TOTW (OT) 9 MAY 2014, COME BACK BOYS, LET'S FEED THE HORSES

I’m going to tackle “Come Back Boys, And Let’s Feed The Horses.”   It’s one of those tunes, to use BHO member Bill Long’s apt phrase, that becomes hypnotic when played and can lead a banjoist to spending long, solitary time running the tune on and on. 

Here’s Dwight Diller playing the tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17iMdbwtmxw

Dwight first heard the tune played by James Hammons, Burl and Edn’s son, and recorded it in one of his home visits.   Notes in Dwight Diller’s tab book, Volume 1, Yew Piney Mountain: Obscure Underground Clawhammer Banjo from Mysterious Central West Virginia, (n.d.) suggest that a fast version recorded by an unnamed old fiddler from Mingo County might not be exactly the same tune. 

Fiddler's Companion (ibiblio.org/fiddlers/) states that this tune is an old time breakdown.  Fiddlers play it in A Major (AEae) tuning.  Kerry Blech “sees some possible similarity to Edn Hammons’ ‘Let's Hunt the Horses.’”  The tune “is known as a West Virginia tune (some times attributed to a member of the Hammons’ family, although this cannot be verified).”  The Companion credits Jimmy Tripplet, Gerry Milnes and Dwight Diller for “popularizing” the tune.

Christian Wig and Mark Ward have the tune on a track on their CD bearing the name: Come Back Boys and Feed the Horses.  Here’s the CD:

http://www.countysales.com/products.php?product=CHRISTIAN-WIG-%26-MARK-WARD-%27Come-Back-Boys-%26-Feed-the-Horses%27

And here’s the Wig/Ward version:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00693NAYK/ref=dm_dp_trk11?ie=UTF8&qid=1378934203&sr=8-2

I really like everything and anything played by Christian Wig.

Cathy Moore joins two young fiddlers, a guitar player and who knows what else in a 2010 Youtube video capturing this tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs_xbYKWTY4

Here’s Nathan Bowles doing a really fine version, with its own galloping pace:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzrVvlX9BRk

And Bowles at it again, in a cut off his CD, “A Bottle, A Buckeye”:

https://soundcloud.com/soft-abuse/nathan-bowles-come-back-boys

And an ensemble combining fiddle, banjo and … harmonica!  I believe these are the Black Twig Pickers; Nathan Bowles is part of the group.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rQ3RzX2oI8

I think this is the fiddler Meg Grey doing a very studied version of the tune.   Note that one of the commentators on her Youtube video suggests that her playing scattered the chickens that were clustered in the foreground where she was fiddling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrU3UPFAgG0

And here’s a video of someone actually headed off to feed the horses, though it’s not clear the subject really has her head in the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdC39sEwHAw

Here’s my crack at the tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MC81Nk07jE

You can access the banjo tab done by Andrew Diamond for Diller’s tab book, Volume 1, Yew Piney Mountain: Obscure Underground Clawhammer Banjo from Mysterious Central West Virginia, (n.d.) here:

http://dwightdiller.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/C.-DLLR-TabBook-2006_07_31-page-numbers-correct.pdf

Go ahead.  Take a crack at it.  See whether you can avoid becoming mesmerized by the pulse of this tune.

Play hard,

Lew