Hand Me Down My Walking Cane: A Song History

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"Hand Me Down My Walking Cane" is sometimes credited to the African American songwriter James A. Bland, and BlackPast lists it among his songs with a date of 1880.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index, however, gives its author as unknown and dates it only from recordings made in 1926, so sources differ on who wrote it.[2] According to BlackPast, Bland began his career in the late 1870s with the Georgia Minstrels, an all-Black troupe that, like white companies, performed in blackface, and he used the minstrel stage to introduce his own songs.[1] In the Index's account the first verse is the familiar part, while the rest wanders through travel, prison, food and burial in floating lines shared with other songs, and its editor suggests that the song filed as "All My Sins Been Taken Away" may be a worn-down form of it.[2]

Daguerreotype of an elderly man holding an ivory-topped walking stick, in an open case

John Plumbe Jr., Elderly Man Holding Ivory-topped Walking Stick, daguerreotype with applied color, ca. 1844. Shown for the walking stick; the sitter has no connection to the song.

Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers, with Riley Puckett among the singers, recorded it for Columbia in Atlanta on April 17, 1926.[3] Kelly Harrell cut it for Victor in New York on June 10, 1926.[4] That September, Henry Whitter and fiddler Joseph Samuels, billed as Fiddler Joe, made an OKeh version in New York.[5] Library of Congress catalog cards record Bascom Lamar Lunsford of Asheville singing it with banjo in 1935, and George Roark singing it with banjo for collector Mary Elizabeth Barnicle in Pineville, Kentucky, in 1938.[6][7] Mississippi State University's record of a 1935 Chicago edition from Calumet Music Co., arranged by Nick Manoloff, lists no composer.[8]

Lorinda Jones includes it in Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer, a Fingers Of Steel instruction book whose 22 traditional songs, all in DAA tuning, come with tablature, chords, strum patterns and play-along audio.[9]

Our book that contains the song "Hand Me Down My Walking Cane"

Sources

  1. BlackPast: "James A. Bland (1854-1911)".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Hand Me Down My Walkin' Cane".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix W142034. Hand me down my walking cane / Riley Puckett ; Skillet Lickers ; Gid Tanner".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-35674. Hand me down my walking cane / Kelly Harrell".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix 80088. Hand me down my walking cane / Fiddler Joe ; Henry Whitter".
  6. Library of Congress: "Hand me down my walking cane" (Bascom Lamar Lunsford, 1935).
  7. Library of Congress: "Hand me down my walking cane" (George Roark, 1938).
  8. Mississippi State University Libraries, Charles H. Templeton, Sr. Sheet Music Collection: "Hand Me Down My Walking Cane".
  9. Fingers Of Steel: "Lorinda Jones, Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer".
  10. Image: John Plumbe Jr., Elderly Man Holding Ivory-topped Walking Stick, daguerreotype with applied color, ca. 1844. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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