Annotation:Hickory Hornpipe (2)

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HICKORY HORNPIPE [2]. Old-Time, Fiddle Tune. The title appears in a list of traditional Ozarks Mountains fiddle tunes compiled by folklorist/musicologist Vance Randolph, published in 1954 in Midwest Folklore (Summer 1954, vol. I: pp. 81-86). Later he printed an unfortunate and sadistic story about the tune [1]

An old fiddler near Pine Bluff, Ark., in 1938, played "The Hickory Hornpipe," a wild tune with a lot of thumps and shrill squealling in it. "Back in slavery times," he told me, "if a n______ wench didn't behave, they just fanned her ass with a hickory. A young yaller gal will holler and dance mighty lively, and that's what this here tune is about.


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  1. Vance Randolph, Blow the Candle Out: "Unprintable" Ozark Folksongs and Folklore, vol. 2", 1992, p. 759.