Jaybird: A Song History
The "Jaybird" heard at old-time jams is a breakdown, usually in two parts, in D major, played by fiddlers in standard tuning or in ADae cross-tuning.[1] Its roots are older than the revival. In the middle of the twentieth century the folklorist Samuel Bayard collected many versions, most of them under this title, from fifers and fiddlers in southwestern Pennsylvania, and he traced the melody to the British air "The Ladies' Breast Knot."[1] The tune's second strain will also sound familiar to many listeners, since it serves as the melody of "Skip to My Lou" and "Bobby Shaftoe."[1]
R. Havell after John James Audubon, Blue Jay, hand-colored engraving from The Birds of America, 1827–1838. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
The tune also turns up in the Midwest. Leah Jackson Wolford's The Play-Party in Indiana (1916) includes a ring game called "Down in Jay Bird Town," played the same way as "Skip to My Lou," and Wolford noted that its melody had been a favorite with fiddlers some twenty years before.[2] Revival musician Joel Shimberg later recognized the first part of "Jaybird" in that play-party tune.[1] Words exist too: the Traditional Tune Archive links a short verse about a jaybird perched on a limb to Ira Ford, whose 1940 collection is among its printed sources, and the revival musician Art Rosenbaum recalled Indiana fiddler John Summers voicing nearly the same lines.[1]
Summers (1887–1976), born in Howard County, Indiana, was recorded at length by Rosenbaum.[3] Rosenbaum learned "Jaybird" from Summers's playing, and the Traditional Tune Archive credits Rosenbaum, John Burke and Joel Shimberg with making it a favorite of the old-time revival in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[1] The group Country Cooking recorded it for Rounder on Fourteen Bluegrass Instrumentals.[1] "Jaybird" appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[4]
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