Annotation:Chippy Get Your Hair Cut

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X: 1 T:Chippy Get Your Hair Cut M:4/4 L:1/8 N:These abc's, from the web, are the first two strains N:of Sarah Armstrong's "Johnny Get Your Hair Cut" S:AABB form R:Key of D K:D |:A2|dfed B2A2|B2A2 F2A2|dfed B2A2|B2c2 d2:|! |:d2f2 a3a|b2a2 f2e2|defg a2a2|b2a2 f2f2|! |d2f2 a3a|b2a2 f2e2|dfed B2A2|B2c2 d2d2:|

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CHIPPY GET YOUR HAIR CUT. AKA and see "Gippie/Johnny/Hippie Get Your Hair Cut." Old-Time, Breakdown. USA, Mississippi. C Major or A Major. The tune was recorded for the Library of Congress by collector Herbert Halpert in 1939 from the playing of eighty year old Lauderdale County, Mississippi, fiddler Stephen B. Tucker. The 'A' major tune often features pizzicato notes on the 'E' string. The melody belongs to the "Fire on the Mountain"/"Hog-eye Man"/"Sally in the Garden"/"Granny, Will Your Dog Bite?" family of tunes. A Harvard College "freshman yell" was recorded in 1888 (in the University of Michigan Chronicle, vol. 19, p. 183) as:

Johnny get your gun,
Johnny get your gun,
Chippy get your hair cut,
Ninety-one.

A 'chippy' was the name for a small sparrow, but used colloquially to refer to young women. This ditty was collected by Vance Randolph (Roll Me in Your Arms) from a woman in Springfield, Missouri, in 1946:

Run, Johnny, Run,
Get your sword and your pistol,
Chippy's on the roof
And she won't come down.

Chippy get your haircut--
Short like mine!

And this, from the 1890's (quoted in McAtee, Grant County, Indiana, Speech and Song, 1946):

Chippy on the woodpile,
Chippy on the fence,
Chippy get your haircut--
Fifteen cents~!

Randolph concluded "that there was a song, of which we have now only bits and pieces, to which the haircut tag became assimilated by the turn of the 20th century." (p. 174)