Bucking Mule (1)

BUCKING MULE. See "Cumberland Gap on a Buckin' Mule." Old-Time, Breakdown. USA; north Georgia, western N.C., eastern Tenn., Ky., southwestern Pa. D Major. Standard tuning. AA'BB. The favorite contest tune of north Georgia fiddler A.A. Gray, who recalled in a 1934 interview:

I find the tune you play has a lot to do with winning prizes. A fellow just ahead of me used "Bully of the Town" and that's a mighty good piece. He won four prizes in a row. Finally, I happened to think of "Bucking Mule." It's a hard piece, but its snappy, and you do a lot of fancy work behind the bridge that makes the fiddle bray like a mule. I won so many prizes that the other follows got to calling my 'Mule' Gray. (Old Time Music, No. 41, Spring 1985)

Georgia duo Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett's version for Columbia Records in 1924 was the first string band record ever released. Further north, the piece was reportedly popular with Tennessee fiddlers. It was in the repertoire of Monticello, Ky., fiddler Dick Burnett and was one of two pieces he remembered getting the most applause for from audiences during his hey-day. "Bucking Mule" was also frequently played by "Natchez the Indian," a contest fiddler in the 1930's and 40's who may or may not have been a Native American; Natchez dressed in beaded buckskins and wore his hair in long braids, and when he fiddled this tune "the animation of his coiffure and the tassles on his buckskins was of greater interest than the quality of his music" (Mark Wilson & Guthrie Meade, 1976).

Source for notated version: A manuscript from fifer Thomas Hoge (Greene County, Pa.) [Bayard].

Printed source: Bayard (Dance to the Fiddle), 1981; No. 339, p. 325.

Broadway A-1963 (78 RPM), 1924, J. Dedrick Harris (Harris was a legendary fiddler from Tennessee who played regularly with Bob Taylor when he ran for Governer of the state in the late 1800's. Harris moved to Western N.C. in the 1920's and influenced a generation of fiddlers there: Manco Sneed, Bill Hensley, Osey Helton, Marcus Martin. This was one of two songs only he recorded [see "Whip the Devil Round the Stump"]). Columbia 110-D (78 RPM), 1924, Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett. Rounder Records, Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers (1934) - "The Kickapoo Medecine Show" (appears as "Cumberland Gap on a Buckin' Mule"). Vocalion 5432 (78 RPM), A.A. Gray (part of "A Fiddler's Tryout in Georgia").

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X:1
T:Bucking Mule (The)
M:2/4
L:1/8
S:Thomas Hoge manuscripts, a collection of fife music from
S:southwestern Pennsylvania
K:D
f/a/f/e/ dd|AB/B/ AF|Ad/d/ cd|ef ge|f/a/f/e/ dd|AB/B/ AF|
Ad d/c/d/e/|1 fddz:|2 fdd z/A/||:