Program booklet to accompany Grey Eagle Records LP 101].
Titon, Jeff Todd, collector. Clyde Davenport: Puncheon Camps. Berea, Kentucky: Berea College Appalachian Center, 1992. Cassette AC 002.
Sacks, Howard, comp. [?] Seems Like Romance to Me. [Ohio anthology]
Vetco LP 104. The Wonderful World of Oldtime Fiddlers, Vol. 1. Notes by Bob Hyland.
WEB-SITES
Titon, Jeff Todd. [Clyde Davenport site]
NOTATED EXAMPLES
1. OLD MISS SALLY (John Hatcher)
2. MISS SALY AT THE PARTY (W. E. Claunch)
3. PRETTIEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE COUNTY (Skillet Lickers)
4. CORNSTALK FIDDLE AND SHOESTRING BOW (Clyde Davenport)
5. SUGAR IN THE COFFEE (Frank Reed / Christeson)
6. COTTON EYED JOE (Ford)
7. COTTON EYED JOE (Christeson)
8. I ASKED THAT PRETTY GIRL TO BE MY WIFE (Thede)
9. RICH MAN STOLE THE POOR MAN’S WIFE (Estill Bingham)
10. WHERE’S THAT NIGGER WITH THE WHITE MAN’S WIFE (Red Abbott)
11. SUGAR IN THE COFFEE (Harvey "Pappy" Taylor)
12. BARLOW KNIFE (John Salyer)
13. TIDEO (Botkin)
14. SAIL AWAY LADIES (Henry Bandy)
15. THE JOSIE GIRL (Charlie Acuff)
16. OLD AUNT JENNY WITH HER NIGHTCAP ON (Clyde Davenport)
17. OLD AUNT JENNY (Ford)
18. SUSAN’S GONE TO THE BALL WITH HER BLUE DRESS ON (Charlie Kinney)
19. SUSAN’S GONE (Morris Allen)
20. SWEET SUSAN (J. W. Day)
21. GOIN’ DOWN TO GEORGIE-O (Melvin Wine)
22. WHAT YOU GONNA DO WITH THE BABY (Grayson & Whitter)
23. HORSE AND BUGGY-0 (Charlie Kinney) (Noah Kinney)
24. I’VE GOT A GIRL NAMED SUSIE (Paul Goodman)