Crawdad Song: A Song History

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"Crawdad Song," often listed simply as "Crawdad," is an American folk song made of loosely linked verses about catching crawdads (crayfish) and about country life, and the Traditional Ballad Index classes it as a nonballad found in the Appalachians and the South.[1] The earliest date the Index gives comes from Cecil Sharp's collecting in 1917; Sharp printed the song as "The Crow-fish Man," and the Index reports his note that his singer had learned it from an African American singer.[1] The Index also points out that it shades into the "Sweet Thing" family, which sometimes shares its tune and its verses, and that the editors separate the two only by whether a crawdad appears.[1] Its simple verse pattern has served many humorous songs in North American tradition, much as the limerick serves comic verse.[1]

Painting on silk of a large spiny crustacean with long antennae and a smaller shrimp-like creature below

Watanabe Seitei, Crayfish, album leaf; ink and color on silk, ca. 1887. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Among the commercial recordings the Index lists, the earliest are by Honeyboy & Sassafras, recorded for Brunswick in 1929, the Girls of the Golden West, issued on Bluebird in 1933 under a different title, and Asa Martin and James Roberts in 1934.[1] The Library of Congress also holds non-commercial recordings, some titled "Sugar Babe," among them a 1935 version by Aunt Molly Jackson.[1] Alan Lomax's Kentucky recordings include Mary Davis singing "The Crawdad Song" at Sibert, in Clay County, on 9 October 1937.[2] Later releases on the Index's list include Evelyn Knight and Red Foley's 1951 Decca record and Joe Turner's "Crawdad Hole" on Atlantic in 1952.[1]

The song is printed in Pete Seeger's American Favorite Ballads and in the Prairie Home Companion Folk Song Book.[1] Maureen Sellers includes it in My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume Two, a 56-page instruction book for the Appalachian mountain dulcimer, published by Fingers Of Steel.[3]

Our book that contains the song "Crawdad Song"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Crawdad".
  2. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "The Crawdad Song".
  3. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume Two".
  4. Image: Watanabe Seitei, Crayfish, album leaf; ink and color on silk, ca. 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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