Johnny Don't Get Drunk: A Song History
"Johnny Don't Get Drunk" is one of several names for an American reel in D major, catalogued by the Traditional Tune Archive under the title "Johnny, Don't Come Home Drunk."[1] Fiddlers in Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri and Nebraska have supplied versions, and the archive describes the tune as spread across both the Midwest and the wider Appalachian country.[1] The archive associates it particularly with Missouri, and fiddler Charlie Walden includes it among his hundred essential Missouri tunes.[1] Folklorist Jeff Todd Titon has suggested it may descend from a temperance song, while some listeners hear a family likeness to the Irish reel "Miss Monahan."[1]
Johannes Hendrik van West, A Fiddler in a Tavern, with Three Men in the Background, watercolor over graphite, mid-19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.
Among the documented sources is Bob Walters of Burt County, Nebraska, whose 1954 playing was transcribed in R.P. Christeson's Old Time Fiddler's Repertory (1973).[1] In Virginia, John Ashby and the Free State Ramblers put it on a 1970 County Records album.[1] The Kentucky fiddler Owen "Snake" Chapman recorded it on the June Appal album Fiddle Ditty (1990) and thought he might first have heard it over the radio.[1] Fiddler Art Stamper included it as "Don't Come Home Drunk, Johnnie" on his 1982 County LP The Lost Fiddler, crediting Chapman as his source.[2]
The shorter title "Johnny Don't Get Drunk" turns up in Titon's Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (2001), which the archive lists with Chapman as its source, and in Silberberg's Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern (2002).[1] A related form, "Johnny, Johnny, Don't Get Drunk," appears in Songer's Portland Collection (1997).[1]
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