Bound To Have A Little Fun: A Song History

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"Bound to Have a Little Fun" is an American reel in G, and its B part is longer than most, at twelve bars rather than eight.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive credits fiddler Bruce Greene with popularizing it, having learned it from Gusty Wallace, who was born in Hart County, Kentucky, in 1890 and died in 1985.[1] Wallace said it was the very first tune he learned, and that it came from his father, Adison Wallace.[1] Greene's reel-to-reel tapes, now at Berea College, include a session with Wallace at Sulphur Well in Metcalfe County on November 14, 1973,[2] and a tape drawn from visits between 1974 and 1976[3] whose side B play list begins with Wallace's "Bound to Have a Little Fun."[4]

Grandville wood engraving of a fiddler playing at a window while a crowd below begins to dance

J. J. Grandville, The Fiddler of Meudon, from The Complete Works of Béranger, wood engraving, 1836. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A French scene, shown for its fiddler and dancers; it has no connection to the tune.

The Archive also lists a recording by the Orpheus Supertones and a printed setting in the third volume of The Portland Collection (2015).[1] Dulcimer player Don Pedi made it the title track of his 1998 album of twenty-four fiddle tunes.[5] In the album notes, Pedi credits years of playing with old-time fiddlers for most of the repertoire and names Bruce Greene as the chief influence, but the notes do not say where each tune came from.[5]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Bound to Have a Little Fun".
  2. Berea College Special Collections and Archives: "Gusty Wallace BG-OR-005, November 14, 1973" (Bruce Greene Kentucky Fiddle Music Collection).
  3. Berea College Special Collections and Archives: "Gusty Wallace BG-OR-027, April 7, 1974, January 14 & April 11, 1975, January 27, 1976" (Bruce Greene Kentucky Fiddle Music Collection).
  4. Berea College Digital Collections: "Gusty Wallace Fiddle Tunes BG-OR-R027-B" (play list).
  5. Don Pedi (Bandcamp): "Bound to Have A Little Fun".