Good Morning BHOer’s/TOTW’ers.
The tune this week: “Georgia Row” aka “Walking Up Georgia Row”
I confess that my TOTW effort is a fool’s errand, based as it is on the playing of the incomparable duet of Adam Hurt and Beth Hartness, playing live in late April 2013 at WAMU's Bluegrass Country:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N52oZyhOWSg
Trying to decipher Adam’s banjo playing is akin to piecing together an understanding of Chaucer based on only a rudimentary understanding of contemporary Brooklynese (my native dialect).
Adam played the tune on his CD, Fine Times at our House, and identified it as “Walking Up Georgia Row,” from Uncle Charlie Osborne, Russell County, Virginia. His banjo was tuned aDADE: http://www.adamhurt.com/new_cds.html
Rich Kirby, a long-time WMMT Mountain Community Radio staff member -- and producer of A Fiddle Runs Through It, a radio series profiling the young musicians carrying on Appalachia’s music traditions and the older musicians they learned from -- was gracious enough to answer some questions of mine via email (25 April 2013), and his note is worth quoting in its entirety:
“I first heard "Georgia Row" from Uncle Charlie Osborne, probably around 1980. I understand he learned it from his father. Tom Bledsoe had introduced me to Charlie; Tom and I spent many a happy hour playing tunes with Charlie and listening to his stories. He lived with his daughter on Moccasin Creek in Russell County, VA, and passed away in 1992 at the age of 101. When Tom produced Charlie's June Appal LP "Relics and Treasures," "Georgia Row" was a tune we made sure to include. It's been in my repertoire ever since. There's something deeply satisfying about it. The band I play with, Rich and the Po' Folk, learned it; our then-guitar player Roy Tackett started using A and G chords exclusively behind the B-part, not getting to a D chord until the very end of the part. It underlines the tension implied in the (almost) key change and makes the eventual resolution even more, well, satisfying.”
Gail Gillespie, a noted multi-instrumentalist and Senior Advisory Editor of The Old Time Herald, posted this on Fiddler Hangout in December 2012:
“Between the Revolutionary & Civil Wars, wealthy southerners summered at mountain spring resorts. It was partly for health reasons (escaping the heat of the low country indigo & rice plantations), but also social. It was a marriage market & there were dances & balls. The resort owners hired orchestras that played classical music during the "season," but in the winter, the off season, the mountain locals played reels for their own dances. The rows were rows of cottages, built by the wealthy, for their summer stay--sometimes wealthy planters who lived in the rice country of Georgia & SC might as long as 3 or 4 months. South Carolina & Georgia planters had their own cottage rows with others of the same area. I did my dissertation on this years ago but still have old guide books. Maps of White Sulphur Springs & Sweet Springs show rows of cottages with names such as "Virginia Row," "South Carolina Row," and "Georgia Row." “See: http://www.fiddlehangout.com/myhangout/music.asp?musicid=10499
Here’s the tune on fiddle being taught by Jane Rothfield: http://oldtimeyjam.blogspot.com/2011/12/walkin-up-georgia-row.html
And a nice ensemble version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfPif-9_qqE
Here’s a tab version with the tuning set to gDGBD, capo at second fret, from L.W. Konigsberg’s Clawhammer Banjo Tabs:
http://lylewk.home.comcast.net/~lylewk/Georgia%20Row.pdf
Fiddle Hangout offers a number of insights into the tune. For example, our Fiddle colleagues have noted that “Walking Down Georgia Road” is:
- An Old-Time, Breakdown. D Major. Standard tuning. AB. From the playing of Angie and Tim Wooten. Source for notated version: Isla Ross [Silberberg]. Silberberg (Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern), 2002; pg. 163.
- A tune played by Buddy Thomas on this great record: http://www.amazon.com/Kitty-Puss-Old-Time-Fiddle-Kentucky/dp/B0000002CU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356224112&sr=8-1&keywords=Kitty+Puss Buddy Thomas got his version from his Uncle/Cousin, Perry Riley.
