Annotation:Tishomingo County Blues

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X:1 T:Tishomingo County Blues M:2/4 L:1/8 S:John Hatcher, Iuka, Miss. Z:From a transcription by Gary Stanton B:North Carolina folklore journal [28.2 November 1980] K:D [D2d2]|[D2d2]e>f|d2 e>f|d2 e>f|e>d B<d-|d2 e>f|(d[Dd]) e>f|d2 e>f| d2 df/f/|e>d B<[Dd]-|[D2d2] e>f|d2 g>g|.a2.a2|.a2.a2|c-B c-B|A3- A/A/| a>a b>a|b<a- a>e|f<d- d>B|A>EF>E|F<(d-d2|d2) F>D|E>E F<E| Dz F>D|E>E F>E|Dz F>D|E>E F>E|D>E F2|d4-|d2 F>D|E>E F>E| D2 zF>D|E>E F>E D2 z [FA]>D|E>E F>E|D>E F2 |[D2d2]||

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TISHOMINGO COUNTY BLUES. American, Reel (cut time). USA, Mississippi. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). ABB. The tune was composed by the source, John Hatcher, of Tishomingo County, Mississippi, who said of it:

All counties have blues. I felt that Tishomingo County was blue enough and ought to have one. I picked up notes from other tunes and made one up of my own. It took some time, not all at once.

Gary Stanton, in his article “All Counties Have Blues: County Blues as an Emergent Genre of Fiddle Tunes in Eastern Mississippi”, points out that while almost a third of the commercial releases of white Mississippi musicians in the 1920’s and 1930’s were blues or blues influenced, only two field recordings of white instrumental blues were made, “Tishomingo County Blues” and “Lost John.” The field recordings were assumed to have been of older, less commercial musicians. Stanton’s thesis is that Mississippi fiddlers of that time period were split between older fiddlers whose repertoire reflected that of the turn of the century, and younger fiddlers who were influenced by mass media and popular trends, whose repertoire included the more modern forms of waltzes, blues and popular tunes.

Tom Rankin (1985) points out that the coarse part of the melody was borrowed almost directly from "Carroll County Blues #1” (there were three different Carroll County Blues recorded), although it was played in a different key. “Tishomingo” is called by Stanton a ‘one-chord’ tune.

"Tishomingo" is a title that appears in a list of traditional Ozarks Mountains fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954, possibly referencing "Tishomingo County Blues."

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