New Five Cent Piece: A Song History
"New Five Cent Piece" is also played as "New Five Cents," "Five Cents" and "Ruffled Drawers."[1][2] A Knoxville old-time club's tune history adds "Brand New Five Cents" and says Midwestern players know it as "Buffalo Nickel."[1] Some writers link the title to the Buffalo, or Indian Head, nickel of 1913, though there is little agreement on the point.[1] Mark Wilson reports that the tune went by "Buffalo Nickle" in the Ozarks and dates that title to around 1913; the melody itself may be older.[1][2] Marion Thede includes a verse in which the singer wishes for a new nickel, or even a dime, to give to his sweetheart.[2] The tune is a close cousin of "Robinson County," and one tune history calls the two virtually the same.[1][2]
Walker Evans, “General store interior, Moundville, Alabama,” photograph, summer 1936. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
Gus Meade identified a 1928 recording by Paul Warmack, made under the title "Five Cents," as the earliest of the tune.[2] The Knoxville history names the band as Paul Warmack and his Gully Jumpers of White's Creek, Tennessee.[1] In 1934 the Kentucky band Walker's Corbin Ramblers recorded a version called "Ruffles and Bustles."[1][2] The same history says Texas fiddler Eck Robertson also recorded the tune, reportedly calling it "Chadwick."[1] The tune is in D major and is fiddled in standard tuning or in ADae cross-tuning.[2] Drew Beisswenger heard an echo of "Grey Eagle," as Missouri fiddler Ike Helton played it, in the tune's second strain.[2]
The Knoxville club calls it a jam standard.[1] It has also reached flatpicking guitarists. In an October 2020 Flatpicking Guitar Magazine lesson, Mickey Abraham said he had come across it at jams for years and that, as with most fiddle tunes, everyone plays it a little differently. His arrangement mixes traditional old-time fiddling with Adam Steffey's playing.[3] Stephen Seifert includes it in his mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[4]
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