Did You Ever See The Devil, Uncle Joe: A Song History

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"Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe?" is an American reel in G, associated with southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and it is a local form of a far older and widely traveled British Isles tune, "Miss McLeod's Reel."[1] That reel first reached print in 1809, in Nathaniel Gow's Fifth Collection of Strathspey Reels, where it is described as an Isle of Skye reel supplied by a Mr. McLeod of Raasay.[2] It crossed the Atlantic early. A version appears in the manuscript copybook of Milton Barlow, an American musician born around 1784, and William Williams printed it in a fife tutor published at Utica, New York, in 1826.[2] In the United States it picked up a string of new names, among them "Uncle Joe," "Hop High Ladies" and "Hop Light Ladies."[1][2][3]

Engraving of an old fiddler playing for a family in a cottage interior

J. Burnet after David Wilkie, The Blind Fiddler, engraving, published by Boydell and Co., 1811. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

In 1927 fiddler Cowan Powers and his family band recorded it under this title for OKeh.[1][4] The Birthplace of Country Music museum credits the Powers family as the earliest family string band on commercial records, a distinction it places about three years ahead of the 1927 Bristol Sessions.[3] American singers have fitted a good number of loose, interchangeable verses to the tune, and one sung on that Powers record is identified as a play-party verse.[1] In 1931 the Kentucky fiddler Doc Roberts recorded it for Conqueror with Asa Martin.[1] Later, on his 1959–60 Southern Journey field trip, Alan Lomax recorded it from Wade Ward and Charlie Higgins.[5]

The tune stayed in circulation through later recordings, among them one by fiddler John Patterson on Rounder's Old Originals, vol. 2 (1978), and it was printed in the first volume of Traditional American Fiddle Tunes (1994).[1] Mountain dulcimer players can find it in Stephen Seifert's jam collection Join the Jam II.[6]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Did You Ever See the Devil Uncle Joe?".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Miss McLeod's Reel (1)".
  3. Birthplace of Country Music: "The Devil Has All the Best Tunes".
  4. Discogs: "Fiddlin' Powers & Family – Did You Ever See The Devil, Uncle Joe? / Old Molly Hair".
  5. Mississippi Records: "Wade Ward & Charlie Higgins – Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe?".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".