“There were two hotels in Cumby fifty years ago when the ox wagons kept the dust rising from the long road. It was not Cumby then, however, but Blackjack Grove, and early inhabitants tell of an old couplet, ‘Blackjack Grove, just one street - two hotels and nothing to eat.’”
-- Dallas Morning News, Ap. 13, 1926
Here’s a strange and addictive Lone Star tune that’ll really take you down the rabbithole. It’s no relation to the wonderful A-modal tune from Appalachia (which someone really oughta pick for next week’s TOTW), but instead is traced back to big Falfurrias, TX, way south of my locale and a town I hadn’t actually heard of until coming across this melody (apparently it’s a place known mostly to engineers, geologists, and the dairy section at our local HEB, where one can get some dang good butter with the Falfurrias name on it).
Falfurrias is where Lomax recorded the bowing of one Old West legend Lake Porter back in ‘39. This is a cowpoke who is said to have left home at the age of nine, with nothing but a rifle, to avenge his sheriff father’s death. A year later the kid shows back up at his homestead’s door (presumably with an Eastwood Squint on his face) and mutters, “debt’s been paid.” He rode the Chisholm trail, hypnotizing the herd by bowing his fiddle, or as folks seem to have said back then, “agitating the cat-guts” (this has immediately become my new favorite phrase). You can hear Lake’s stomping take on Blackjack Grove here. The tune blasts to life with an eerie howl, and settles into a deep-voiced drone for the B-part, where one might be inclined to voice the titular “interjections,” as Lomax called ‘em.
Spencer & Rains, newfound old-time heroes of mine, play it beautifully on their fascinating collection of Weird Tunes of Old Texas. Listen to a couple samples here and here -- both give you separate moments from the track. Don’t shy away from buying the whole CD, though, with a title like that you can’t go wrong.
Wonderfully played but the thing is, they built a Jackalope of a tune by taking Lake Porter’s rendition and tossing in a second B part sourced from Jack Gage of Eastland, TX. Two far-flung Texas fiddlers contributing to a tune originally named after a third town in the northeast part of the state, a place that became Cumby, TX way back in 1895.
The odd nature of Spencer & Rains’ tune doesn’t stop at three parts, though -- and here’s where we get technical. It took me getting a guitar out to realize it, but it seems to change keys in each of the three sections! The main part, with the howl, sounds at home in E major with a modal feel, I find myself switching between E, G and D chords when playing along to this. The Lake Porter B part (“Black Jack Grove”) seems to be in G (with that wonderful fiddle drone beneath), and the Jack Gage B part is in D. To bring it all back to banjo, the CD liner notes describe the tuning as gDADE, that is, Double-D without tuning the 5th string up to A. Probably to match that low G drone, but quite honestly I haven’t picked up my ‘jo to test out if this is a reasonable tuning to play the E major part in.
All that said, the original tune is stated as being in G (recording sounds pitched to around F) in its description on Tunearch(great write-up, the musing about “old-fashioned boys” is fantastic too). So Janet and other adventurous tablateurs, you can choose your own adventure here and have a hand at either the original or Spencer & Rains’.
Being a Weird Tune, examples of this one are scarce. Check out David Bragger’s excellent take on it below, playing his gourd fiddle (in this post he describes his tuning and calls the piece a “very archaic, surreal tune”).
David Bragger - Black Jack Grove
Quotes from the 1920’s Dallas Morning News article were found here, a surprisingly enjoyable read about a booming small town. I love the reference to the tune being played over the radio to the enjoyment of partyin’ Cumbians (and I wonder who played it). Also features women of the temperance movement tearing up a couple of “blind tigers” that moved into town (“...both places were sacked and the chocolate loam soil got a good jag from the whisky, gin, and beer which splashed out from breaking bottles”), and one “Miss Texana Trimble.”
Finally, here’s my take on Spencer & Rains’ tune, and my first attempt at posting a fiddle video to BHO (so take it easy on me). Standard tuning, GDAE. A little messy but man is it fun to play.
Thanks y’all, glad to play a part in this TOTW tradition!