Pig Ankle Rag: A Song History

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“Pig Ankle Rag” is an American country rag played on the fiddle, and the Traditional Tune Archive says its first strain comes from “Pig Ankles,” a ragtime piece by M.E. Williams.[1] That piano piece, subtitled “A Grotesque Intermezzo,” was published in Kansas City in 1905 by J.W. Jenkins Sons’ Music Co., and the IMSLP library catalogues its composer as Mamie E. Williams.[2] The archive connects only the opening strain to the 1905 piece and names no composer for the fiddle rag as a whole.[1]

Painted terracotta figure of a pink and black spotted pig with its snout lowered

Pig, polychromed terracotta, 18th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A pig, shown in fun; it has no connection to the tune.

The archive also lists a 1928 jug-band record, “Pig Ankle Strut” by Cannon’s Jug Stompers, as this tune under another title, although none of the sources consulted here sets the two side by side musically.[1][3] That instrumental was cut for Victor in Memphis on September 5, 1928, with Noah Lewis on harmonica, Elijah Avery on guitar and Gus Cannon on banjo and jug; Victor’s ledgers credited it to Lewis, and it was issued as Victor V-38006.[3] The archive names Uncle Dick Hutchinson, a fiddler from Disney, Oklahoma, and fiddler Ron Hughey (1914–1974) as the players who made the rag popular, and suggests it found a modest local audience in the Ozarks in the middle decades of the twentieth century.[1] A slower Missouri setting, “Pig Ankle Blues,” prompted Drew Beisswenger, co-author of Ozarks Fiddle Music, to propose that the “Pig Ankle” tune probably existed in more than one Ozarks form, with the Cannon record among the evidence he cited.[4]

Sam McGee, the Grand Ole Opry guitarist, kept the rag among his pieces and credited a visitor named “Slim” Smith as his source; Mike Seeger recorded him in Franklin, Tennessee, in 1969–70 for Arhoolie’s Grand Dad of the Country Guitar Pickers.[1][5] In the revival, Bob Potts and Walt Koken of the Highwoods String Band learned it by way of Joel Shimberg and Ron Hughey, and the band recorded it on No. 3 Special (Rounder, 1976); the tune has since been printed in fiddle collections such as Brody’s Fiddler’s Fakebook.[1]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Pig Ankle Rag (1)".
  2. IMSLP Petrucci Music Library: "Pig Ankles (Williams, Mamie E.)".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Victor matrix BVE-45481. Pig ankle strut / Cannon's Jug Stompers".
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Pig Ankle Blues".
  5. Smithsonian Folkways: "Sam McGee, Grand Dad of the Country Guitar Pickers (Arhoolie 9009) liner notes".