Annotation:Love Nancy

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LOVE NANCY. Old-Time, Slow Air. A Major. ADae tuning (fiddle). In the repertoire of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, fiddler Biography:Edden Hammons [1] (1876-1955). Alan Jabbour (1984, notes reprinted in "The Edden Hammons Collection, vol. 1") says the tune seems to be a derivation of "an older British-American ballad sometimes entitled 'William and Nancy" (Courting Too Slow), and recorded from the Appalachian singers by various 20th century ballad collectors." He cites Cecil Sharp's English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians as one source with a similar setting collected in Kentucky, and points out that sung versions usually follow an AABA form, while Hammons version has a "phrasal structure ...remodeled so that if feels like a three-phrase tune. In all likelihood it was never sung exactly this way but evolved into its present form strictly as an instrumental piece."

Edden Hammons

Gerry Milnes (Fiddle-L, 14 Sep 2000) remembered that Sherman Hammons (Edden's nephew, born 1903) sung "Love Nancy" with words that went something like:

There goes love Nancy,
She is my fancy;
I gave to her a ring of gold.


Source for notated version:

Printed sources:

Recorded sources: West Virginia University Press SA-1, "The Edden Hammons Collection, vol. 1" (1999).




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