Martha Won't Let You Have Some Good Old Cider: A Song History

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The Traditional Tune Archive files this old-time breakdown in D as "Martha Won't You Have Some Good Old Cider," also spelled "Marthy," and gives its source as Gaither Carlton, with Deep Gap, North Carolina, as its region.[1] Carlton was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on February 3, 1901, taught himself the fiddle at nine, and became Doc Watson's father-in-law when Watson married his daughter Rosa Lee in 1946; he died at their Deep Gap home on June 24, 1972.[2] Unlike Watson, he stayed a home-community musician, though he joined the Watsons at the Cornell Folk Festival in 1962 and at Newport in 1964.[2] Ralph Rinzler and Daniel Seeger recorded him playing the tune on fiddle in September 1964, with Doc and Merle Watson on guitars, and it was issued in 1977 on The Watson Family Tradition (Rounder 0129 in the United States, Topic 12TS336 in Britain).[1][3] Rounder reissued that album on CD in 1995 as Tradition.[3][4] A transcription of Carlton's setting appears in the second volume of Phillips's Traditional American Fiddle Tunes (1995).[1][5]

A weathered wooden cider mill under a large tree in driving rain

George Harvey, Rainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, Connecticut, watercolor and gouache, about 1840. A Connecticut cider mill, shown for the cider of the title; it has no connection to the tune.

Both the Archive and The Fiddler's Companion point out that the Skillet Lickers' "Sal Won't You Have Some Good Old Cider" is a different tune despite the similar title, and the Archive also sets it apart from Clyde Davenport's "Paddy Won't You Drink Some Good Old Cider."[1][5] Beyond Carlton's recording and Phillips's transcription, the sources consulted here name no other fiddler who played it and say nothing about how the title came about.[1][5]

A piece listed under the slightly different title "Martha Won't Let You Have Some Good Old Cider" appears in Larry Conger's Hoedowns And Breakdowns, a Fingers Of Steel book of 28 dance tunes arranged for mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, each with an MP3 recording; the listing does not say whose version it follows.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Martha Won't Let You Have Some Good Old Cider"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Martha Won't You Have Some Good Old Cider".
  2. Smithsonian Folkways: "Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton" (SFW40235), liner notes.
  3. Mainly Norfolk: "The Watson Family".
  4. Musical Traditions: "Tradition" (Rounder CD 0564), review by Rod Stradling.
  5. The Fiddler's Companion: "Martha Won't You Have Some Good Old Cider".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hoedowns And Breakdowns".
  7. Image: George Harvey, Rainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, Connecticut, watercolor and gouache, about 1840. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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