BLACK EYED SUSIE

BLACK EYED SUSIE . AKA and see variant “Hop Up Kitty Puss ” (northeast Ky.), “Kitty Puss,” “Possum Up a Simmon Tree ,” “Puncheon Camp,” “Puncheon Camps.” American, Air and Reel. USA; southwestern Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Nebraska, Kentucky. D Major (most versions): G Major (Newcomer). Standard or GDad (Newcomer) tunings (fiddle). AB (Christeson, Krassen/1983, Silberberg): AABB (Brody, Krassen /1973): AA’BB’ (Phillips). “One of the most popular breakdown tunes,” note the New Lost City Ramblers (1964), widespread throughout the South and Southwest in both song and instrumental versions. Bayard (1981) traces the history of the tune, beginning in the British Isles with a melody called “Rosasolis,” set by Giles Farnaby (c. 1560–c.1600), which appears in the the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Another version of the melody is called “Morris Off” and appears in Jehan Tabourot’s Orchesographie (1588); it is still used for English morris dances and has been called the earliest recorded morris tune. Still another version appears as an old Welsh harp tune in Alawon Fy Ngwlad/Lays of My Land. Later developments of the tune were popular in England and Scotland from the early 17th century through the 18th, under the title “Three Jolly Sheep Skins ;” while in Ireland a variation became known as “Aillilliu mo Mhailin” (Alas my little bag) {a humorous lament for a stolen bag of sundries}. Transported to the United States from various overseas sources the melody developed into an old-time standard, “Black Eyed Susie,” well-known throughout the South and Midwest. It was mentioned in reports from 1926–31 of the De Kalb County, northeast Alabama, Annual (Fiddler’s) Convention, and at a 1929 Grove Hill, southwest Alabama, contest (Cauthen, 1990). It appears in the lists of tunes played at the 1924 Berea, Kentucky, fiddle contest, and in tune lists dating from 1915 from Berea fiddlers. Musicologist Vance Randolph collected and recorded the breakdown in the early 1940’s for the Library of Congress from Ozarks Mountains fiddlers, and it was similarly waxed in 1939 from the playing of Tishomingo County, Mississippi, fiddler John Hatcher for the same institution. A fiddler from Texas, Elmo Newcomer of near Pipe Creek, was recorded by John and Ruby Lomax in 1939, playing the tune in GDad tuning.