Stoney Point: A Song History

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"Stoney Point" is an American breakdown in G major whose middle strain shifts to E minor, and the Traditional Tune Archive traces its melody to British and Irish relatives sold under "Miss McLeod" titles.[1] The archive lists a string of other names for it, among them "Wild Horse," "Pigtown Fling" and "Buck Creek Girls," along with "Hop Squirrel" around Virginia's Franklin and Floyd counties and "Hop Skip Squirrel" in the playing of a north Ozarks fiddler.[1] The archive suggests, as a possibility rather than a fact, that the title points to Stony Point on the lower Hudson River.[1] There, on July 16, 1779, American troops under General Anthony Wayne captured a fortified British post, a success that boosted the morale of the American armies.[2]

Color portrait of General Anthony Wayne in profile wearing a tricorn hat and blue and buff Continental uniform

W. Duke, Sons & Co., General Anthony Wayne, from the Great Americans series, commercial color lithograph, 1888. General Anthony Wayne, who led the 1779 attack on Stony Point, New York; the sources consulted treat any link between that battle and the tune's name as only a possibility.

The tune reached print well before the age of recording, appearing as "Old Dad" in an 1844 banjo collection issued under Dan Emmett's name, as "Stony Point Reel" in an 1866 dance-music book, and as "Kelton's Reel" in Ryan's Mammoth Collection of 1883.[1] William Sidney Mount also wrote a version into his mid-nineteenth-century music manuscripts under the title "Off with Your Jacket."[1] On February 27, 1928, the fiddler Jilson Setters recorded it for Victor as "The Wild Horse on Stoney Point," accompanied on guitar.[3] Later sources noted by the archive include a 1939 Library of Congress recording of W.A. Bledsoe in Meridian, Mississippi, Clark Kessinger's version under the title "Wild Horses," and a version from Henry Reed that Alan Jabbour, Bertram Levy and James Reed recorded for A Henry Reed Reunion.[1][4]

Mark Gilston arranges it in Popular American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer, a 57-page book of solo mountain dulcimer settings in DAD tuning that is the second in his series surveying influential American old-time tunes.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Stoney Point"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Stoney Point (1)".
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Battle of Stony Point".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor V-40025".
  4. Henry Reed Fiddle Tunes: "A Henry Reed Reunion".
  5. Mark Gilston: "Popular American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer".
  6. Image: W. Duke, Sons & Co., General Anthony Wayne, from the Great Americans series, commercial color lithograph, 1888. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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