- Possibly related to a song recorded by Riley Puckett and McMichen, whose lyric begins "Way down yonder in Georgia, by an old pine rosin tree. That's where I hugged and kissed her, and she said that she loved me." This is the link to which Fiddler’s Hangout players point in making the argument that there is a resemblance between the Uncle Charlie Osborn and the Thomas/Riley version, and a relationship between the Skillet Lickers version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIcnMlGrM0k
- Derived, at least insofar as the verse Riley sings, from "The Farmer's Daughter" by James Bland, published in 1883. According to as persistent Fiddle Hangout cadre, it is in the Levy collection at this link http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/
- A tune from James Bland who lived part of his life in England. Fiddle Hangout cadre conclude that this song must have entered the folk tradition over there, because it was collected from traditional singers. Fiddler’s Hangout cites a recording of the song by Arthur Smith:
http://www.1001tunes.com/PCvolume02/farmers_daughter__ARTHUR_SMITH.mp3
- A tune that Rich Hartness got from Uncle Charlie Osborne, who learned it from his father. Uncle Charlie plays it on this CD: http://appalshop.org/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=45&products_id=356 Parenthetically, Buddy Thomas' "“Georgia Row” " and Charlie Osborne's "“Georgia Row” " are related, different key and tuning though.
- Mentioned in Fiddler's Companion as having a resemblance to "Angelina Baker," http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/GEO_GH.htm#GEORGIA_ROW though Fiddler's Companion says the tune is in A yet the notation at that entry says its in D, but it's really the Buddy Thomas version in A. Fiddler’s Companion also suggests the tune is played from DDAE thought it is listed as AEAE in the M-K collection. To me, this is all too much like algebra or trigonometry.
The Angelina Baker connection is interesting. John Huerta, an old banjo friend from my days in northern Virginia, and now a devoted resident of Elkins, West Virginia – and a serious contributor to the old time community there – tells me that most folks in Elkins just call the tune that is our subject “Georgia Row.” It is a D tune, John says, “and if a fiddler just starts playing it, unless I listen very carefully it sounds to me a lot like Angeline the Baker, especially the high part,” echoing the point made by some Fiddler Hangout companions. For myself, I see the similarities most clearly in this version of the tune “Georgia Row” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyBB6ofBJJQ
George Gibson, a great old time banjo player born and raised in Knox County, Kentucky, and an extremely well informed source regarding regional banjo history and tune lineage (http://www.banjohistory.com/recording) told me that “Georgia Row” may be a “folk version” of Angeline the Baker. I’ve also seen the assertion that “Georgia Row” bears similarities to Coon Dog. http://tunearch.org/wiki/Georgia_Row
Our Fiddle Hangout friends note in various threads that Rich Hartness played it on Ray Alden's fine compilation, "Tribute to the Appalachian String Band Festival", IIRC. In a 22 April email, Bob Carlin told me that though he does not recall much about the tune, he used to play it years ago with Rich Hartness. John Huerta mentioned that on “Young Foggies, Vol. ll,” Rich Hartness and Beth play the tune.
Three more versions worth listening to:
Deleuran Eevoldsen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keVVoca12U4
Mac and Jenny Traynham and Shay Garriock -- very interesting subtle twists to the banjo version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uxXQh0johM
And here’s an interesting version -- I think we've seen this musician before, on a previous TOTW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CftFoFbFA4M
I’ve sanded off the polish Adam and Beth brought to this tune, and dropped all the accomplished licks that Adam infuses into his music, chiseled away the gymnastic fingerings, and boiled down the tune to make it accessible to me, so it comes out like this in Sledgehammer Style:
This take in gCGCD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-9X4rCRH4U
This time in gDGBD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEpJ03Y33LI
We now return control of your computer to you until next week, at the same time, when the Control Voice will take you to next … Tune of The Week.
Play hard.
Lew