Dry And Dusty: A Song History

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The earliest recording of "Dry and Dusty" found in the sources consulted here comes from the Morrison Twin Brothers String Band of Arkansas. The twins, Abbie and Absie Morrison, were born in 1876 at Campbell in Searcy County.[1] On June 3, 1930, they recorded for Victor in Memphis, with Ralph Peer supervising, on two fiddles backed by two guitars played by Abbie's sons Claude and Lawson.[1][2] A third son, Hardy, had come along to play banjo, but he broke a string, had no spare, and was left off the record.[1] Victor issued the tune on 40323 with "Ozark Waltz" on the other side.[1] The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists Abbie Morrison as composer, though the Encyclopedia of Arkansas thinks the brothers more likely reworked an existing tune.[1][2] The twins were celebrated contest fiddlers, and Absie was named national champion in 1925.[1]

1936 photograph of a field of withered, drought-stricken corn stalks in Arkansas

Dorothea Lange, “Corn, drought-stricken and eaten off by grasshoppers, near Russelville, Arkansas,” photograph, August 1936. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

The tune also turned up in the field. In the early 1940s the folklorist Vance Randolph recorded it for the Library of Congress from Ozark fiddlers, notably Lon Jordan of Farmington, Arkansas.[3][4] Jordan played it in AEae tuning, while most older versions, the Morrisons' among them, use ADad.[3] Absie Morrison later told Judith McCulloh that it also went by "Napoleon's Charge" and belonged with "Bonaparte's Retreat," a pairing the Traditional Tune Archive reports from two separate sources.[3][4] Ken Perlman relays an Ozark story that a fiddler playing for a dance would launch into this tune as a hint that he was thirsty.[4]

The Traditional Tune Archive gives the tune in D major and files it under Arkansas and Missouri, and Charlie Walden includes it in his list of 100 essential Missouri fiddle tunes.[4] Later recordings include Lonnie Robertson of Missouri, Benny Thomasson, and Brittany Haas.[4] It also appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[5]

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Sources

  1. CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "Morrison Twin Brothers String Band".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Victor matrix BVE-62567. Dry and dusty / Morrison Twin Brothers String Band".
  3. Field Recorders' Collective: "Kerry Blech – Notes on the Tunes".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Dry and Dusty (1)".
  5. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".