Big Scioty: A Song History
“Big Scioty” (also spelled “Big Sciota”) takes its name from the Scioto River, which runs through Ohio and empties into the Ohio River; the river’s name is spelled and pronounced in more than one way.[1] Most versions of the tune trace back to one West Virginia fiddler, Burl Hammons of Marlinton.[1] Alan Jabbour and Carl Fleischhauer documented the Hammons family in the early 1970s for the Library of Congress, which published a double album of the family’s traditions in 1973.[2] A 1972 recording of Hammons playing the tune appears on Rounder’s set The Hammons Family.[3]
John Vachon, “Corn shocks on Phil Gay’s farm in the Scioto River valley at the foot of the hills. Ross County, Ohio,” photograph, October 1940. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
Hammons apparently played it differently from one collector’s recording to the next. Jabbour noted the irregular repeated phrases that made his playing “wonderfully crooked.”[1] Revival bands learned from different Hammons recordings: the Red Clay Ramblers, for instance, worked from a 1970 field recording rather than from Jabbour’s.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive also connects it to related tunes such as “Big Sandy” and the Kentucky fiddler John Salyer’s “Kentucky Winder.”[1]
The tune became a favorite of the old-time revival. It was printed in Johnson’s Kitchen Musician series (1982) and Brody’s Fiddler’s Fakebook (1983), and the Red Clay Ramblers recorded it in 1975.[1] As “Big Sciota” it also reached bluegrass and flatpicking players, especially after Russ Barenberg recorded it with Jerry Douglas and Edgar Meyer on Skip, Hop & Wobble (1993).[4] Stephen Seifert’s Join the Jam II has two settings, one of them labeled as coming from a Jim Miller.[5]
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