Red Rockin' Chair: A Song History

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"Red Rockin' Chair," often spelled "Red Rocking Chair," belongs to a loose family of Southern mountain songs that the Traditional Ballad Index files under "Sugar Baby," alongside titles such as "Red Apple Juice" and "Honey Babe Blues."[1] The Index treats it as a nonballad on the theme of marriage, pieced together from floating verses, and its annotator writes, "This is a white blues, but it powerfully resembles an improvised African-American blues lyric."[1] The Traditional Tune Archive notes that some of its verses turn up interchangeably in other songs, and reports Richie Matteson's view that two distinct tune families share the "Sugar Babe" name, one linked with the "Crawdad Song" and the other with "Red Rocking Chair."[2]

A yellow-painted wooden rocking chair with spindle back, decorated crest rail and curved rockers.

Hudson and Brooks, Rocking Chair, maple, pine and mahogany, ca. 1823. An American rocking chair of the 1820s, shown for the title; it has no connection to the song.

The earliest date the Ballad Index gives is a 1927 record by Dock Boggs.[1] Boggs cut "Sugar Baby" for Brunswick in New York on March 10, 1927, singing to his own banjo with Hub Mahaffey on guitar, and that take was later reissued on Folkways LPs and a Smithsonian Folkways CD.[3] The song appears as "Red Apple Juice" in Lunsford and Stringfield's 30 and 1 Folk Songs from Southern Mountains, and Charlie Monroe and his Kentucky Pardners issued it as "Red Rocking Chair" on a 1949 RCA Victor record.[1] Later versions in the Index's list come from Clarence Ashley with Clint Howard, Roscoe Holcomb, Frank Proffitt and the New Lost City Ramblers, whose songbook also prints it.[1]

Aubrey Atwater's Song By Song, Vol. I, which she publishes herself, gathers old-time favorites for mountain dulcimer, banjo, whistle, guitar and voice; it lists "Red Rockin' Chair," in G modal tuning, in its Old-Time Banjo section rather than among the mountain dulcimer arrangements.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Red Rockin' Chair"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Sugar Baby (Red Rocking Chair; Red Apple Juice)".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Red Rocking Chair".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Brunswick matrix E21801-E21802. Sugar baby / Dock Boggs".
  4. Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. I".
  5. Image: Hudson and Brooks, Rocking Chair, maple, pine and mahogany, ca. 1823. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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