Ebenezer: A Song History

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The "Ebenezer" played at old-time jams is a fiddle reel in G.[1] It is a different piece from the Welsh hymn tune of the same name, which Thomas John Williams composed in 1890.[2] The fiddle tune never travelled far.[1][3] According to Alan Jabbour, it turns up only in western Virginia and parts of West Virginia.[1] The oldest recording in the sources consulted here is "West Virginia Highway," fiddled by Kahle Brewer of Galax, Virginia, for Victor in 1926 (Victor 20237). Only the guitarist, Ernest V. Stoneman, was named on the label.[1][3] Another Galax fiddler, Uncle Charlie Higgins, called it "West Virginia Farewell."[1]

1938 photograph of a wooded valley in West Virginia with railroad cars and a trestle along the main road

Marion Post Wolcott, “Along main road between Charleston and Gauley Bridge, West Virginia,” photograph, September 1938. Library of Congress. No known restrictions. One of the tune’s old titles is “West Virginia Highway.”

Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia, played it twice for Jabbour in the 1960s. The first time he had no name for it; the second time he called it "Alabama Girls Give the Fiddler a Dram."[1][3] Jabbour heard a country-rag character in it, with an implied move to the dominant chord and back in the first strain. He also notes that it shares some melody with "Climbing up the Golden Stairs," a popular piece of the late 1800s.[3] The name "Ebenezer" goes with West Virginia fiddler W. Franklin George, whose performance appears on the LP 31st Annual Old Fiddlers' Convention, Galax, Virginia (Justice JLP 1002, 1966).[3]

Most revival versions appear to derive from George's, spread by fiddlers such as Armin Barnett, George Wilson and Allan Block.[1] The Fuzzy Mountain String Band learned it from the playing of George and Reed by way of Jabbour, and recorded it on their 1972 Rounder album. Jabbour's own Hollow Rock String Band played Reed's version under the old record title "West Virginia Highway."[1] Notations appeared in Kaufman's Beginning Old Time Fiddle (1977) and Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook (1983).[1] Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam II, a book of old-time jam tunes for mountain dulcimer, includes it.[4]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Ebenezer".
  2. Hymnary.org: "EBENEZER (Williams)".
  3. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, Henry Reed Collection: "Alabama Girls Give the Fiddler a Dram".
  4. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".