Turkey In The Straw: A Song History

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"Turkey in the Straw" is far older than its name. Bronner, in a 1987 study cited by the Traditional Tune Archive, called the tune "undoubtedly in American folk tradition before the 19th century," and several scholars, Alan Jabbour and George Pullen Jackson among them, hear a strong likeness between its first part and the older tune "The Rose Tree."[1] The stage, both popular theater and blackface minstrel troupes, did much to carry it across the nineteenth century, and under an earlier minstrel-era title it was printed in Howe's collections around mid-century.[1] The name we know arrived in 1861, when Dan Bryant copyrighted new song lyrics called "Turkey in de Straw," with the music credited only as an old melody.[1]

Prang color lithograph of a wild turkey tom with its tail fanned

Wild Turkey, color lithograph, L. Prang & Co., [1872]. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. A natural-history print; it is not connected to the tune.

Newspapers record it at a fiddlers' contest in 1921, and in 1930 it was named an acceptable old-time number for a fiddlers' convention in Fayette, Alabama.[1] On June 30, 1922, Texas fiddler Eck Robertson and Henry Gilliland recorded it at Victor's Manhattan office, on the same New York visit that produced Robertson's "Sallie Gooden," which the National Recording Registry essay counts among the first country music recordings.[2] Victor issued it on 19149, backed with "Ragtime Annie,"[3] and according to the Traditional Tune Archive it was the third best-selling country record of 1923.[1] Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers followed with their own recording in Atlanta on April 17, 1926, for Columbia.[1]

For mountain dulcimer players, it is one of the tunes in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam collection in DAD tuning.[4]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Turkey in the Straw".
  2. Library of Congress, National Recording Registry: "'Arkansaw Traveler' and 'Sallie Gooden'—Eck Robertson (1922)".
  3. Smithsonian National Museum of American History: "Turkey in the Straw; Ragtime Annie".
  4. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam DAD Tuning".