Grasshopper Sitting On A Sweet Potato Vine: A Song History
"Grasshopper Sitting on a Sweet Potato Vine" is an old-time reel in D, played in standard tuning, and is mainly associated with Luther Davis (1887–1986), a fiddler from Grayson County in southwest Virginia, near Galax.[1] Davis recorded it in the 1980s for the Heritage LP Old Time Way.[1] A field recording made on August 31, 1984, has him on fiddle with Alice Gerrard on banjo and Andy Cahan on guitar.[2]
Grasshopper on Pomegranate, color woodblock print, Suzhou, China, 1700–1750. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
The title is older than those recordings. In 1922 the African American collector Thomas W. Talley printed a song by this name in his anthology of Black folk rhymes, and its verses follow a chain of hunters in which a blackbird catches the grasshopper and a hawk then goes after the blackbird.[1] Some players hear resemblances to other melodies in the tune, including parts of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" ("John Brown's Body") and the Irish melody "An Comhra Donn."[1] Since the 1980s it has been printed in fiddle-tune collections such as The Portland Collection (1997).[1] It also appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II.[3]
Find books with Grasshopper Sitting On A Sweet Potato Vine for sale →