Fiddle Tunes in Alabama, 1900

Subject: RE: Fiddle Tunes in Alabama, 1900
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Jan 26 - 09:36 AM

Birmingham Post-Herald (Oct. 23, 1908):

“The Confederate Veterans of Alabama are to hold a reunion at Mobile on November 24, 25, and 26….The music of the fiddlers is to be confined to a list that will bring back the days before the war. We print the list:"

The list, in the same order, is identical to that of 1900 in the Marion Standard.

So the tunes were all believed to have been played in the state in the 1850s. Unfortunately, except for a few core titles like "Arkansas Traveler," there seems to be no contemporaneous evidence.

Subject: Fiddle Tunes in Alabama, 1900
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Jan 26 - 05:37 PM

The Florence Herald (June 14, 1900) advertises an "old fiddlers' contest" for the Fourth of July and lists the following tunes to be played. Such lists are unusual in that period:

Mississippi Sawyer
Cotton-Eyed Joe
Run, N----r, Run
Sugar in the Gourd
Old Mollie Hare
Billy in the Low Grounds
Natchez Under the Hill
Hell in Georgia
Devil Among the Tailors
Jennie, Get Your Hoe Cake Done
Milk and Peaches
Speed the Plow
Bill Cheatham
Leather Breeches
Arkansas Traveler
Within a Mile of Edinboro Town
The Lass of Goein [sic]
Home, Sweet, Home
Suwannee River
Hail Columbia
Fisher's Hornpipe
The Sailor's Hornpipe
The Girl I Left Behind Me
Who Will Be King But Charlie
Irish Washerwoman
Dixie


Most or all of these tunes were known and played during the Civil War - presumably by many of the "old fiddlers."

The same list appears in the Marion Standard (July 5), which adds:

Hell After the Yearlings
Devil's Dream
Alabama Gals
Sweet Gals in the Piney Woods
Cinda [sic]
Red Apple
The Old Hen Cackled
John T. Moore

The Moulton Advertiser (Aug. 2) added

Down in Mobile
Sallie, Put the Saddle on the Old Gray Mule.