I Love My Wife As Well As Anybody, But When My Back Is Turned She's A-Huggin' Everybody: A Song History

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This old-time fiddle tune is known from the playing of William Lee "Jake" Phelps (1885-1977), who farmed and fiddled at Pea Ridge, near Elkton, in southwest Kentucky.[1] Phelps's source was George Holland, an African-American fiddler, and the tune is catalogued under the title "George Holland's Tune."[1] According to Phelps, Holland called it by a shorter version of the title used here, "Loved His Wife as well as Anybody."[1] The long, joking form of the title is listed, worded a little differently, as an alternate name for Phelps's performance in the Slippery Hill archive of fiddle recordings.[2] The Traditional Tune Archive treats it as a version of the more familiar "Sally Goodin."[1]

Watercolor of villagers dancing in a ring outside a thatched cottage while a fiddler plays

Thomas Rowlandson, The Village Dance, watercolor, c. 1815–25. An English country dance with a fiddler, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

Bruce Greene recorded Phelps playing the tune in the field in 1973.[1][2] Phelps had also been recorded by D. K. Wilgus and Yvonne Gregory in 1965.[1] A transcription appeared in print in the Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes in 2011.[1] For dulcimer players, Don Pedi includes it in Simply Old Time Dulcimer, a collection of traditional old-time repertoire with traditional dulcimer tablature and demonstration audio files, published by Don Pedi.[3]

Our book that contains the song "I Love My Wife As Well As Anybody, But When My Back Is Turned She's A-Huggin' Everybody"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "George Holland's Tune".
  2. Slippery Hill: "George Holland's Tune" (Jake Phelps, 1973).
  3. Don Pedi: "Simply Old Time Dulcimer".
  4. Image: Thomas Rowlandson, The Village Dance, watercolor, c. 1815–25. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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