Hi. Could anyone point me towards the sheet music for a fairly standard version of the tune “Cripple Creek” ???
A friend who plays guitar is coming over this weekend and wants me to play this tune with him. I’ve found a couple of versions but they are pretty different from eachother. Is there a “standard” ?
Thanks.
-Brett
The thing about Cripple Creek and other similar old-time tunes/songs is that when you reduce it to bare bones it is very simple. When you find a version like a couple of those at JC’s tunefinder they are likely to be pretty dressed up, although there is one basic version there. Each person who plays the tune fleshes it out in a different way so that no two versions are ever the same. Also each person who hears a variety of filled out versions will infer a slightly different basic melody. Here’s mine. It’s really simple and I would never play it that way. Remember also that this is a song as well as a tune and, when reducing it to a basic version, I was keeping the words in mind. You can look up words at Mudcat Cafe but I’ve copied a bit. Please don’t think that the melody I’ve given you is in any definitive. It’s just one very basic version I came up with. Compare the versions at JC’s
X:1
T:Cripple Creek
M:4/4
L:1/8
C:Trad
R:Breakdown
K:A
||:a2aa e2AA|d2ff e4|a2aa eeee|BABc|A8:||
||:c2cc BBA2|c2cc E4|c2cc BBA2|EDEG A4:||
CRIPPLE CREEK
(Kentucky, traditional)
Hey, I got a gal,
At the head of the creek,
An’ I’m goin’ up t’ see her,
'Bout three times a week.
Kisses on the mouth,
Jus’ as sweet as any wine,
Wrap myself aroun’ her,
Like a sweet potato vine.
chorus:
Goin’ up Cripple Creek,
Goin’ on a run,
Goin’ up Cripple Creek,
T’ have some fun.
Goin’ up Cripple Creek,
Goin’ in a whirl,
Goin’ up Cripple Creek,
T’ see my girl.
Steve
That’s not a bad version. My ABC player, BarFly, didn’t like the colon after the || at the beginning of each section, though.
Some more verses:
Roll my britches up
To my knees
Wade ol’ Cripple Creek
Whenever I please
Girls on Cripple Creek
'Bout half grown
Jump on a boy
Like a dog on a bone
Same as learning Irish tunes from O’Neill’s, etc. Great way to pick up new tunes, but they need a LOT of fleshing out.
BTW-- if you can find an old timey group holding sessions, check them out. There is a lot of great music in that field, and much of it is whistle playable. Usually really nice people too.
I’m no authority on abc. I checked it out with the converter at the concertina site and it worked there. I looked at some abc at the Session. I notice that sometimes they have only one vertical line at the beginning and end of a section but with a colon.
Steve
Thanks! 
The problem here is that most Bluegrass banjo players learn this as there first song. None of them ever play it the same way twice. It follows a basic pattern but is embellished or ornamented a little differently by each player. Try googling for 5 string banjo. You should find some sites with the basic tune. They also may have some good mp3 files so you can hear how it is supposed to sound. Have fun after all bluegrass is Irish traditional music 2 or 3 generations from the old sod modified by time and circumstances.
Keep whistling
Ron
Bluegrass is not Irish traditional music or anything very much like it. Furthermore, tunes like Cripple Creek were played before bluegrass was ever conceived-which was in about 1945. Furthermore again, there is no “problem”. There are different ways of playing the tune. This is only a problem if you think there is supposed to be one definitive version of such a tune.
Steve
I have found that many people don’t know the difference between bluegrass and old time (pre 1945) string band music. They usually call it all bluegrass.
Music was brought to this country from the UK where many people settled in the applachian south. Early on, there was little outside influence in the area and may tunes were learned from generation to generation by ear. Thus the celtic influence evolved into the old time style and is still played there today. As stated above, tunes like Cripple Creek were played in many forms from region to region and when blugrass was developed around 1945, it became a “standard” bluegrass tune as well.
Of course this evolution is true of other forms of traditional music also.
