Spider Bit The Baby: A Song History
According to the Traditional Tune Archive, this three-part reel in C major was composed by the bluegrass fiddler Kenny Baker.[1] Baker, born in 1926 in the coal town of Burdine, Kentucky, joined Bill Monroe's band in 1957 and played with it intermittently until 1984; the National Endowment for the Arts, which named him a National Heritage Fellow in 1993, says he wrote more than eighty original tunes.[2] The piece is the second track on Kenny Baker Country, a 1972 County Records LP that County Sales announced in 2023 it would reissue on remastered vinyl.[3] A 2002 Baker album also bears the tune's title.[4]
Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne, A Spider, watercolor, late 17th century. A spider, shown for the title; the watercolor has no connection to the tune.
Later recordings listed by the Archive include a 1978 LP by Dale Morris, Adam Hurt's 2002 CD Intrigue, and Fiddle Whamdiddle by Vi Wickam and Steve Eulberg; the Archive also cites a Tammy Rogers transcription printed in Fiddler Magazine in 2012.[1] The Slippery Hill fiddle archive hosts Baker's recording of the tune, in the key of C with the fiddle in standard GDAE tuning.[5] Steve Eulberg includes it in Old School, Old Time, an Owl Mountain Music book with mountain dulcimer and hammered dulcimer arrangements by Eulberg and fiddle arrangements by Wickam, which can be played together as a trio or on their own.[6]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Spider Bit the Baby".
- National Endowment for the Arts: "Kenny Baker".
- Bluegrass Today: "County Sales to reissue Kenny Baker Country LP".
- Bluegrass Today: "Kenny Baker – A Retrospective".
- Slippery Hill: "Spider Bit The Baby".
- Steve Eulberg: "Old School, Old Time".
- Image: Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne, A Spider, watercolor, late 17th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.