Ginny Get Around: A Song History

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"Ginny Get Around," catalogued by the Traditional Tune Archive as "Jenny Get Around," is an old-time song and breakdown associated with eastern Kentucky, played on fiddle and banjo alike and often sung with the banjo.[1] According to the Archive, Jeff Titon considers it a regional eastern Kentucky tune and finds it twice on Berea, Kentucky, tune lists from 1915, though the Archive adds that it is known in the Ozarks too.[1] Titon ties its melody to one of the "Liza Jane" tune types, while Mark Wilson hears links to the "Sugar Hill" family.[1]

Painting of a farmhouse and open shed in a mountain valley with an ox cart on a dirt road in the foreground

Homer Dodge Martin, In the Housatonic Valley, oil on canvas, late 1850s. A small farm beneath wooded mountains, shown for the song’s mountain setting; it has no connection to the song.

On October 28, 1937, Alan Lomax and Elizabeth Lyttleton recorded J. M. Mullins singing it with banjo at Florress, Kentucky, and the Library of Congress catalog card titles it "Ginny git around."[2] The recording, made in Morgan County, is filed as a dance tune, banjo tune and lyric song in the Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings project.[3] John and Alan Lomax printed Mullins's performance as "Jinny Git Around," labelled a banjo tune, among the white dance tunes in Our Singing Country (1941).[4] John M. Salyer (1882–1952) of Salyersville, in Magoffin County, played it on home recordings his sons made in 1941–42, later issued by Berea College's Appalachian Center, and Titon included the tune in Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (2001).[1][5] Later recordings include Lee Sexton's Whoa Mule (1988) and Morgan Sexton's Rock Dust (1989).[1]

Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione include it, in the keys of D and F, in 30 Old Time Tunes, a pair of companion books of dulcimer and autoharp arrangements that present each tune in two keys.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Ginny Get Around"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Jenny Get Around".
  2. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Ginny git around" (AFS 1590, catalog card).
  3. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings (University of Kentucky / Berea College): "Jenny Get Around (part 1)".
  4. Internet Archive: John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, "Our Singing Country" (1941).
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Jenny Get Around".
  6. Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione: "30 Old Time Tunes".
  7. Image: Homer Dodge Martin, In the Housatonic Valley, oil on canvas, late 1850s. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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