Steve I didn’t mean that playing it differently was a problem. I meant that made it harder to learn a “standard” version. I am well aware that cripple creek is much older than bluegrass. I remember when bluegrass began. The music I grew up with was the music found throughout southwestern Virginia, the Shennandoah Valley and neighboring areas. These areas were settled by Scots-Irish, German and English settlers. They brought their music with them. It evolved over several hundred years into what we hear today. The fiddle tunes have changed the least but they have changed. However, there is a strong Celtic ancestry in old time country and what became bluegrass.
Ron
Old-Time Music is usually considered to be improvisational to the extent a tune is played (often a Reel or Breakdown) as the basic structure and the player(s) play subtle variations. Practically all fiddler and banjo players develop unique styles much as each person has a speaking style.
In Old-Time the bowing style has a large impact on a player(s) over all style, whether or not it is long, or short stroked, and how much and the emphasis placed on the bow shuffles. How “notey” a fiddler is and how they perceive the tune makes a big difference. Many Old-Time musicians tend to “flatten” the melody where others use many notes. The “folk” process is very much apart of Old-Time, where one person “hears” a tune, “learns” it, “plays” it, and it changes to varying degrees. I imagine to a large degree this has some parallels to ITM. ITM and Old-Time music first came to fruition before recorded music, hence the folk process.
In respect to “Cripple Creek”, there is some sort of basic way the tune goes with all sorts of variations. If anyone is interested in this type of music, http://www.countysales.com/ , is one of the largest distributors of both Old-Time and Bluegrass, and is a good source. http://www.elderly.com/ is also a good source which some may already be familiar.
IMO Old-Time music is a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th generation of ITM if you think of ITM as one of many grandparents, or great-grandparents, etc. The banjo came from Africa, and was further developed else where. The fiddle came from Europe along with basic tune structures. The guitar became widely available due to mail order catalogs at the turn of the century (last century, I guess now there’s a new turn). The bass became a standard instrument in Old-Time music more or less since the 40’s. So, IMO Old-Time music is related to ITM, however is uniquely different as well.
I don’t think it’s as strong as you do. I don’t think that bluegrass is a continuation of the Anglo-Celtic-American dance music tratition. Yes, bluegrass was influenced somewhat by that tradition. But bluegrass has been influenced even more by gospel and chruch music. Nobody ever looks at the Blue Sky Boys, The Delmore Brothers or the Carter Family and says, “Oh, that’s just ITM.” But that’s the tradition that Monroe came out of with his brother. Bluegrass was also strongly influenced by blues and by jazz and swing. The influence of Arnold Schultz, a black guitar player, on Monroe is often cited. I have wondered if bluegrass could exist even if no Irish person had ever set foot in the US. Maybe not, but I think you could make a case for it. What would be lost? A handful of tunes-that’s all. In addition there is a general approach to tune compsition used by Monroe and other bluegrass musicians which is based on the older dance tradition.
Steve
I agree with most of what SteveK wrote, but would even go a little further with it.
If you look at these styles on a time line it would be in the order of: ITM, Old-Time, Bluegrass.
Many styles blended to form Old-Time with one sizeable force being ITM. Many styles blended to form Bluegrass, and one could argue that the largest of these, being Old-Time.
On the surface many folks not exposed to Old-Time and Bluegrass tend to think Old-Time is really Bluegrass. Kind of like the ink blot test…. You say the word “banjo” and the response is Bluegrass. I have a friend from Bangladesh, and when he first heard an Old-Time CD recording I played on, said “Celtic”. I think this friend was not exposed much to Celtic forms or Old-Time and to his ear sounded fairly familiar due to instrumentation and music structure (ie Reels, AABB format, fiddle, etc), hence a similar perception to how many US folks view Old-Time and Bluegrass.
Another generalization I would point out is that Bluegrass is probably more performance oriented than dance oriented, although one can certainly dance to some of it such as flat footing, and waltzes. What I mean by performance is that many Bluegrass musicians focus on the vocals, or taking “Breaks”, and spend a lot of time polishing it. A “Break” is where one musician takes the lead. Old-Time musicians tend to play as a whole without breaks. Old-Time is used often in Appalachian Square Dances, and New England Contra Dances, where as Bluegrass is not.
