Annotation:Squirrel Heads and Gravy
X:1 T:Squirrel Heads and Gravy M:C L:1/8 R:Reel N:From a transcription by John Lamancusa, by permission http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.html Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G “G”G2G2 EDEF | G2G2 EDEF| G2 GG E2G2|”D”A3B A2 AA| ”G”B2 BB A2G2|“C”GAGF E2 EE|”G”D2 EF G2D2|”D”BG A2 “G”G4 :| |: “G”d2 de dcBc| d2 de d2 Bc|d2 de dc B2|”D”A3B A2 Bc| ”G”d2 de dcB2|”C”cBcd e4|”G”d2 ef g2d2|”D”BG A2 “G”G4:|
SQUIRREL HEADS AND GRAVY. American, Reel (cut time). G Major. Standard or GDad tuning (fiddle). AABB. "Squirrel Heads and Gravey" was composed by fiddler Chris Germain (originally from Ferguson, Missouri, then of Washington D.C.) around the year 1975, apparently as part of a joke. Ironically, the tune has entered tradition and is sometimes listed as a "traditional" melody. The rumor that there is an older tune by the same name only seems to be part of the joke. One story goes that Germain asked around at fiddlers gatherings and parties whether anyone had heard the ‘old’ tune called “Squirrel Heads and Gravy,” then, a few months later started playing his composition allowing people to assume he had unearthed a long-lost piece. Germain played the tune in GDad tuning, although it has also been played in GDgd and AEae tunings. These words are sometimes sung to the second strain:
Squirrel heads and gravy squirrel heads I say,
Squirrel heads and gravy I'm a gonna eat them everyday.
Squirrel heads and gravy is, in some parts, considered a delicacy. Said Missouri fiddler Taylor McBaine (1911-1994) of his favorite food: "You get a skillet with those squirrel heads in that gravy; you take a hammer and crack open those skulls and suck out those brains. Now that's good eatin" (Old Time Herald, vol. 4, No. 5). Missouri fiddler Howard Marshall is of the opinion Germaine was influenced by McBaine in his choice of the title. That squirrel brains were a delicacy to some is well documented. An Associated Press article by Charles Wolfe of 9/8/97 quoted Janet Norris Gates, who said they were the choicest morsels of the game her father once hunted in Tennessee. "’In our family, we saw it as a prized piece of meat, and if he shared it with you, you were pretty happy. Not that he was stingy,’ said Mrs. Gates, an oral historian in Frankfort, ’but there's just not much of a squirrel brain.'" The article went on to warn that researchers had recently found a possible link between eating squirrel brains and the rare and deadly human variety of mad-cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It has been reported that in some rural traditions small-sized biscuits were called ‘squirrel-heads’.
