Baby-O: A Song History
The Traditional Tune Archive treats “Baby-O” as another name for the Southern breakdown it files as “Whatcha Gonna Do with the Baby?”, also known as “What’ll We Do with the Baby?” and “Hell Up Hickory Holler.”[1][2] The archive associates it with Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina, and cites the folklorist Jeff Titon’s view that it was a play-party song familiar throughout the upland South.[1]
Russell Lee, “Playing a swing game in the yard. Play party in McIntosh County, Oklahoma,” photograph, February 1940. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
It turns up on several fiddlers’ repertoire lists that Berea, Kentucky students drew up in 1915, and two years later the English song collector Cecil Sharp took down a Kentucky version.[1] The fiddler G. B. Grayson and the guitarist Henry Whitter recorded it for Victor in Memphis in October 1929.[1] Their “What You Gonna Do With the Baby” was later included on an LP of the duo’s recordings.[3] Jean Ritchie’s version was well known among 1960s folk revivalists, and in 1975 Claudio Buchwald, a fiddler from New York State, used the tune for a country dance in the New England style.[1]
The Tune Archive gives it in G, played in standard tuning or in the GDad cross-tuning it associates with Estill Bingham.[1] It is one of the old-time jam tunes in Stephen Seifert’s mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II.[4]
Find books with Baby-O for sale →