Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss: A Song History

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"Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss" is an old-time breakdown, usually played in D, that is both sung and fiddled. The Traditional Tune Archive ties it mainly to Virginia and North Carolina.[1] It belongs to a family of closely related tunes with many names, among them "Blue-Eyed Girl," "Fare Thee Well My Pretty Little Miss," "Susanna Gal" and "Western Country." According to the Tune Archive, the family was widespread in the upland South, and its entry under the title "Western Country" lists Kentucky and West Virginia among the states where it was played.[2] Under various titles it was also a standard in Grayson and Carroll counties, Virginia.[2] None of the sources consulted gives a composer or a date of origin.

Ben Shahn photograph of couples square dancing on an outdoor wooden platform at Skyline Farms, Alabama, 1937

Ben Shahn, Square Dance, Skyline Farms, Alabama, photograph, 1937. Farm Security Administration collection, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

The tune reached records early. In 1924 Samantha Bumgarner, a North Carolina musician who also fiddled, recorded it on banjo for Columbia and called the square-dance figures herself.[3] Eva Davis shares the credit on that Columbia release.[1] In 1926 the string band the Hill Billies recorded it for Vocalion as "Blue-Eyed Girl."[1][4] At a 1927 Columbia session in Atlanta, the Ashe County, North Carolina, band of sixteen-year-old fiddler Frank Blevins, billed on the spot as the Tar Heel Rattlers, recorded the tune. Their version also came out on Velvet Tone, Columbia's budget label.[1][5] The Bogtrotters of Galax, Virginia, also recorded it for the Library of Congress.[1]

Collectors kept finding the tune in the following decades. In 1959 John Cohen recorded Kentucky banjo player Lee Sexton singing it, and that recording later appeared on Smithsonian Folkways' Mountain Music of Kentucky.[6][7] Hobart Smith recorded both the tune itself, on tapes Fleming Brown made in 1963, and a sung version with piano called "Fly Around My Blue-Eyed Girl."[8][9] The New Lost City Ramblers brought it to revival audiences on their Folkways LP Volume 3 in 1961.[1] It also has a place in mountain dulcimer jams. Stephen Seifert includes it in Join the Jam, his collection of tunes from the dulcimer jamming tradition, and it appears on the jam playlist of the Blue Ridge Mountain Dulcimer Players.[10][11]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Western Country".
  3. Archeophone Records, Before the Big Bang: "Track 131: Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss by Samantha Bumgarner (1924)".
  4. Smithsonian National Museum of American History: "Fisher's Hornpipe; Blue Eyed Girl" (Vocalion 5017).
  5. Smithsonian National Museum of American History: "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss; Darneo" (Velvet Tone 7103-V).
  6. Smithsonian Folkways: "Fly around My Pretty Little Miss" (Lee Sexton, Mountain Music of Kentucky).
  7. Smithsonian Folkways: "Mountain Music of Kentucky" liner notes (SFW40077).
  8. Smithsonian Folkways: "Fly around My Pretty Little Miss" (Hobart Smith, In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes).
  9. Smithsonian Folkways: "Fly around My Blue-Eyed Girl" (Hobart Smith, Virginia Traditions: Blue Ridge Piano Styles).
  10. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam DAD Tuning".
  11. Blue Ridge Mountain Dulcimer Players: "Jam Playlist".