Uncle Henry: A Song History

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“Uncle Henry” is an old-time reel in D from northern Arkansas, played on the fiddle in DDad cross-tuning.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive traces it to Violet Hensley of Yellville, who learned it in the 1920s from her father, George Washington “Wash” Brumley.[1] In the Archive’s account, Hensley had no name for the tune until she heard a man from Dardanelle, Arkansas, call it “Uncle Henry.”[1] The same entry reports Mark Wilson’s view that the reel is a “drastic revamping” of the minstrel-era song “Goodbye My Honey I’m Gone,” and notes that its first strain is slightly crooked, with an extra beat at the end.[1]

Black-and-white photograph of a homemade wooden violin with its bow

Folk Violin, wood, United States or Canada, late 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

Hensley was born near Mount Ida, Arkansas, in 1916, made her first fiddles as a teenager after studying how her father built his, and spent most of her life as a fiddler and fiddle maker, demonstrating at Silver Dollar City from 1967 to 2007 and being named the 2004 Arkansas Living Treasure.[2] According to a Musical Traditions review, Wilson and Gordon McCann made field recordings of older Ozark fiddle styles in the summer of 1997 for Rounder, and the reviewer singled out Hensley’s playing.[3] Her “Uncle Henry” appears on Rounder’s Traditional Fiddle Music of the Ozarks, Vol. 1: Along the Eastern Crescent (1999), and a transcription from her playing is printed in Beisswenger and McCann’s Ozarks Fiddle Music (2008).[1][3]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Uncle Henry".
  2. CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "Violet Brumley Hensley (1916–2026)".
  3. Musical Traditions: "Traditional Fiddle Music of the Ozarks Vol 1" (review by Paul Roberts).