Pappy's Billy Goat: A Song History

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The song that Maureen Sellers prints as "Pappy's Billy Goat" is a version of an old story song about a goat that eats a red shirt off the clothesline and is tied to the railroad track as punishment.[1][2] In the usual telling, the goat escapes by coughing up the shirt and waving down the oncoming train with it.[2] The Traditional Ballad Index files the song as "Bill Grogan's Goat," and the printed texts and recordings it lists go by other titles, among them "Papa's Billy Goat," "The Billy Goat," "Rosenthal's Goat" and "Joey Long's Goat."[2] The earliest precisely dated version the index reports is a 1904 piece called "Tale of a Shirt," which Norm Cohen notes is very different from the familiar text, and the earliest traditional version appears to be Brown's, from 1913.[2] Cohen also links the song to "O'Grady's Goat," a Will Hays song published by 1890.[2]

Color trade card of a girl in a red bodice with her arm around a white billy goat

William S. Kimball & Company, Pet Billy Goat, from the Household Pets series, commercial color lithograph, 1891. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Fiddlin' John Carson recorded "Papa's Billy Goat" in New York on November 7, 1923, singing to his own fiddle, and OKeh issued it on record 4994.[3] On July 9, 1924, Uncle Dave Macon recorded it for Vocalion, singing with banjo, and Vocalion issued it on record 14848.[4] The song also turned up in later Arkansas field recordings: the John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection at Lyon College holds an August 27, 1963, recording of a Mrs. Martin singing it as "Billy Goat" at Banner.[5] Missouri State University's Max Hunter Folk Song Collection has a recording dated May 20, 1969, of Floyd McGinnis singing "Papa's Billy Goat," listed under Pea Ridge, Arkansas.[6]

Maureen Sellers includes it in Simply Remembered, a collection of more than 20 old-time songs for novice to intermediate mountain dulcimer players, all in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[1]

Our book that contains the song "Pappy's Billy Goat"

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Sources

  1. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Remembered".
  2. Traditional Ballad Index: "Bill Grogan's Goat".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix S-72018. Papa's billy goat / Fiddlin' John Carson".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Vocalion 14848".
  5. Lyon College, John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection: "Billy Goat".
  6. Missouri State University, Max Hunter Folk Song Collection: "Papa's Billy Goat".
  7. Image: William S. Kimball & Company, Pet Billy Goat, from the Household Pets series, commercial color lithograph, 1891. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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