Here we go, my first ever Banjo Hangout Old-Time Tune of the Week! I hope I'm not judged too harshly, having to follow JanetB's Ultra-TOTW from last week 
Here goes nothing:
Disclaimer - I'm posting this a few hours before Friday (9pm EST) because I realized I'll be out of the house almost all day tomorrow. I figured a little early is better than a little late!
The tune I've selected is "Elk River Blues" written by West Virginia fiddler Ernie Carpenter. It was one of the tunes that made me want to try playing clawhammer banjo in the first place, and the first I learned by ear.
The first time I heard Elk River Blues was in a promo video for Nathan Bowles' 2014 album Nansemond. His label produced a handful of live video before the release, but I must've replayed this one fifty times. Its slow, haunting, somewhat crooked melody got stuck in my head and I could not get it out. From there I started listening to Ernie Carpenter, which started me down the rabbit hole of incredible hyper-regional Appalachian fiddle/banjo music, and now here we are! Anyway, enough about me - onto the tune:
Elk River Blues is a pretty straight-forward piece once you wrap your head around the meter. It's essentially made up of four five-bar phrases in 4/4 time, but the third bar of each phrase is in 2/4. The change in meter and the odd phrase length can be a little wonky, but there's plenty of time to become more comfortable as it just repeats itself over and over with little variation! 
Performers seem to repeat the AA' several times, varying it a little here and there as it goes on. It's a nice tune with a good amount of breathing room to take some liberties and noodle a little bit. It's written in standard G tuning, but I like to play it in A just because I prefer the way my banjo sounds with the capo up two frets.
I've seen some comments that Elk River Blues isn't really Old-Time, and it's more of a Country or Pop tune. Eh.. I don't really know what to say. It definitely has a more "modern" sound than the countless OT classics, but to my ears it still fits in the genre. I will say I definitely prefer the slower Bowles arrangement compared to Carpenter's faster tempo. I think it works very well as a nice lamenting ballad.. after all, it was inspired by the flooding of his boyhood home on the Elk River. From the Traditional Tune Archive:
According to the booklet accompanying Carpenter's LP, the story behind the tune is one of a difficult adjustment to a forced change in Ernie's life. He had worked most of his life for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company in Clarksburg, prior to retiring in 1972 to his home in Braxton County, West Virginia. He was a regular visitor during his working years to his homeplace on the Elk River, and was witness to the planning and construction of the Sutton Dam by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the river during the 1950's and 1960's. Unfortunately, this resulted in the flooding of his boyhood home and the surrounding area, despite the efforts of himself and neighbors to forestall the project through a lobbyist. He refused the government's initial offer for his land (they didn't offer him anything for his house), and took the case to court. He was able to gain a marked increase in the money he eventually was paid through this process, although had to pay legal fees out of his pocket. He stayed in his Elk River homestead while the dam was being constructed, even though most of his neighbors had already left. Workmen blocked the roads in and out of the area, but Carpenter found alternate routes until they too were closed off. "I was the last person out of there," he said," I went ahead then and tore the old place town and brought it up here. Part of its in this house." Of the tune, he remarked: "I was sittin' here one day, an' I had the blues. I reckon as bad as anybody could, thinkin' about my old homeplace up on the Elk River. I started sawin' on the fiddle an' that's what I came up with."
Interstingly enough, my fiancée's late grandparents settled in Sutton, WV, and I've been to the same lake and the same dam that Ernie is referring to - pretty small world! Here's an aerial view of the dam at Sutton Lake (from wvencyclopedia.org):
I've attached a basic tab of my own (please forgive the screenshot - can't quite afford the full version of Tabledit right now, so a mock-up will have to do) which is based on the Bowles version, and I've included a tab from Ken Torke over at TaterJoes.com.
There seems to be no shortage of relatively recent recordings of this tune available on YouTube, Amazon, and CDbaby, so I'll just include the two that inspired me to write this whole thing up in the first place. Along with the tab, there are recordings of Ernie, Nathan, and myself attached below. I'd love to know if anyone has recordings that have stood out to them. I haven't found a lot of "veterans" playing the tune, or at least recording it.
There is a wonderful collection of Ernie Carpenter's work available here, from WV's Augusta Heritage Center. More information on the release can be found in this Discogs entry.
And I think that just about wraps it up - I'll end with a nice quote from Mr. Carpenter, taken from the AHC website. Thanks for reading everyone!
“Music is a great gift, one of the greatest anybody can have, because it’s something nobody can take away from you. No way can they touch it. They can’t take a note away. It don’t make no difference if you’re a tramp or how low down you are, if you play music you can still keep it. That’s about the only thing left that the politicians can’t get in on! Money can’t buy it. You can’t even give it away yourself. You can learn somebody, but you can’t give it to them as a gift. It’s a very precious thing, I think, very precious.”
