Hair In The Butter: A Song History

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"Hair In The Butter" has its own entry in the Traditional Tune Archive, but that entry gives no region, genre, source fiddler or recording, only a list of other titles the tune is known by.[1] Among them are "Too Young to Marry," "Chinky Pin," "Darling Child," "Sweet Sixteen" and "Yellow Eyed Cat," though the entry has no notes explaining how these titles are connected.[1] The Archive's entry for "Too Young to Marry," which counts "Hair in the Butter" among its own alternate titles, traces that tune to the Scottish reel "My Love Is but a Lassie Yet," calls it a reel heard throughout the upland South under several names, and gives western North Carolina and southwestern Virginia as its region.[2]

Etching of a woman churning butter in a farmhouse, with a cat at her feet

Jean-François Millet, Woman Churning Butter, etching, 1855–56. Plenty of butter and no hair in it, shown in fun for the title.

The Archive's entries for two more titles on that list also name "Hair in the Butter" among their other titles, and they report early records made under those other names: "Darling Child" by the Blue Ridge Highballers in 1926,[3] and "Chinky Pin" by West Virginia fiddler Clark Kessinger for Brunswick in 1929.[4] The Archive transcribed its "Too Young to Marry" from western North Carolina fiddler and banjo player Oscar Jenkins, listing the 1968 County album Down to the Cider Mill.[2] None of the sources consulted here names a fiddler who played it under the title "Hair In The Butter," a field recording under that name, or how the name arose.[1]

Larry Conger includes it in Hoedowns And Breakdowns, a dulcimer book of 28 tunes in DAD tuning, with an MP3 recording of each, published by Fingers Of Steel.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Hair In The Butter"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Hair in the Butter".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Too Young to Marry (1)".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Darling Child".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Chinky Pin (1)".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hoedowns And Breakdowns".
  6. Image: Jean-François Millet, Woman Churning Butter, etching, 1855–56. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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