Greasy String: A Song History

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More than one fiddle tune goes by "Greasy String," and the Traditional Tune Archive treats them as separate pieces. Its best guess is that the title refers to a slippery fiddle string.[1] The oldest recording found in the sources consulted here was made by a string band from the Bluefield area of West Virginia. The band cut it for Victor on August 5, 1927, the last day of the sessions Ralph Peer ran in Bristol, on the Tennessee–Virginia line, the sessions best remembered for the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.[2] One player's name was misspelled on the disc.[2]

Cornelis Dusart etching of a fiddler seated on a bench playing for drinkers in a tavern

Cornelis Dusart, Violin Player Seated in the Inn, etching, 1685. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The Tune Archive files that 1927 record with a G-major tune also kept in West Virginia and Indiana. Oscar Wright was recorded playing it in West Virginia in 1966, Burl Hammons in 1972, and Lotus Dickey of Indiana is another source.[1] A second tune by the same name, in A, comes from the Mount Airy area of North Carolina. Tommy Jarrell (1901–1985) learned it from his uncle Charlie Jarrell. The Tune Archive gives the tune in AEae cross-tuning, and Jarrell sang a verse urging the fiddler to bear down on the greasy string.[3] Its high part is akin to "Shoot That Turkey Buzzard" and its low part is close to "Cripple Creek."[3] West Virginia fiddler Ernie Carpenter played a cross-tuned A version too, recorded in 1987.[3][4]

A 1984 performance by Jarrell at Pinewoods Camp in Massachusetts, a week where Paul Brown and Mike Seeger played alongside him, is now available from the Field Recorders' Collective.[5] Another Jarrell performance appears on County's Sail Away Ladies (1999).[3] "Greasy String" is one of the tunes in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II.[6] The sources consulted here do not say which of the two melodies that arrangement follows.

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Greasy String (1)".
  2. Birthplace of Country Music: "West Virginians and the Birth of Country Music".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Greasy String (2)".
  4. Slippery-Hill: "Greasy String - Ernie Carpenter".
  5. Field Recorders' Collective: "Tommy Jarrell, Volume 2 (FRC212)".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".