Alabama Fiddle Tunes - Civil War

Subject: Alabama Fiddle Tunes - Civil War?
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Jun 26 - 03:05 PM

The Atmore [Ala.] Spectrum (Oct. 22, 1908) announced an upcoming "fiddlers' contest" in Mobile for members of the Confederate Veterans of Alabama - few of them under 60 at that point.

The announcement says that "Selections will be confined to the following list," presumably because these were titles familiar to the fiddlers during the Civil War.

The list is interesting because we don't have a lot of information on folk fiddling in the Deep South as early as the 1860s.

A few of the 28 titles may be post-war (nobody's memory is perfect), but by and large most (and possibly all) of these tunes were well-known in the early 1860s:

Mississippi Sawyer
Cotton-Eyed Joe
Run, N----r, Run
Sugar in the Gourd
Old Molly Hare
Bill in the Low Grounds
Natchez Under the Hill
Jenny, Get Your Hoecake Done
Milk and Peaches
Devil Among the Sailors
Speed the Plow
Leather Breeches
Arkansas Traveler
The Lass of Goein [sic]
Hell in Georgia
Suwanee River
Irish Washerwoman
Dixie
After the Yearlings
Alabama Gals
Devil's Dream
Red Apples
Cinda [sic]
Old Hen Cackled
Sweet Gals in the Pine Woods
John T. Moore
Sally Put the Saddle on the Old Gray Mule
Home, Sweet Home

About twenty of these are still commonly played. ("...Sailors" may be a typo for "Tailors," or else a local variant.) Other tunes may be known by different titles.