Sally In The Garden: A Song History

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"Sally in the Garden" is an old-time breakdown that the Traditional Tune Archive describes as known across the upland South and the Midwest under several names[1]. Its title comes from a sung verse about Sally sifting sand in the garden, and the odd variant title "Sally in the Garden, Assisting Sam" is explained there as a mishearing of those words[1]. The tune has a modal flavor: the Missouri setting printed by R.P. Christeson is in A Dorian, though the Archive notes that both minor and major versions circulate[1]. The title is also shared by several distinct melodies, among them a G major version from Kentucky fiddler Clyde Davenport played in GDgd cross-tuning[2], so it pays to check which "Sally" a jam means. In the sources consulted here, no state of origin is documented.

Charles Cromwell Ingham painting of a young woman in a dark hood holding a potted plant and a basket of garden flowers

Charles Cromwell Ingham, The Flower Girl, oil on canvas, 1846. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its garden flowers; it has no connection to the tune.

The earliest recording found in the sources consulted is by the Crockett family band, credited as the Crockett Family Mountaineers and also known as Crockett's Kentucky Mountaineers. They cut it in Los Angeles on November 12, 1928, as the middle tune of a Brunswick medley between "Sourwood Mountain" and "Sally Goodin," released on Brunswick 291[3]. The band was led by John Harvey "Dad" Crockett, a fiddler born in Wayne County, West Virginia, who settled in Bath County, Kentucky, before the family moved to California in the late 1920s[4]. Later collectors documented the tune from other fiddlers: Christeson printed his version in 1973 from Uncle William Raines of Morgan County, Missouri[1]; Jeff Titon published Davenport's setting, from Monticello, Kentucky, in his Old Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (2001)[2]; and Estill Bingham of Pineville, Kentucky, played a tune of the same name that the Archive says bears only a faint likeness to the usual melody[5].

In the revival, John McCutcheon recorded "Sally in the Garden" on his 1977 hammered dulcimer album The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and David Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook (1983) prints a transcription from McCutcheon's playing[1]. Dirk Powell and Tom Sauber included it on One Eyed Dog (1993)[1].

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Sally in the Garden (1)".
  2. Traditional Tune Archive: "Sally in the Garden (3)".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Brunswick matrix LAE335. Medley of old time dance tunes / Crockett Family Mountaineers".
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Sally in the Garden (5)".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Sally in the Garden (4)".