Katy Hill: A Song History
"Katy Hill" is a G-major reel known to fiddlers across the South and Midwest, from Virginia and Tennessee to Missouri and Nebraska, and the Traditional Tune Archive credits its wide circulation to performances on the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts.[1] The Archive names Allen Sisson's 1925 recording and Bill Chitwood's of 1927 as the earliest. The north Georgia fiddler Lowe Stokes, for whom it was once a signature piece, recorded it in 1928 with Riley Puckett and Fate Norris, and Tennessee's Fiddlin' Arthur Smith spread a more modern version of it.[1]
Detroit Publishing Co., “In the pine woods, Florida,” photograph, about 1904. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
Older fiddlers tied the tune to an earlier melody. Tommy Jarrell of North Carolina told an interviewer in 1982 that he believed it came from "Piney Woods Gal," and that "Sally Johnson" in turn grew out of "Katy Hill."[1] In 1941 the Galax, Virginia, fiddler Eck Dunford gave Elizabeth Lomax a story behind the name "The Piney Woods Girl of North Carolina": a young Grayson County fiddler, Bob Cox, picked up the tune without its title and named it after a young woman who enjoyed hearing it on his travels through North Carolina's piney woods.[1] Whatever its roots, "Katy Hill" is now nearly a twin of "Sally Johnson." Writing in the notes to a 2005 Rounder album, Mark Wilson argued that the two once had quite separate identities and grew alike after Opry fiddlers trimmed the melodies down to show off speed rather than to play for dancing.[1]
Bill Monroe recorded "Katy Hill" with his Blue Grass Boys in 1940, an instrumental with the fiddle rather than the mandolin in the lead.[1][2][3] In a story West Virginia fiddler Woody Simmons told Goldenseal magazine in 1979, Chubby Wise played it as his hoedown when he auditioned for Monroe.[1] Bluegrass fiddlers such as Kenny Baker and Paul Warren later recorded it too.[1] Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II includes both "Katy Hill" and "Sally Johnson."[4]
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