Wild Hog- Diane Jones (West Virginia) 1997
[Diane Jones recorded Wild Hog on her album, with Hubie King, called "There Are No Rules". Dwight Diller was one of her banjo instructors. The "Cut him down, cut him down, catch him if you can" refrain is similar to Diller's.]
DIANE JONES was born in New Jersey but adopted West Virginia as her home so she could be near old-time music. She says she got hooked on the banjo “as soon as I heard it” at a music festival in Boone, North Carolina, where she purchased her “little mountain banjo” from an old-time musician and instrument maker. After taking a banjo class from Dwight Diller, Diane went on to teach banjo at the Augusta Heritage Workshops in Elkins, WV. Her playing style has been influenced by Ola Belle Reed, Maggie Hammons of Pocahontas County, WV, and Lily May Ledford. She once heard Lily May in person and remembers being inspired not only “because here was a woman banjo player just singing her heart out. That’s not what got me. It was the playing.”
Diane is keenly aware that she is a woman banjo player. She was once in a banjo contest with one other woman and fifty-six men. As the only female banjo player in a group of male fiddlers, she says that “it used to be that they’d sort of look at you like ‘we don’t need this woman.’ I still get it as a joke: ‘You’re my favorite banjo player—for a girl.’”
She has recorded a CD with banjoists Hubie King entitled There Are No Rules. Of this work she says: “If anybody listens to me and likes something particular and it moves them the way it has moved me, the whole thing was worth every dime.” [From: Banjo Women of West Virginia- Marshall University]
WILD HOG- Diane Jones 1997
There was a wild hog in yonders woods,
Doodle um day, doodle um day,
There was a wild hog in yonders woods,
Doodle um downey day,
There was a wild hog in yonders woods,
Catch him, boys, don't let him get away,
Cut him down, cut him down, catch him if you can.
Bangun did a huntin' ride,
With a sword and a pistol by his side,
Bangum rode to the wild hog's den,
Where he spied the bones of a thousand men,
Bangum blew his huntin' horn,
And the wild hog crawled through the oak and thorn,
Bangum drew his huntin' knife,
He swore he'd take that wild hog's life,
They fought nine hours on that day,
Until the wild hog bled and slunk away,
Bangum did you win or lose,
He swore, by God, he won his shoes,
There was a wild hog in yonders wood,
Catch him, boys, don't let he get away.