Today's Tune of the Week is
Blind Steer in a Mudhole, a twelve-measure tune (eight-measure A part, four-measure B part) in the key of A that comes to us from southern Ohio fiddler Jimmy Wheeler.
I came across the tune during some recent research into Ohio fiddle tunes that began when my local weekly jam chose a different Ohio piece as their own tune of the week. Being an Ohio native and living again in the state after a twenty year absence, that selection sparked in me a desire to enrich my current southern Appalachian-centric repertoire with some tunes that were born and popularized a little closer to home. Compared to the long, rich history of field recording and tune collecting in areas like North Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, and so forth, Ohio seemed to be unexplored territory, and it has been relatively difficult to find old time tunes indigenous to the region. Much of the state's early-20th-century traditional fiddle and banjo music heritage has no doubt been lost - again compared to, say, Appalachia or the Ozarks - but fortunately there were a handful of people recording traditional Ohio artists back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
One of those people was fiddle player Jeff Goehring. He recorded a number of southern Ohio fiddlers in the late 1970s and 1980s - Ward Jarvis, Lonnie Seymour, Cecil Plum, John Hannah, Arnold Sharp, and Jimmy Wheeler. Many of his recordings can be found on Field Recorder Collective releases, including one from 2004 devoted to Jimmy Wheeler - FRC401 (
http://www.fieldrecorder.com/docs/store2004.htm#frc401 ). Jeff was also a founding member of The Red Mule String Band, a central Ohio old-time group popular in the 1980s. It was their recording of
Blind Steer in a Mudhole on the 1994 Rounder compilation album "The Young Fogies" that introduced me to the tune. Although I just discovered that album last month, I did actually see the Red Mule String Band many years ago - in 1985, I think. That was back when I had a more casual interest in the music, buying the occasional Folkways album but not seeking out live performances, and not yet even thinking of taking up an instrument. I somehow found myself at a concert of theirs in, of all places, the sculpture garden at the Columbus Museum of Art. Not quite the usual venue for an introduction to live old-time string band music.
Jeff recorded Jimmy Wheeler in the early 1980s at Jimmy's home in Portsmouth, Ohio, a river town located at the southernmost point of the state, where the Scioto River flows into the Ohio (the Scioto being the namesake of the popular fiddle tune Big Sciota). Jimmy was in his mid-60s at the time (he would die a few years later in 1987 at the age of 69) and had spent most of his life working as an instrument repairman and a professional musician, playing fiddle, guitar, and bass. He played both old-time and popular music in a variety of groups over the years, including a long stint with Forrest Pick as "The Personality Boys" on WPAY in Portsmouth.
I could find no mention of his birthplace, but I assume it was Portsmouth or elsewhere in Scioto County. Many of the southern Ohio fiddlers recorded by Jeff had actually been born in Kentucky or West Virginia, coming to Ohio as adults in search of work. But it seems Jimmy's family had been in Ohio for a long time. A book on the history of Adams County, immediately to the west of Scioto County, contains the following passage:
"Dr. F. Cumming, while touring "the western country," tells of stopping at an inn run by Timothy Mershon near Locust Grove Ohio, in August, 1807. Timothy Mershon had been a tavern keeper in Hunterdon Co. NJ, where he had also served in the militia during the Revolutionary War.
"Mershon is from the Jerseys, he has a numerous family growing up, and is now building a large log house in which he means to keep a tavern. Three of his sons play the violin by ear -they had two shocking bad violins, one of which was of their own manufacture, on which they scraped away without mercy to entertain us, which I would have most gladly excused, though I attempted to seem pleased and believe I succeeded in making them think I was so."
Timothy Mershon was Jimmy Wheeler's great-great-great-grandfather. The fiddle-playing sons were Jimmy's great-great-great-uncles and possibly his great-great-grandfather.
[That information comes from Helen Armstrong, a cousin of Jimmy's, who posted it on the Field Recorder Collective's website:
http://www.fieldrecorder.com/docs/notes/wheeler_armstrong.htm .]
Since Jimmy's father was also a fiddler, it seems the Wheeler family may have been able to boast of an unbroken fiddle music heritage stretching back seven generations. Perhaps their playing improved with each generation (or maybe Dr. Cumming just couldn't appreciate good frontier fiddling when he heard it).
