Great Big Taters In Sandy Land: A Song History
"Great Big Taters in Sandy Land" is a reel of the South and the Old Southwest, played especially in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.[1] It belongs to the same family as "Sally Ann" and "Sail Away Ladies." Drew Beisswenger notes that the potato title (or plain "Sandy Land") is what fiddlers use in Arkansas and nearby states, while players elsewhere know related versions by those other names.[1] The Slippery-Hill archive, presenting a 1977 recording of Dale Carothers from Jim Renner's Oklahoma fiddle archive, calls it "the Southwest's counterpart to the Southeast's 'Sally Ann.'"[2] The Traditional Tune Archive even suggests that "Sally Ann" may have started as a mishearing of "Sandy Land."[3]
The Potato Harvest, after a painting by Jules Breton, Detroit Publishing Co. reproduction, between 1900 and 1920. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
The title turns up early in print. The Missouri doctor William Percival King named it among the fiddle tunes played at country dances in Stories of a Country Doctor (1891). An Alabama newspaper, the Fayette Banner, listed it in a "Fiddler's Jubilee" article on January 2, 1908, and Vance Randolph included it in his 1954 list of traditional Ozark fiddle tunes.[1] Ira Ford's Traditional Music in America (1940) tells a story of a farmer named Steve whose first crops failed on his sandy hill land until he planted potatoes, and of the tune played at the celebration that followed. The Tune Archive reports this as a tradition, and it should be read as legend.[1]
Sam Long recorded the tune for Gennett in 1926 under the title "Sandy Land." According to the Tune Archive, the earliest recording under the potato title was made for Victor in 1929 by the Texas fiddler Eck Robertson with J. B. Cranfill.[1] Mississippi fiddler Ernest Claunch played it as "Great Big Taters" in a 1939 recording, later issued on Great Big Yam Potatoes (Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1985).[1][4] Printed transcriptions draw on fiddlers including Earl Collins and Bob Wills, and most of the versions the Tune Archive lists are in G, though A also appears.[1] The tune appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II.[5]
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