Needle Case: A Song History

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"Needle Case," also written "Needlecase" or "Needle in the Case," is a D-major reel. The earliest trace of it in the sources consulted here comes from southwest Alabama. In May 1929 the Clarke County Democrat called it a popular old-time tune and expected it to be played at an upcoming fiddlers' contest in Grove Hill.[1] None of the sources consulted here explains the title or names a composer.

Slender eighteenth-century needle case of painted wood with gold mounts

Needle case (étui à aiguilles), painted wood with gold mounts, Paris, 1768–69. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Much of its later reach is credited to a finger-picked banjo recording by the Tennessee musician Sam McGee.[1] McGee and his brother Kirk had played on the early Grand Ole Opry.[2] In November 1957 Mike Seeger recorded Sam playing it on five-string banjo at Kirk's home outside Nashville. Folkways released the recording in 1964 on an album by the McGee Brothers and fiddler Arthur Smith.[2][3] Later banjo players kept it going. Bob Carlin recorded it on Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer Banjo (Rounder, 1980), and Seeger included it on his own Southern Banjo Sounds (Smithsonian Folkways, 1998).[1][4] Vermont fiddler Pete Sutherland arranged it for fiddle, and it appears in printed collections such as Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern (2002) and The Portland Collection, vol. 2 (2005).[1] Stephen Seifert includes it in his mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[5]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Needlecase".
  2. Smithsonian Folkways: "Look! Who's Here: Old Timers of the Grand Ole Opry".
  3. Smithsonian Folkways: "The McGee Brothers and Arthur Smith" (Folkways FA 2379 liner notes).
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Southern Banjo Sounds".
  5. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".