The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #34525   Message #1907071
Posted By: Richie
11-Dec-06 - 11:11 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Pretty Little Pink
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pretty Little Pink
Here's some info from Mike Yeats' 'Far in the Mountains' notes:

Western Country
(Played on the fiddle by Sam Connor and the banjo by Dent Wimmer at Dent's home in Floyd, Floyd County, 8.8.79)

Sam called this Little Pigee from his verse:

Run the old hog over the fence
And the little pigs through the cracks.

whilst Dent uses the title Western Country from the verse:

When I was in the western country,
Where the weather was so dry.
The sun came out and froze me,
Suzannah don't you cry.

Other Appalachian musicians call it either Fly Around My Pretty Little Pink or Blue Eyes Run Me Crazy because of another common verse:

Fly around my pretty little pink,
Fly around my daisy.
Fly around my pretty little pink,
Your blue eyes run me crazy.

Kentucky banjo player Lee Sexton plays a good, if short, version on the album Mountain Music of Kentucky (Smithsonian Folkways SFCD 40077), and the North Carolina banjo-player and singer Frank Proffitt can be heard on Appleseed APR CD 1036; while Hobart Smith of Virginia played a stunning version on the piano (Rounder CD 1702). The Bogtrotters from Galax, VA, recorded it for the Library of Congress and The Hillbillies, a '20s stringband also from the area around Galax, called it Blue-Eyed Girl on their 1926 recording (Vocalion 5017) which has been reissued on Document DOCD-8039. They also included the 'little pigee' verse in their 1925 recording of Whoa' Mule (Okeh 40376) which is available on the same Document CD. A fine version from Frank Blevins and his Pilot Mountaineers has been reissued on Yazoo CD 2028, while Bradley Kincaid's Pretty Little Pink, reissued on Yazoo CD 2051, contains a number of similar verses.