Camp Meeting On The Fourth Of July: A Song History

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The best-known account of where "Camp Meeting on the Fourth of July" came from is the one given by Alabama fiddler James Bryan. In his telling, the tune was first played in nineteenth-century Arkansas as a processional for evening services at camp meetings.[1][2] No earlier documentation of that story turned up in the sources consulted here, so it is best read as Bryan's account. Camp meetings were outdoor revivals lasting several days, with those attending camping on the grounds. They spread across the southern frontier in the early 1800s, and Methodists took them up most fully.[3] Bryan had the tune from Tom Jackson, who learned it from Coleman Barwick, an old-time fiddler from Blountsville, Alabama.[1][2] It should not be confused with "At a Georgia Camp Meeting" or with "4th of July at the County Fair."[1]

Lithograph of a crowd at an outdoor camp meeting in the woods, with a preacher in a wooden stand and worshippers kneeling

A. Rider and H. Bridport, “Camp-meeting,” lithograph, Kennedy & Lucas, c. 1829. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

Bryan was born in Boaz, Alabama, in 1953 and lives in Mentone. He took the Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention's "Fiddle King" title, apprenticed with bluegrass fiddler Kenny Baker, and played in Norman Blake's Rising Fawn String Ensemble.[4][5] He recorded the tune with guitarist Carl Jones on their album Two Pictures.[1][5] Players today treat it as a two-part march in D, in standard tuning or with the fiddle in DDad.[1] It is printed in Silberberg's Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern (2002) and in the second volume of The Portland Collection, and it appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II.[1][6][7]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Camp Meeting on the Fourth of July".
  2. Knoxville Old-Time (Mark D. Murray, ed.): "Camp Meeting On The Fourth Of July".
  3. Tennessee Encyclopedia (Tennessee Historical Society): "Camp Meetings".
  4. Michael Ismerio, Video Encyclopedia of Old-Time Fiddlers: "James Bryan".
  5. Alabama State Council on the Arts: "James Bryan, Mentone" (Alabama Folk Heritage Award).
  6. North Atlantic Tune List: "Camp Meeting on the Fourth of July".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".