The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #54404   Message #842833
Posted By: Richie
07-Dec-02 - 12:09 AM
Thread Name: Steamboat coonjine songs
Subject: RE: Steamboat coonjine songs
Guest Q,

Here's the info from A Fiddler's Companion:

NATCHEZ UNDER THE HILL [1]. AKA and see "Turkey In the Staw," "The Old Bog Hole," "Old Zip Coon." Old-Time, Breakdown. USA; Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia. A Major. AEAE. AABB. The tune is related to, and perhaps pregenitor of, the American fiddling standards "Turkey in the Straw" and "Old Zip Coon" (it is distinct from the latter, a Northern relative, by virtue of the two different beginning measures). It appears to be American in origin, though Alan Jabbour sees the roots of the tune in the English country dance melody "The Rose Tree," while others note the similarities of the English morris dance tune "Old Mother Oxford." Jabbour (1971) states: "The only conspicuous difference in the melodic contours is that 'The Rose Tree' drops to tonic in the third phrase of the second strain, while the American tunes thrust up to the octave for rendering much of the same melodic materical." Though it seems clear its roots were in the British Isles, "Natchez Under the Hill" appears to have been one of the earliest American tunes that can be characterized as "old-timey" (i.e. having entered American traditional fiddling repertoire via the folk process) and a popular one. It was first published in this country in George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels, volume I (1839), and the title was mentioned in a humorous dialect story called "The Knob Dance," published in 1845, and set in Eastern Tennessee. Brown maintains the tune served as a "rhytmically enlivened" transitional melody between "The Rose Tree" and the song "Old Zip Coon" (curiously published in 1834, five years before the Knauff's printing of 'Natchez'--the two tunes were probably older than their publications), which closely follows "Natchez" harmonically and melodically (save the opening arpeggios of "Natchez" are replaced by a more singable phrase). By at least 1899 it was enough of a "chestnut" that it had become a category tune for fiddlers' contests, like the one held that year in Gallatin, Tennessee. Each fiddler would play his version, and the rendition judged the best won a prize (C. Wolfe, The Devil's Box, Vol. 14, No. 4, 12/1/80).
**
Marion Thede (1967), quoting Cushman, elucidates the title, the name of a river town in the state of Mississippi:
**
'Natchez Under the Hill' was in that early day (the late 1700's and early
1800's) the sine qua non as the point of rendezvous for the rough and
care-for-nothing men who navigated the keel and flat boats on the
Mississippi River ere they were superseded by the steamboat. At that
early day the city of Natchez was an excellent market for the products
of the 'upper country', consequently hundreds of heavily laden and
richly-laden boats congregated there, to the great dread of the
law-abiding and peaceful inhabitants residing in the upper part
of the city, known as 'The Bluff;' for the wild and lawless boatmen
knowing no restraint...indulged in their caprices in every kind of
rowdyism known to man...thus did those specimens of American
freemen spend their leisure hours in drinking whiskey, yelling,
fiddling, dancing, and fist-fighting...'"
**
Sandy Hook, Kentucky, fiddler Alva Greene called his version "Matches Under the Hill." Kerry Blech suggests comparison with the Cape Breton/Scottish tune "Old Bog Hole" which seems to be a close relative or variant of "Natchez." A version of "Bog Hole" was fiddled by Joe MacLean on Rounder 7024, "Old Time Fiddle Music from Cape Breton Island."
**
"Natchez" was recorded in 1941 for the Library of Congress by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph from Ozark Mountain fiddler Lon Jordan, of Farmington, Arkansas (AFS 5317 A3), and was reissued on the Library of Congress LP AFS L62, "American Fiddle Tunes from the Library of Congress," edited by Alan Jabbour. Other Libarary of Congress recordings of the tune were made in 1937 of Theophilus G. Hoskins of Hyden, Kentucky (AFS 1520 A1), and in 1941 of Emmett Lundy of Galax, Virginia (AFS 4941 A3).
**
Sources for notated versions: W.S. Collins (Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma) [Thede]; Mrs. John Hunter (Richmond, Va.) [Chase]. Chase (American Folk Tales and Songs), 1956; pg. 208. Thede (The Fiddle Book), 1967; pg. 112-113.

NATCHEZ UNDER THE HILL [2]. Old-Time, Breakdown. G Major. Standard. AABB. Related to version #1. Ford (Traditional Music in America), 1940; pg. 56.

NATCHEZ UNDER THE HILL [3]. Old-Time, Breakdown. A Major. Standard. AABB. Source for notated version: John Hartford [Phillips]. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), 1994; pg. 163. Rounder CD 0392, John Hartford - "Wild Hog in the Red Brush and a Bunch of Others You Might Not Have Heard" (1996. Learned from Texas fiddler Benny Thomasson "one night in Dallas at a birthday party").

NATCHEZ UNDER THE HILL [4]. Old-Time, Breakdown. A Major. Standard. AABB. A different tune that versions #1 and #2. Source for notated verison: Bob Walters (Burt County, Nebraska) [Phillips]. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), 1994; pg. 163.