Old Dan Tucker went to town, Ridin a goat and leadin' a hound; The hound give a yelp and the goat give a jump, And set Dan Tucker right a-straddle of a stump.Old Dan Tucker
Played by: Just Folk Source: Soundcloud Image: The original 1843 sheet music, featuring Emmett and the Virginia Minstrels
was a popular tune throughout the 19th century and into the next, and is mentioned fairly frequently in publications. Several older fiddle-players have said the "Old Dan Tucker" was the first tune that they learned to play, according to Mike Yates (2002).
It was recorded on a dance card as a square dance played at a "Grand Select Quadrille at City Hall, Lima, Ohio, on Thursday Evening, Jan. 13th, 1870," and "Old Dan Tucker" was given as one of the "category" tunes played in an 1899 Gallatin, Tenn., fiddle contest-the fiddler who played the best rendition won a prize (C. Wolfe, The Devil's Box, vol. 14, No. 4, 12/1/80). The title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954.
Elizabeth Burchenal prints a circle dance of the same name to the tune, and Ford (1940, p. 207) also prints a dance called "Old Dan Tucker." Indeed, Paul Tyler reports that Old Dan Tucker is the name of a square dance figure—"It's something like the Nine-Pin Reel, a 4-couple square dance with one extra dancer in the middle"—with the active male dancer being known as the 'Tucker'.
Recorded versions in the 78 RPM era come from Uncle Dave Macon (in the early 1920's), Al Hopkins & His Buckle Busters (1928), and the Skillet Lickers (1928).
Although we are not trained musicologists and make no pretense to the profession, we have tried to apply such professional rigors to this Semantic Abc Web as we have internalized through our own formal and informal education.
This demands the gathering of as much information as possible about folk pieces to attempt to trace tune families, determine origins, influences and patterns of aural/oral transmittal, and to study individual and regional styles of performance.
Many musicians, like ourselves, are simply curious about titles, origins, sources and anecdotes regarding the music they play. Who, for example, can resist the urge to know where the title Blowzabella came from or what it means, or speculating on the motivations for naming a perfectly respectable tune Bloody Oul' Hag, is it Tay Ye Want?
Knowing the history of the melody we play, or at least to have a sense of its historical and social context, makes the tune 'present' in the here and now, and enhances our rendering of it.
Andrew Kuntz & Valerio Pelliccioni
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