Annotation:Walking Down the Georgia Road
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WALKING DOWN THE GEORGIA ROAD. AKA and see "Walking Up Georgia Row." Old-Time, Breakdown. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The tune is sourced to Russell County, Virginia, fiddler Uncle Charlie Osborne [1] (1890-1992), who learned it from his father. The similarly titled "Georgia Row," from Kentucky fiddler Buddy Thomas (1934-1974) is perhaps related, distanced tune in the key of 'A'. Regarding the "Georgia Row" title, multi-intrumenatlist Gail Gillespie (a Senior Advisory Editor of periodical "Old Time Herald") explains:
Between the Revolutionary & Civil Wars, wealthy southerners summered at mountain spring resorts. It was partly for health reasons (escaping the heat of the low country indigo & rice plantations), but also social. It was a marriage market & there were dances & balls. The resort owners hired orchestras that played classical music during the "season," but in the winter, the off season, the mountain locals played reels for their own dances. The rows were rows of cottages, built by the wealthy, for their summer stay--sometimes wealthy planters who lived in the rice country of Georgia & SC might as long as 3 or 4 months. South Carolina & Georgia planters had their own cottage rows with others of the same area. I did my dissertation on this years ago but still have old guide books. Maps of White Sulphur Springs & Sweet Springs show rows of cottages with names such as "Virginia Row," "South Carolina Row," and "Georgia Row." [Fiddle Hangout, 2012]
Source for notated version: Isla Ross [Silberberg].
Printed sources: Silberberg (Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern), 2002; p. 163. Songer (Portland Collection, vol. 2), 2005; p. 220 (as "Walk Up Georgia Row").
Recorded sources: June Appal Records, Uncle Charlie Osborne - "The June Appal Recordings" (2008).
See also listing at:
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [2]
See/hear the tune played by Jane Rothfield [3] and see the banjo tab for her version [4].