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Annotation:Bob Walker
BOB WALKER. AKA and see "Dubuque." American, Reel. The tune was also recorded in Richmond Indiana in 1923 by Anderson County, Kentucky, native William B. Houchens (1884-c.1955), who recorded a dozen sides for the Starr Piano Company of Indiana (including such chestnuts as "Arkansas Traveler" and "Turkey in the Straw"). Houchens spent much of his adult life running a music conservatory in Dayton, Ohio, where he taught a variety of stringed instruments, but he apparently learned tunes from his mother and older Kentucky fiddlers as well as from books (Charles Wolfe, Kentucky Country, 1982, p. 24). Significant was the fact that Houchens recorded his sides prior to what is thought of as the first country music recordings by Fiddlin' John Carson. Kerry Blech believes Georgia fiddler Lowe Stokes also recorded "Bob Walker," although the side was not issued.
