Annotation:Fiddler's Hoedown
FIDDLER'S HOEDOWN. AKA and see "Black Foot Rag," "Boone County Rag," "Dead Slave (The)." Old-Time, Breakdown. D Major (Marshall). DDae tuning (fiddle). See note for "Dead Slave (The)" for important (albeit infamous) history on this tune. The reel is on Missouri fiddler Charlie Walden's list of '100 essential Missouri fiddle tunes'. "Martha Campbell" is a related melody, and the second strain of "Fiddler's Hoedown" is similar to the first strain of the Missouri reel "Brickyard Joe (1)." While most fiddlers seem to be familiar with the "Fiddler's Hoedown" title from the playing and recordings of Boone County fiddler Pete McMahan, the "Fiddler's Hoedown" title was first used by Missouri fiddler Cleo Persinger (1909-1971), when he played it at the National Oldtime Fiddler's Contest in Weiser, Idaho, in 1964. McMahan also called the tune "Black Foot Rag," a reference to the community in Boone County where Persinger grew up.