Shoe Heels Crackin’ On the Floor: A Song History
"Shoe Heels Crackin' On the Floor" is an old-time fiddle tune from Kentucky, documented through the playing of Darley Fulks of Wolfe County.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive names Fulks as its source, files it as a reel of the Upland South, and gives a transcription in C major.[1] The Slippery-Hill archive of fiddle recordings lists a 1980 field recording of Fulks playing it, made by John Harrod and drawn from the Digital Library of Appalachia, and groups it with its "crooked" tunes.[2] That listing puts the tune in G with the fiddle in standard tuning, so the sources consulted here differ on its key.[1][2]
Boots, American, leather, 1868. Heeled boots of the 1860s, shown for the title; they have no connection to the tune.
Fulks (1895–1990) learned many of his tunes from his grandfather, Stephen Tutt, and from other fiddlers of that older generation, and he added tunes while working on oil rigs in Michigan and Texas as a young man.[3] Harrod, who first met him in 1976, cautions in his tune notes for the Field Recorders' Collective's Kentucky Wild Horse that Fulks set his fiddle a step and a half to two steps under modern concert pitch, so the keys named there show how the tunes are fingered, not how they sound.[4] Don Pedi arranges the tune in DGD tuning for Bound To Have A Little Fun!, a book Pedi publishes himself that comes with a separate PDF and an MP3 for each of its 29 pieces.[5]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Shoe Heels Cracken on the Floor".
- Slippery-Hill: "Shoe Heels Cracken' On The Floor" (Darley Fulks).
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Biography: Darley Fulks".
- Field Recorders' Collective: "Darley Fulks: Kentucky Wild Horse – Tune Notes" (John Harrod).
- Don Pedi: "Bound To Have A Little Fun!".
- Image: Boots, American, leather, 1868. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.