Hunting The Buffalo: A Song History
"Hunting the Buffalo" is an old-time reel from the Arkansas Ozarks. The Traditional Tune Archive traces it to Jimmy Driftwood (1907–1998), a singer, songwriter and fiddler who got it from two of his uncles, both fiddlers, who had spent many years in Indian Territory.[1] The uncles played it with the fiddle tuned B-E-G-B, an open E-minor chord that makes the instrument ring with overtones.[1] Mike Seeger later picked the tune up from Driftwood. Despite the name, the Ozarks music researcher Drew Beisswenger found no apparent connection between this melody and the old play-party songs of the region with titles about hunting or shooting the buffalo.[1]
“Herd of bison, near Lake Jessie,” color lithograph by Sarony, Major & Knapp after Stanley, from the Pacific Railroad Surveys, ca. 1855. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
Driftwood himself was a figure of some importance in Arkansas music. A Stone County native who began as a teacher in rural one-room schools, he wrote "The Battle of New Orleans" in 1936 to help his students keep their wars straight; Johnny Horton's 1959 recording of it topped the country charts, and the song won the Grammy for Song of the Year.[2] He also did much to bring the Ozark Folk Center into being.[2]
The tune has since travelled well beyond the Ozarks. It is printed in Susan Songer's Portland Collection (1997) and in Beisswenger and McCann's Ozarks Fiddle Music (2008), and Norman Blake recorded it on Just Gimme Somethin' I'm Used To (Shanachie, 1991).[1] The Tune Archive's main transcription sets it as a two-part AABB reel in A major, though versions in E minor and G also circulate.[3] It is one of the tunes in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[4]
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