Old Hen She Cackled: A Song History
"Old Hen She Cackled" is one name for a family of American old-time breakdowns built around a cackling hen, which the Traditional Tune Archive also lists under such titles as "Cacklin' Hen," "Hen Cackle(d)" and "Barnyard Serenade," and which it associates with Texas and Missouri as well as Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.[1] Citing the historian Charles Wolfe, the Archive says Black and white string bands across the mid-South alike played it widely, and it adds as examples the African American fiddlers Cuje Bertram and Howard Armstrong and the team of Joe Evans and Arthur McClain.[1] It also cites Alabama newspapers of 1922 and 1929 that named the tune among those expected at local fiddlers' conventions.[1]
Allen & Ginter, White Dorking Hen, from the Prize and Game Chickens series, commercial color lithograph, 1891. A prize hen of the 1890s, shown for the title; it has no connection to the tune.
In June 1923 Fiddlin' John Carson, fiddling and singing, recorded "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow" in Atlanta, and OKeh issued it as 4890.[2] The New Georgia Encyclopedia says it was one of two numbers OKeh's Ralph Peer grudgingly agreed to record at a makeshift studio on Nassau Street, that the first 500 copies were gone within days, and, in a picture caption, that his first record launched the country-music recording industry.[3] According to the Archive, the Chattanooga fiddler Jess Young recorded his own version a year later, adding a part in the key of C.[1] Folklorists met it in the field as well: on October 17, 1937, Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Luther Strong fiddling "The Old Hen Cackled" at Hazard, in Perry County, Kentucky, for the Library of Congress.[4] The exact title "Old Hen She Cackled" is attached in the Archive to a separate setting by the Kentucky fiddler Bill Stepp, recorded by the Lomaxes at Salyersville that October, which it treats as another branch of the same tune family; the Lomax Kentucky Recordings project catalogs that recording as "Cacklin' Hen."[5][6]
Mark Gilston, who publishes the book himself, includes "Old Hen She Cackled" among the old-time American tunes in More American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer, sold as a PDF with each tune also supplied as a separate file; the listing does not say which version of the tune he follows.[7]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Old Hen Cackled (1) (The)".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix 8375. The old hen cackled and the rooster's going to crow / Fiddlin' John Carson".
- New Georgia Encyclopedia: "Fiddlin' John Carson (ca. 1868-1949)".
- Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "The Old Hen Cackled".
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Old Hen Cackled (2)".
- Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "Cacklin' Hen".
- Mark Gilston: "More American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer".
- Image: Allen & Ginter, White Dorking Hen, from the Prize and Game Chickens series, commercial color lithograph, 1891. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.