Little Billy Wilson: A Song History
"Little Billy Wilson" is an American breakdown in A major, often fiddled in AEae cross-tuning, and it also goes by "Billy Wilson," "Old Bill Wilson" and "Ace of Spades."[1][2][3] Its early history runs through two southern fiddlers. Uncle Jimmy Thompson, one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry, recorded a related tune called "Billy Wilson" for Columbia in 1926.[1][4][5] Texas fiddler Eck Robertson drew on the tune for his "Brilliancy Medley," recorded for Victor in Dallas on October 11, 1929, and released in 1930.[1][3][4] One fiddle-lesson source says the medley contains two of the three parts fiddlers play today.[2]
Winslow Homer, Thanksgiving Day – The Dance, wood engraving, 1858. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
The three-part form played in the old-time revival has a known assembler. According to the Traditional Tune Archive, fiddler and musicologist Joel Shimberg pieced it together, building on Thompson's recording, and it passed into revival repertoire from there.[1] The first strain travels widely on its own: it appears in North Dakota fiddler Joe Pancerzewski's "Original Canadian Hoedown," opens Quebec musician A.J. Boulay's "Reel des charretiers," and turns up in two untitled Missouri breakdowns printed by collector R.P. Christeson.[1]
Revival string bands have kept the tune in circulation, with recordings by the Critton Hollow String Band (1979), the Ill-Mo Boys (1993) and fiddler Rafe Stefanini.[1] It is also taught to fiddle students; Bruce Molsky, for example, teaches it in A with the fiddle cross-tuned.[2] The tune also appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[6]
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