Can You Dance A Tobacco Hill? A Song History
"Can You Dance a Tobacco Hill?" is a Kentucky reel in D, played in two strains, and it comes from the playing of Owen "Snake" Chapman of Pike County, who learned it from his father.[1] Chapman was born in 1919 near Canada in northeastern Kentucky, mined coal for much of his working life, and was back living in Chapman's Hollow, where his family's home stood, by the late 1960s.[2] Producer Mark Wilson recorded him between 1995 and 1998, and the tune came out on Chapman's Rounder album Up in Chapman's Hollow.[1][2]
Astbury-Whieldon, Fiddler, lead-glazed earthenware, ca. 1750. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.
In his review of Chapman's albums, Paul Roberts heard echoes of "Moneymusk" in it.[2] The Traditional Tune Archive points to a more distant relative, "Charlie MacLean's Strathspey."[1] Jeff Todd Titon printed a transcription in Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (2001), and Brad Leftwich recorded it on Say Old Man (County, 1996).[1] Fiddler David Bragger taught it in high bass tuning at his workshop at the 2010 Old Time Fiddlers Convention in Goleta, suggesting it as shuffle-bowing practice: the melody is full of notes, yet its repetition keeps it manageable.[3]
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