Sullivan's Hollow: A Song History
"Sullivan's Hollow" is a Mississippi reel, most often played in D in standard fiddle tuning, though it is also heard in C.[1] Its name comes from a hill district straddling Smith and Covington Counties, settled by Thomas Sullivan in the early nineteenth century, which acquired a notorious reputation for violence during and after the Civil War.[1] More recent research suggests those stories grew in the telling, and the Traditional Tune Archive observes that residents probably did not object to a reputation that helped guard their independence and privacy.[1]
Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Co., L-3 Archtop Guitar (serial no. 32544), spruce, maple, mahogany, ivoroid, mother-of-pearl, nickel silver, 1917. A guitar of 1917, shown for the string band that recorded the tune; it has no connection to the band or the tune.
The tune is known from Freeny's Barn Dance Band, a string band from the Freeny community just south of Carthage in Leake County.[1] Fiddlers Leslie and Hendrix Freeny, with Cleveland Freeny on mandolin, S. Carlton Freeny on tenor banjo and Fonzo Cannon on guitar, recorded it for OKeh in Jackson on December 16, 1930, and it was issued as OKeh 45508.[2] It was one of six sides the group made at that session, alongside "The Leake County Two-Step" and two sides titled "Mississippi Square Dance."[3] Writing in Old Time Music in 1973, Tony Russell judged it "one of the greatest string band recordings ever made."[1]
The Freenys' record has been reissued on County's Mississippi String Bands, Vol. 2 and Document's Mississippi String Bands, Vol. 1, and the tune was later recorded by Kenny Hall and by Bob Carlin on his 1980 Rounder album Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer Banjo.[1] It was printed in the first volume of Traditional American Fiddle Tunes in 1994 and in Fiddler Magazine in 2020.[1] Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione include it in The Doofus - Occasional Number 1, a 22-page collection of 18 traditional songs and tunes for mountain dulcimer, notated from the repertoire of their ensemble, The Doofus.[4]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Sullivan's Hollow".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix W404738. Sullivan's Hollow / Freeny's Barn Dance Band".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Freeny's Barn Dance Band".
- Neal Walters: "The Doofus - Occasional Number 1 - 18 Traditional Songs And Tunes For Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Co., L-3 Archtop Guitar (serial no. 32544), spruce, maple, mahogany, ivoroid, mother-of-pearl, nickel silver, 1917. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.