Sadie At The Back Door: A Song History
"Sadie at the Back Door" is a relatively new old-time tune with a known composer: Jere Canote, who with his identical twin Greg plays as the Canote Brothers in Seattle.[1][2][3][4] The Traditional Tune Archive says it began as a banjo tune.[1] Its title comes from a cat named Sadie who would ask to go out by the front door but would only come back in by the back.[1][4][5]
Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, illustration for “On Cats” by Jacques Dalbray, L’Illustration, color lithograph, 1901 (detail). The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
The tune is a two-part reel in the key of D, and fiddlers often play it with the low string tuned down to A (ADae).[1][3][4] One teaching site tells players to be ready for surprises in the second part.[4] Recordings listed by the Traditional Tune Archive include Bob Carlin's Where Did You Get That Hat? (Rounder, 1982) and the Boiled Buzzards' Early Bird Special (1994).[1] It has since become popular with old-time musicians: old-time groups in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Frederick, Maryland, feature it on their websites, and it was played at a banjo camp in Washington State,[2][3][4] and it appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[6]
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