Today's volunteer is unable to post, so here is a quick 'emergency back-up tune'. Since last week's tune was Cora Dye, I thought I'd keep things in the family and post the tune Hobb Dye.
Actually, the name of the tune probably refers to items used in the machinist trade, not to a person - and if it a person, certainly not one related to Cora (unless she happened to be importing Texas bootleg liquor to Benton, Illinois).
Here's what the Traditional Tune Archive has to say:
HOBB DYE. Old Time, Country Rag. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB'. A "slightly crooked" tune from the playing of California mandolin player Kenny Hall, who said he had the tune from a Texas piano player by the name of Clara Desmond, who had learned it from sheet music (although she may have had it from a Texas fiddler). Desmond had moved to Oakland sometime in the 1930's, a city where Hall worked in a broom factory while playing music and collecting 78 RPM records in his spare time. Hobs and dies are terms from the machine trade (i.e. 'gear hobber'), although the lore attached to the tune has it that the tune was composed after one Hobb Dye, who was a bootlegger from Texas.
The title is often spelled Hob Dye, and less often Hob(b) Die. Some have speculated that it was originally entitled Hob Died.
KENNY HALL
Kenny Hall, our source for Hobb Dye, was for many decades a major figure in the California old-time music community, known for tirelessly preserving, protecting, and passing on the great wealth of old-time music knowledge he began gathering as a young boy. He played regularly up until his death in September, 2013, just shy of his 91st birthday. A few years earlier, Alan Jabbour summed up Kenny's contributions to the music when he wrote: "For one thing, he has a phenomenal repertoire. Hang out with him for several days, and you will discover that his memory bank of great fiddle tunes seems well nigh inexhaustible. For another thing, Kenny's musical style is pure distilled passion and energy. He plays the fiddle with a driving vigor that is utterly infectious, and his stories are equally engaging. And finally, Kenny has been a warm and encouraging mentor to all the younger musicians who flocked around."
Kenny was born in 1923 in San Jose, California. Blind at birth, in 1929 he was enrolled in the California School for the Blind in Berkeley, where music was considered to be basic vocational training for the sightless. He started piano lessons immediately, but as the years passed he rejected both the classical music taught at the school and the big band jazz and western swing the dominated popular music at the time. Instead, he developed a strong interest in traditional folk songs and stringband music from various parts of the U.S., in large part from listening to "The Happy Hayseeds" radio show on KGDM in Stockton. At age eleven he met W.D. Sanford, a blind fiddle and mandolin player from Texas who at the time resided in Kenny's hometown of Campbell, California, a meeting which inspired Kenny to take up the fiddle and mandolin. Through Sanford, he was soon introduced to and mentored by a number of "old-time" musicians from Missouri, Georgia, and other parts of the country. By the late 1930s, Kenny had started actively collecting 78 records, and his repertoire quickly increased to encompass folk music from other countries as well as from almost every region of the U.S. After leaving school, he got work in a broom factory, while continuing to play music. When interest in folk music waned during the mid-and-late 1940s, Kenny played in a western swing group, The Desmond Family Band, before eventually giving up playing on a regular basis. He was "rediscovered" during the folk revival of the 1960s, and recorded a few albums in the early 1970s. For the next 40 years he was a beloved and respected mentor to countless young old-time musicians on the west coast.
You can read about Kenny's life in more detail in this article from the Old-Time Herald http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-7/7-4/kenny-hall.html
and in this except from his book https://books.google.com/books?id=Q-qtFMZxFVUC&pg=PR8&lpg=PR8&dq=clara+desmond+guitar+texas&source=bl&ots=tS1FNV6cFE&sig=9NxIG54qOa-0sJbMQAIxrcY6qBQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Xn2DVZ_HEMKagwSRjbfYCA&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=clara%20desmond%20guitar%20texas&f=false
CLARA DESMOND
As noted above, Kenny learned Hobb Dye from Clara Desmond. A piano player and band leader originally from Texas, Clara was active in the central valley area of California in the 1940s and 50s. As Kenny wrote in his book "Kenny Hall's Music Book: Old Time Music - Fiddle and Mandolin":
"This tune was taught to me in 1946 by Mrs. Clara Desmond of Texas who was the leader of the Desmond Family Band. And she could play it on the piano. She was a terrific leader. She would set the pace for that band and you didn't move any faster or slower - you kept that pace. And she didn't mind us drinking, as long as we did it outside. If you want to drink, go outside and drink it and then come inside and go ahead and play music. That was her way. I met the Desmonds at their home in Hayward, California, through a cousin to the girl I got kicked out of school over. He took me over and introduced me. I was playing with the Desmond Family for four or five years, from 1946 to 1952. Yeah, they taught me several pieces of music."
THE TUNE
Hobb Dye has a strong polka or schottische feel, and is almost certainly a Texas fiddle tune. After first appearing on record in 1974 on Kenny Hall's self-titled LP, it became a standard among west coast fiddlers during the 1970s.
It is in the key of G and follows the standard AABB pattern, but the B part has nine measures.
AUDIO AND VIDEO
video
Madison County, NC, jam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMDvMnmnkbs
Andy Alexis, on bottleneck guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6p_idWLA8w
cds
Jean Murphy and Scott Marckx, "The Time's Been Sweet" (2002): http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/murphymarckx
"Pop Wagner and Bob Bovee", (2003) http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/popwagner4
The Dead Fiddlers Society, "Livin it Up" (2010): http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/DeadFiddlersSociety1
tab
Tab by Ken Torke can be found on his TaterJoe's website:
http://taterjoes.com/banjo/HobDye.pdf