Natchez Under The Hill: A Song History

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The title points to a real place. Natchez Under-the-Hill was the landing at the foot of the bluffs at Natchez, Mississippi, and from the late eighteenth century into the 1830s it was notorious for lawlessness, with saloons, gambling rooms and brothels serving the river boatmen who crowded it.[1] The tune was in print in America by 1839, when George P. Knauff included it as "Natches on the Hill" in the first volume of his Virginia Reels. Mark Wilson believes the title was mentioned in print some twenty years before that, and it turns up again in "The Knob Dance," a comic dialect story of 1845 set in East Tennessee.[2] Alan Jabbour traced the melody back to the English country dance tune "The Rose Tree." The main difference he noted comes in the second strain, where at one phrase the English tune drops down to the home note while the American versions leap up to the octave.[2]

Photograph looking down a wooded bluff at Natchez Under-the-Hill and the Mississippi River

William Henry Jackson, “Natchez, under the hill and the Mississippi,” photograph, Detroit Publishing Co., between 1885 and 1898. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

Players who know "Turkey in the Straw" will probably hear the family resemblance. The Traditional Tune Archive suggests that "Natchez Under the Hill" may be the ancestor of that fiddle standard and of a related tune from the North, which differs from Natchez in its opening measures.[2] Arkansas fiddler Lon Jordan introduced his 1941 recording by saying it resembled "Turkey in the Straw," but "there's a difference!"[2]

Collectors for the Library of Congress recorded the tune in several states. Alan Lomax recorded Theophilus G. Hoskins in Hyden, Leslie County, Kentucky, on October 14, 1937. Hoskins said he had learned it around 1916 from fiddler Joe Sizemore.[3] In 1941 Vance Randolph recorded Lon Jordan in Arkansas, and the same year the Library recorded Emmett Lundy of Galax, Virginia.[2][4] The Traditional Tune Archive gives the tune in A major with the AEae fiddle cross-tuning, which Jordan also used.[2][4] Stephen Seifert includes it in his mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[5]

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Sources

  1. Mississippi Encyclopedia: "Natchez Under-the-Hill".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Natchez Under the Hill (1)".
  3. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "Natchez Under the Hill".
  4. Slippery-Hill: "Natchez Under The Hill" (Lon Jordan).
  5. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".