Jaybird Died With The Whooping Cough: A Song History

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Despite the shared bird, "Jaybird Died With the Whooping Cough" is not the same tune as "Jaybird." The Traditional Tune Archive lists it separately as a G-major old-time breakdown in standard tuning, linked with Virginia and Tennessee, while "Jaybird" is a D-major tune from a different family.[1][2] It is a song as well as a fiddle tune, and an old one: folklorist Charles Wolfe noted printed versions dating back to 1846. Wolfe also observed that collectors have found it among Black and white musicians alike, and the archive points to verses in Thomas Talley's collection of folk rhymes, which Wolfe edited for a 1991 reissue.[1]

Color print of a blue jay perched on a pine branch

The Blue Jay, chromolithograph, True & Co., 1880. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

The fiddle settings in the Traditional Tune Archive come from John Ashby (1915–1979), a fiddler from the Warrenton area of Fauquier County, Virginia.[1][3] His band, the Free State Ramblers, took its name from the "Free State," the district with a rebellious past where the Ashby family farm stood.[3] Ashby recorded the tune on Fiddling by the Hearth (County, 1979), and a performance from Ray Alden's collection was later issued by the Field Recorders' Collective.[1][3][4] The Double Decker String Band, a source for one of the Ashby transcriptions, recorded it on Giddyap Napoleon.[1] A related Kentucky tune, "Here Comes Jack with a Fiddle on His Back," was recorded by Bruce Greene in 1976 from fiddler Sammie Walker of Metcalfe County.[5] Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam II includes the tune as "Jaybird Died of Whooping Cough."[6]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Jaybird Died of the Whooping Cough".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Jaybird".
  3. Field Recorders' Collective: "The Ashby Family and Friends of Fauquier County Virginia".
  4. Field Recorders' Collective (Bandcamp): "Jaybird Died With the Whooping Cough," from FRC 108 – John Ashby & The Free State Ramblers.
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Here Comes Jack with a Fiddle on His Back".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".