It’s Battle Ground week! That is, time for the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering in lovely Battle Ground, Indiana, just a couple hours out of Chicago, just off interstate 65. This years festival will be the 40th. I missed the first four, but have only missed two since. Lots of folks look forward to reuniting for a weekend of tunes and friendship. Plus there are concerts on the stage, workshops under the trees and an old-time square dance on Saturday with music by the Bum Ditty Barn Dance Band.

I think the year was 1979 when the Gathering was treated to the music of the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, a family band from Tennessee. Their tunes were great. Their spirit infectious. And they hawked their most recent album in LP and 8-track tape formats! (Now available on the CD Down Home.) Banjoists take note of the distinctive left-hand style in the picture below. The Easy Street String Band, an outfit from Bloomington, was inspired by a Hilltoppers original, and included it on their LP Money in Both Pockets. (Originally released on the Prairie Schooner label out of St. Louis, it is now available as a CD from Yodel A-Hee.)

Bill & Joe Birchfield of the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers Photo by Al Smitley (click photo to enlarge)

Easy Street String Band On the right is Frank Hall, who was the source for an earlier Tune of the Week.

Rattletrap by the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers


Rattletrap by the Easy Street String Band


X:1
T:Rattletrap
M:C|
L:1/8
S:Joe Birchfield & the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers
K:G
Bc | d2c2 BcdB | e2c4 Bc | d2c2 B2G2 | ABA2 G2Bc |
d2c2 BcdB | e2c6 | g2=f2 d3B | ABA2 G2 ::
(3DEF | G2GD B,2B,D | +C2E2++CE++CE+ +^C2^E2++^C^E++^C^E+ | +C2E2++CE++CE+ D3D | +CE+D+C2E2+ D2EF |
G2GD B,2D2 | +C2E2++CE++CE+ +^C2^E2++^C^E++^C^E+ | +C2E2++CE++CE+ D3D | +CE+D+C2E2+ D2 :|

Paul Tyler, convener

Tune histories are funny things, especially because different names are often given to the same tune, while, at other times, different tunes are given the same name. And often, some tunes seem to slip through the years without any name attached. Little Billy Wilson is a case in point. I think. Are we talking about the same tune?

Check out what the Traditional Tune Archive has to say about Little Billy Wilson. It names Billy Wilson, as recorded in 1926 by Uncle Jimmie Thompson, the first fiddler on the Grand Ole Opry, as the ultimate source for the tune as played today. Lynn “Chirps” Smith, formerly of Grayslake, Illinois, now living on the other side of the Cheddar Curtain in Wisconsin, can play the tune Uncle Jimmie’s way (as well as anybody can that I know.) But this recent recording by him mostly follows the common contemporary setting of the tune.

Little Billy Wilson, Chirps Smith of Lagrange, Wisconsin


That distinctive first strain appears in many other tunes. According to Guthrie “Gus” Meade, the tune scholar who compiled the incredibly mammoth and helpful reference work, Country Music Sources, Little or plain old Billy Wilson resembles such tunes as Ace of Spade, Jack of Diamonds, Possum Up a Gumstump and Indiana Home. Of course, some of those titles also float around a bit, and have been attached to dissimilar tunes. Nearly 25 years ago, I recorded an Indiana fiddler who played that first strain in a tune he called “Old Woman, Stop Your Quarreling.” Are we talking about the same tune? I’m not sure. And that first strain can be found in two unnamed breakdowns in A, printed in the Old-Time Fiddler’s Repertory: one each in Vol 1 (#37) and Volume 2 (#14). R.P. Christeson collected both of these pieces from Bill Driver of Iberia, Missouri. Paul Gifford also learned a few unnamed breakdowns with that A strain from old-timers in Michigan.

But I think it is the second and/or third strain of Little Billy Wilson that carries some of the distinctiveness of this week’s Tune of the Week. That distinctive flavor is reflected in this unnamed tune found in a rare tunebook published in Fort Wayne, Indiana the same year that Uncle Jimmy Thompson recorded Billy Wilson. Check out old number 29 below from Charles Blee’s Ball Room and Country Dance Music: Quadrilles, Schottisches, Watlzes, Polkas and the Danish, Rye Waltz, Varsouvienna, Oxford Minuet.

And then give a listen to this unnamed tune on hammer dulcimer, recorded by Paul Gifford in 1975 (click on Paul’s name for more traditional dulcimer playing).

[Little Billy Wilson], Paul Van Arsdale, Frewsburg, New York


The ABCs that follow are fairly generic, based on how the tune has commonly been played since the old-time music revival of the 1970s.

X:18
T:Little Billy Wilson
M:C|
L:1/8
K:A
fg | a2g2 a2e2 | fedf edcA | B2E2 B2GB | ABcd e2fg |
a2g2 a2e2 | fedf edcB | ABcd efed | cABc A2 ::
cB |ABcd efed | cAcA B2cB |ABcd efed | cABc A2 ::
cB | A3 A2cBA | F3E F2EF | A3 A2Bcd | e3f e2c2 |
B3 B2cBA | F3E F2EF | A2ae fecA | BABc A2 :|

– Paul Tyler, convener.
NB This post has been amended to rectify various assumptions wrongfully made.

Frank Hall

Emmett Lundy

Frank Hall, my good friend and fellow Hoosier-in-exile, visited a while back from Ireland, where he has lived for the past decade. Our session served as the maiden voyage for my then brand new Zoom digital recorder, which has since been a real work horse for Fiddle Club of the World. Here is a tune from that October 2007 session in my living room. Frank played one that was first recorded by the great Emmett Lundy of Galax, Virginia. Compare the versions below. Obviously the same tune, but quite different treatments.

Also, compare the photos above. Both men are quite dapper and accomplished. Frank, however, has recently become a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. Sláinte (to your health), Buddy!

Piney Wood Gal by Frank Hall (2007), with Lena Ullman, banjo


Piney Wood Girl by Emmett Lundy (1925), with E.V. Stoneman, harmonica


BTW Frank Hall has an open invitation to be a featured guest at the Fiddle Club of the World any time he flies in to O’Hare from Dublin.

X:14
T:Piney Woods Gal
M:C|
L:1/8
S:Frank Hall after Emmett Lundy
K:G
+E3B3+B AGEG | ABBA Be3 | +E3B3+B AGEG | DEGB AG3 |
+E3B3+B AGEG | E3D EFGE | DGBG AG3 ::
dega bgag | eddd edeg | dega bgag | egag abag |
dega bgag | eddd eged | b3b ageg | dgbg aG3 :|

A little gem from Missouri

From the Rhythm Rats 1994 cassette on Marimac Recordings. It has been reissued on CD by 5-String Productions (click for the catalog). The band featured fiddler Kenny Jackson with Whitt Mead on banjo and Paula Bradley on guitar. Sometime in the 1980s, Kenny Jackson and Brad Leftwich learned this tune on a visit with Ed Sutherland, a Missouri fiddler. Kenny’s fiddle on this recording has the G string run up to an A (ADAE).

Note: this is not the more famous Indian War Whoop recorded by Hoyt Ming & his Pep Steppers circa 1930 and reprised by David Holt in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Indian War Whoop


X:1
T:Indian War Whoop
M:C|
L:1/8
S:Ed Sutherland, from Missouri, via Kenny Jackson
K:D
de | fafe d2cd | efed BABc | dBAG F2FD | A,2CA, D2 ::
FG | ABAG FDEF | GB2G E2FG | ABAG F2FD | A,B,CA, D2 :|