I started with the tuning first here, after I fell for Ken Perlman’s B minor tuning from his Clawhammer Style Banjo book. From gDGBD you just drop the third and fifth a half-step and you’re there (f#DF#BD). I enjoyed fooling around with it so much I decided to select my tune around it.
I ended up with Old Drake, a crooked ol’ minor tune from West Virginia’s East side. It’s referred to as Big Fancy some times. I won’t get far into history here, as it’s so well documented and I’m sure plenty of y’all know the stories better than I. Dwight Diller did extensive field work and interviewed the Hammons family at length (link to that work below). This is one of the tunes he picked up from Burl, who learned it from his uncle Edden.
Edden was a character. There are some choice quotes on his Wikipedia entry, and he’d apparently wander around with his fiddle stored in a full sack of flour. Just pulled the fiddle out when it was time to get down to business, blow the flour off in a big cloud of white powder. He said, “Upon my honor, that's just as good as the best cases every [sic??] made.”
Haven’t heard his version of the tune yet, but Burl can be heard on the Slippery Hill site for a woefully short thirty-one seconds:
http://slippery-hill.com/M-K/ADAE/AMINOR/OldDrake.mp3
My main source was fiddler David Margolin and banjo player Yigal Zan, who I found on Youtube (link below).
So here’s my version, f#DF#BD, followed by some great videos and links!
The source I learned from:
They play it here, too:
Great page on the Traditional Tune Archive:
http://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Old_Drake
Edden Hammond’s highly entertaining Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edden_Hammons
Plenty of history on the Hammons family:
http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-12/12-5/hammons.html