Jimmy In The Swamp: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Jimmy in the Swamp" is a G-major reel whose documented source is Bob Walters (1889–1960), a fiddler from Burt County in eastern Nebraska.[1][2] He was a source for R. P. Christeson, a Missouri collector who bought a wire recorder in 1948 and began recording Missouri fiddlers. Christeson was recording Walters by about 1950,[2][3] and he printed Walters' "Jimmy in the Swamp" in the first volume of The Old-Time Fiddler's Repertory, which the University of Missouri Press issued in 1973 together with a two-record album.[1][3] The Slippery Hill archive of field recordings has Walters' performance, played in G on a standard-tuned fiddle.[4]

1866 wood engraving of a Louisiana cypress swamp hung with Spanish moss, with alligators in the water

After A. R. Waud, “Cypress swamp on the Opelousas Railroad, Louisiana,” wood engraving, Harper’s Weekly, December 8, 1866. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

How the tune reached Nebraska is less certain. John Hartford noted that Walters' family had moved from Kentucky to Iowa in the mid-1800s and that his father and grandfather both fiddled, implying the tune came west with them from eastern Kentucky.[1] Back east, Ed Haley, whose fiddling left its mark across eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southern Ohio, is also said to have played it, according to the West Virginia fiddler Wilson Douglas.[1] The sources consulted here give no earlier printing or commercial recording.

Hartford recorded the tune on his album Wild Hog in the Red Brush (Rounder, 1996).[1][5] It has since been printed in several widely used fiddle collections, among them Phillips's Traditional American Fiddle Tunes (1994), The Portland Collection, vol. 2 (2005), and the Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes (2011).[1] Stephen Seifert included it in his mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II.[6]

Find books with Jimmy In The Swamp for sale →

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Jimmy in the Swamp".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Red Bird Reel".
  3. State Historical Society of Missouri: "Robert P. Christeson Collection (C3971)".
  4. Slippery Hill: "Jimmy In The Swamp" (Bob Walters).
  5. John Hartford: "Wild Hog In The Red Brush".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".