Annotation:Puncheon Camps

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PUNCHEON CAMP(S). AKA and see "Possum up a Simmon Tree (1)," "Kitty Puss," "Tucker's Old Barn," "Old Time Mockingbird." Old-Time, Breakdown. USA, eastern Ky. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCC. A puncheon floor is a floor mad of logs split lengthwise which are pegged, flat side upward, to joists to make floors in log houses. A puncheon camp is generally thought to be the logging camp where loggers split the wood prior to delivering it. The third strain is irregular in Kentucky fiddle and banjo player Clyde Davenport's version, which is the same tune as Buddy Thomas's (eastern Ky.) "Possum up a Simmon Tree (1)." Davenport's father, Will Davenport, played the tune on the fiddle, and Clyde himself plays it on both banjo and fiddle. Variants of the tune include Virgil Anderson's “Cold Nights a-Comin'."

Source for notated version: Clyde Davenport (b. 1921, Monticello, Ky.) [Phillips].

Clyde Davenport

Printed sources: Perlman (Everything You Wanted to Know About Clawhammer Banjo), 2004; p. 13. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1), 1994; p. 190 (related to "Five Miles from Town").

Recorded sources: Field Recorder Collective FRC 104, "Clyde Davenport vol. 2" (2005). Venerable Records, Andy Cahan - "Hits From the Mountains." Appalachian Center Ser. AC002, Clyde Davenport, Clyde - "Puncheon Camps" (1992).

See also listing at:
Hear/see the tune played in 1993 by Clyde Davenport on youtube.com [1]
Hear Davenport's recording at Slipper Hill [2]

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