All of the above of course are generalizations.
I am probably predjudiced in this area. My wife’s family is from southwestern virginia. I have traced most of her family lines and they are all Irish, Scottish or English. In fact one of her lines is Monroe. Many of her family have had bands or played in bands. Mostly an “old time” style more like Carter family than anything else. This is not surprising since the Carters lived just over the mountain. Some of the family today play in Bluegrass groups. I remember the first time I heard Earl Scruggs play 5 string. I said I want to play like that. I have tried and I will never be able to play like that. I am sure that bluegrass or something like it would have evolved without Irish or Scottish influence but I think it added a great deal to the music as it developed. I guess since I love both Irish and Appalachian music that I want to see links everywhere I look. Some of the best 5 string players I have ever met were not famous, didn’t play professionally, and couldn’t read music if their life depended on it. They were just guys playing in the parking lot or on the porch. One I met played a home made 5 string that sounded better than any Gibson I ever heard. He learned every tune from family and friends in that true folk tradition.
Keep Whistling
Ron
Regarding Cripple Creek: The real basic tune in this case is the sung melody, which is pretty simple. The ABC version that was posted is very similar to the various fiddle versions that I’ve heard that use arpeggios or various scalewise figures to embellish the tune.
Regarding Old-Timey Music (OTM) and Bluegrass (BG): I’m no music historian. The following all comes from reading on the subject, along with some recorded interviews with Bill Monroe, along with personal observations from over 40 years of exposure to the music. (More than that, if you count the fact that my mother sang “Barbara Allen” and “Babes in the Wood” to me when I was a baby, and that her mother sang them to her when she was a baby.)
I’d say that Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English folk songs and dance tunes are a very important component of OTM. Cecil Sharp collected lots of American versions of the Child ballads. Irish dance tunes are often identifiable, too. In addition, many American ballads use common Irish tunes, like the one to “Rosin the Beau”. Take a look at Jean Ritchies “Field Trip” album at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005KHGC/qid=1074191622/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/102-7534288-7030567?v=glance&s=music Ritchie also made a connection between “Loving Hannah” from her tradition and Margaret Barry’s “Going to Mass Last Sunday”. (See Barry’s “I Sang Through the Fairs” CD.)
The Irish influence in cowboy songs probably comes mostly from the post-potato-famine immigrations.
Both the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, who made the first commercial “country music” recordings just days apart in 1927, were influenced by blues musicians. Maybelle Carter supposedly learned to fingerpick the guitar from a Black player (Leslie Riddle?). Some of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s recordings were already out by then, and his style of long bluesy runs can be heard in Maybelle’s playing, and in Roscoe Holcombe’s. This mixing wasn’t just in one direction. Early jazz, jugband music, and Piedmont blues were all heavily influenced by European music, too.
On “Standin’ on the Corner” (“Blue Yodel No. 9”), Jimmie Rodgers was backed up by Louie Armstrong and other jazz musicians. According to one report, Armstrong also recorded a version of Jimmie’s “Blue Yodel No. 4”, though I don’t know the details.
Bill Monroe developed with all these influences. His “Uncle Pen” played traditional fiddle tunes, but Bill was also a big Jimmie Rodgers fan, and Arnold Schultz and gospel music have been mentioned in this thread. As Bill has said, he had a idea of just what he wanted his music to sound like, and it’s obvious that that idea included OTM, blues, and swing. Monroe had at least two fairly distinctive mandolin styles. One is a farily straight fiddle tune style that wouldn’t be out of place in ITM, except maybe for some of the rhythms. The other sounds for all the world like Blind Lemon’s guitar.
It’s probably worth bringing up the connection between Texas fiddle music, which is heavily ornamented and sounds very Irish to me, and Western Swing. I think of Western Swing as jazz influenced by Irish fiddle styles.
