Double File: A Song History
"Double File" comes from Gaither Carlton of Deep Gap, North Carolina, a fiddler who was also Doc Watson's father-in-law.[1][2] The notes to a 2020 Smithsonian Folkways album describe it as one of Carlton's own compositions. As Carlton and Watson played it, the tune is in A but leans hard on a B-minor chord, which gives it a sound somewhat more modern than most of their repertoire.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive classes it as a two-part A-major reel, often fiddled in AEae cross-tuning, and cites Bill Hicks's 1972 remark that it "bears an obvious resemblance" to "Leather Britches."[2]
Ben Shahn, “Aunt Samantha Bumgarner, fiddler, banjoist, guitarist, Asheville, North Carolina,” photograph, 1937. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
The earliest performance of the tune found in the sources consulted here was taped in New York in October 1962, when Watson made his first appearances in the city as a headliner. One was a Friends of Old Time Music show at NYU's School of Education, and the other was at Blind Lemon's coffee house in the West Village.[1][3] Peter K. Siegel's tapes of those nights went largely unheard until Smithsonian Folkways issued them in 2020 as Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton, which opens with Carlton's fiddle and Watson's guitar on "Double File." These shows were among Carlton's rare appearances outside North Carolina.[3][4] A 1972 field recording of Carlton playing it, made by Tom Carter, is held in the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina.[2][5]
Revival musicians took the tune up as well. The Fuzzy Mountain String Band recorded it on their 1972 Rounder album, David Brody printed it in The Fiddler's Fakebook (1983), and Alan Block included it on a record of New England contra dance music.[2] Mountain dulcimer players will find it in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam II.[6]
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