Benton's Dream: A Song History
“Benton’s Dream” was composed by Benton Flippen (1920–2011), a fiddler from Mount Airy in Surry County, North Carolina.[1][2] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, Flippen came up with it in the 1960s while idly fiddling at the home of fellow Mount Airy fiddler Tommy Jarrell. Jarrell liked it and gave it its name.[1] The tune is a reel in A, played in standard tuning.[1][3]
William Henry Jackson, “Blue Ridge from Mt. Toxaway, Sapphire County, N.C.,” photograph, 1902. Library of Congress. No known restrictions. Mount Toxaway is in the western North Carolina mountains, well away from Flippen’s Surry County.
Flippen began on the banjo as a young teenager and switched to fiddle around eighteen. He learned largely by watching, including from a fiddling uncle and the local musician Esker Hutchins. His style stood out for unusual left-hand fingerings, frequent slides and a bow arm with strong rhythm.[2] He played with the Green Valley Boys, the Camp Creek Boys and the Smokey Valley Boys, and he received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1990.[2][4] In 1973 Rounder issued an album by the Smokey Valley Boys.[1]
The tune has since travelled beyond Surry County. It appears in Phillips’s Traditional American Fiddle Tunes (vol. 1, 1994) and the Portland Collection (1997), and the Tompkins County Horseflies and Patrick Street both recorded it.[1][5] It is still taught as a fiddle lesson today.[3] It also has a place in younger players’ repertoire: Flippen’s obituary recalls how pleased he was to hear the young Tennessee fiddler Carson Peters play it.[4] Stephen Seifert’s mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II includes it.[6]
Find books with Benton's Dream for sale →