Ground Hog: A Song History

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"Ground Hog," often written "Groundhog," is a comic hunting song from the southern mountains. In the Traditional Ballad Index's summary, the plot is no more than a family hunt that ends in a happy groundhog supper, with the verses shifting freely from one version to another. The index gives no author, finds the song in the Appalachians and the wider South, and dates it back to at least 1911.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive notes that it is widely known in Appalachia both as a playful nursery song and as an instrumental piece, and it counts fourteen Library of Congress recordings, vocal and instrumental, made before 1940.[2] The meal in the song was a real one. Groundhog was one of several game animals, along with squirrel, possum and raccoon, that were once staples of American cooking but that most diners now shun.[3]

1874 color lithograph of a woodchuck, or groundhog, sitting upright among plants, with a drawing of its skull

L. Prang & Co., Woodchuck – Arctomys monax, color lithograph, 1874. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

Song collectors found it again and again. Versions appear in Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina folklore, Vance Randolph's Ozark collection and several anthologies by John and Alan Lomax.[1] A version from Nathan Hicks of Sugar Grove, North Carolina, collected in 1933, was printed in Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads in 1936.[4] According to the Smithsonian Folkways notes, the song was first recorded in Atlanta in 1924 by Land Norris, and the record was issued on the OKeh label.[5][1] In February 1928 Jack Reedy and His Walker Mountain String Band recorded it for Brunswick at Ashland, Kentucky.[2] Field recordings followed. In 1936 the North Carolina fiddler Marion Reece played it on the fife for the Library of Congress,[2] and on New Year's Day 1938 George "Shortbuckle" Roark sang it with his banjo for the Lomaxes in Pineville, Kentucky.[6] Commercial recordings continued with the Almanac Singers in 1941 and Homer & Jethro in 1947, and the Ballad Index also lists versions by Pete Seeger, Frank Proffitt and the New Lost City Ramblers.[1]

Doc Watson learned the song on the banjo from his cousin Willard Watson. Two of his 1962 New York concert performances with the fiddler and banjo player Gaither Carlton, one at the Friends of Old Time Music and one at the club Blind Lemon's, were later issued by Smithsonian Folkways.[5] The mountain dulcimer has a place in the song's story too. In 1963 John Quincy Wolf Jr. recorded George and Gerry Armstrong of Mountain View, Arkansas, introducing it as a song about going groundhog hunting, with George playing his dulcimer with a turkey feather.[7] Today it belongs to the dulcimer jam repertoire as well: Stephen Seifert includes it in his mountain dulcimer jam book Join the Jam.[8]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Ground Hog".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Groundhog".
  3. Atlas Obscura: "When Groundhog Was on the Menu in Punxsutawney".
  4. UNC Libraries, North Carolina Miscellany: "Groundhog".
  5. Smithsonian Folkways: Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton liner notes (SFW40235).
  6. Library of Congress, Folklife Today: "Groundhog Day on the Folklife Today Podcast".
  7. Lyon College, John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection: "Groundhog Song" (George and Gerry Armstrong, 1963).
  8. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam DAD Tuning".