Hop High Ladies: A Song History

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"Hop High Ladies" is not a separate tune. It is one of the American names for the reel covered on our "Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe" page, an old-time form of the Scottish "Miss McLeod's Reel." One difference noted between them is the cadence: the American form comes home to the tonic, where Scottish settings usually close on the fifth.[1] "Hop Light Ladies" and "Uncle Joe" are other names for the same piece, and the Traditional Ballad Index files the song under "Hop High Ladies (Uncle Joe)."[1][2] The title phrase opens the sung chorus, a call for the ladies to dance high, sometimes with the tag "the cake's all dough." Singers hang a loose set of floating verses on it, some of them questions for Uncle Joe.[2]

1942 photograph of couples swinging through a square-dance figure in a crowded hall

Russell Lee, square dance at the Saturday night dance, Farm Security Administration farm workers’ community, Woodville, California, photograph, January 1942. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

Collectors found the song in many places, under titles that keep shifting. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore prints fragments as "Hop Light, Ladies" and a tune as "Hop High, Ladies," and an Alabama collection has a text as "Hop Light, Ladies."[2] In 1937 Alan Lomax recorded Wade and Fields Ward of Galax, Virginia, playing it on banjo and guitar. The Lomaxes later printed a transcription as "Hop Up, My Ladies"[1] in Our Singing Country (Macmillan, 1941), prepared with Ruth Crawford Seeger.[3] The "Hop Light" name was in fiddlers' use before the record era: a Raleigh newspaper's account of a 1905 fiddlers' convention there shows "Hop Light Ladies" among the tunes of S. S. Ransdell, a contestant from Louisburg, North Carolina, and Vance Randolph later included the name when he listed Ozark fiddle tunes in 1954.[1] Viola Ruth printed it as "Hop High Ladies" in Pioneer Western Folk Tunes (1948).[4]

On early commercial records "Light" was the usual word. Henry Whitter's 1924 OKeh record was titled "Hop Light Ladies and Shortenin' Bread." Fiddlin' John Carson recorded "Hop Light Lady" in 1925, and Ernest V. Stoneman and Riley Puckett both cut "Hop Light Ladies," in 1927 and 1934.[2] Uncle Dave Macon and his Fruit Jar Drinkers recorded it for Vocalion in 1927 with "the cake's all dough" in the title, but sources differ on whether the label reads "Hop High" or "Hop Light."[4][2][5] Revival musicians took it up as well. The New Lost City Ramblers recorded "Hop High, Ladies" and printed it in their songbook.[2]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Hop High Ladies".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Hop High Ladies (Uncle Joe)".
  3. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings (University of Kentucky Libraries et al.): "Our Singing Country: A Second Volume of American Folk Songs and Ballads".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Hop High Ladies".
  5. SecondHandSongs: "Hop High Ladies, the Cake's All Dough – Uncle Dave Macon and His Fruit-Jar Drinkers".