Early Southern Mountain multi-instrumental music was played (and sung) in unison, like ITM. That contrasts strongly with swing. BG took the swing approach to this, even when performing traditional fiddle tunes.
Another point of relatively early Black influence on Southern Mountain music is the use of the banjo. Not only was the instrument of African origin, but the original style of playing it involves picking down on the strings with the back of a fingernail, which is supposedly an African technique. In Febuary I’ll be going to a clawhammer banjo workshop to work on this technique.
Another point of relatively early Black influence on Southern Mountain music is the use of the banjo. Not only was the instrument of African origin, but the original style of playing it involves picking down on the strings with the back of a fingernail, which is supposedly an African technique. In Febuary I’ll be going to a clawhammer banjo workshop to work on this technique.
Good stuff Darwin. I believe the drone string is what characterizes the banjo as an instument of African origin… The fact that the highest string is next to the lowest. Then again I could be wro ng 
bgb
Ulf Jagors of Sweden has been pushing the Akonting, and african skin-head instrument as the main source of primitive African-American banjos. The Akonting has many points of similarity with early banjos including a short string. The playing style is also similar to the downstroke (clawhammer) style presumably used by slaves and certainly used by minstrel musicians. Ulf views are not totally unopposed but he has a good case. Joel Walker Sweeney (sounds Irish) is often credited with inventing the 5-string banjo by adding a short string but it’s clear that’s not true. The short string is present in at least one earlier depiction of a gourd banjo.
Steve
one way to tell if you are seeing “old time” or “blue grass” playing is to look at the banjo and style of playing. The open backed, claw hammer player is usually found in old time. The resonator backed, Monroe finger roll style of playing is usually found in bluegrass.
Many of the songs of the Appalachia’s are direct decendants of the Scotch / Irish tunes. When Jean Ritchie - a wonderful musician, mountain dulcimer, guitar, and autoharp player, and composer - went to Ireland on a Fullbright scholarship in the early 60’s, she was told that HER versions of many songs were closer to the originals than ones that were being sung currently. The “problem” with older Appalachian songs is that many of the people looked on instruments of any kind as the “devil’s playthings” and most songs were vocal only, or very minimum back up (speculation is that’s how the MD came into being).
I’ve heard the same song in Old Time have different titles, depending on the region of the country one “got” it from. I’ve also heard different words for the same song. And different songs with the same title (usually the chord structure is the same, but the melody will vary).
Missy
Actually, this seems to have led to singing with lots of ornamentation. Jean Ritchie refers to her version of “Little Sparrow” (“Fair and Tender Ladies”) as “decorated”. The melody is more interesting than some others that I’ve heard sung accompanied.
By the way, check out this new thread: http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=17051&sid=96186746385b817ea8daef1ab2299de9
There’s a link to a site that has some pre-1927 recordings of songs that show both Irish/British and Black influences. One note says:
“Isaac Meddler” is a tune which has appeared under a number of different titles. See Jabbour (pp. 21-22) for a history of the tune, known to the Hammons family of West Virginia as “Camp Chase”. As a strathspey, it appears in Scots tradition under the name “Marquis of Huntley’s Farewell.” It has been recorded a number of times in the south as “George Booker” (Krassen, p.84).
That seems pretty typical.
Missy wrote:
I’ve heard the same song in Old Time have different titles, depending on the region of the country one “got” it from. I’ve also heard different words for the same song. And different songs with the same title (usually the chord structure is the same, but the melody will vary)
The tune that lead me to my obsession with Old-Time music was “Soldiers Joy”… which I believe was called “Kings Head Reel” in the British Isles. I heard relatives from Southwest Virginia playing a banjo and guitar duet, and thought the tune sounded very familar. When they told me the name, I realized that this was the same tune I played on the fife growing up in Williamsburg Va. Great whistle tune with String Band accompanyment.
There are also many cases of the same verses used in different songs, often refered to as floating verses, and there are many cases of the same title with completely different unrelated tunes.
Rick