Jeff Goehring posted his own thoughts and impressions of Jimmy and his music, along with a description of one of his recording sessions, on the Field Recorders website (
http://www.fieldrecorder.com/docs/notes/wheeler_goehring.htm ). His entire account is well worth reading - the following is an excerpt focusing on
Blind Steer in a Mudhole:
He plays very notey and fluidly, utilizing trills when they work. Kind of his own creative touch. Buddy Thomas and Haley both used "trills" to enhance their sound. Jim also sited older area fiddlers as sources for some of the tunes, which led me to the conclusion that these tunes weren't strictly Kentucky tunes but also were popular amongst Portsmouth area fiddlers of an earlier era.
Other tunes were strictly from Jim's father, like "Blind Steer in the Mudhole," and one which he called affectionately, "Dad's Tune." Other ones I also have never heard anywhere else, like "Six White Horses," "Cauliflower," "Dover." Plus some standards played by most Ohio fiddlers like Stonewall Jackson, Liberty, and Raggedy Ann. He also played a couple other Canadian type tunes: Joys of Quebec and the No Name Polka.
The tune "Blind Steer in the Mudhole" struck me as one of the most unique tunes he played the whole session. He learned the tune from his father. The first part of this tune was uncanny. I've never heard anything like it before. It starts out in the E chord, though the tune is actually, according to Jim, in the key of A. The second or "B" part of the tune is almost note-for-note derived from the Scottish, French-Canadian piece "Money Musk." It kind of makes one ponder upon the origin or creation of fiddle tunes once again.
The "A" part of Blind Steer is very bizarre and uncommon. I'm pretty sure I've not heard that particular melodic strain in anything else. The use of the open strings, double-stopping and drones is familiar to other pieces of earlier vintage. But that particular one is a first for me. Not that I've got that broad of a background anyways.
As mentioned in that account, Jimmy said he learned Blind Steer in a Mudhole from his father, Jim. I could find no other reference to its origins, and am not sure whether it was a traditional tune that never traveled far from its southern Ohio/northern Kentucky roots, whether it was basically a family tune that the Wheelers had been playing for generations, or whether Jim Wheeler came up with it himself. The modern recordings of it that gave a source (several didn't) cited only Jimmy Wheeler. The recent versions I found all appeared shortly after the Field Recorders release mentioned above, so I'm guessing that the recording of Blind Steer in a Mudhole on that disc, not the Red Mule String Band version, was used as the source recording. Of course, it may be a more common tune than I realize, since I have only been paying close attention to old-time music for a few years. I was, for instance, somewhat surprised to find it in Steve Kaufman's "Favorite Traditional Fiddle Tunes for Flatpicking Guitar".
I did not, however, find it in any of the banjo tablature books I checked, and it seems that Blind Steer in the Mudhole has not really been adopted by banjo players the way so many fiddle tunes have been. It is perhaps a tune more appropriate for the Fiddle Hangout, but on the other hand I thought it might be worth introducing into the banjo repertoire - I mean, you can never have too many tunes to learn and play.
Jimmy Wheeler, "Berea College Digital Library of Appalachia", recorded by John Harrod: http://dla.acaweb.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/Berea43&CISOPTR=1554&CISOBOX=1&REC=2 (solo fiddle) (solo fiddle)
The Red Mule String Band, on "Young Fogies" (1994): http://www.amazon.com/The-Young-Fogies-Various-Artists/dp/B0000002M3 (full band)
Pete Sutherland, on his 2004 album "Streak o' Lean" (paired with
Icy Mountain):
http://www.amazon.com/Icy-Mountain-Blind-Steer-Mudhole/dp/B0014BWVMY (fiddle and guitar)
I could find no solo banjo versions, but there is banjo tab on the Mossy Roof site: http://stringband.mossyroof.com/Blind_Steer_In_A_Mudhole.png
("We're playing 2 tunes. The first is
Little Billy Wilson and the second (at
2:20) is
Blind Steer in a Mudhole. Cheers, Jay")
I don't know where the title of the tune comes from. I guess the same place most traditional fiddle tune titles come from - some old-time musician's practical yet slightly quirky imagination. If I try, I can hear in the B part of some versions - particularly that by the Red Mule Band - the repetitive struggles of a stuck steer. I have been trying to come up with a banjo version of their recording, although since my learning-by-ear skills aren't that great what I play is based just as much on the Mossy Roof tab. Anyway, I enjoy playing the tune- I hope some of you do as well.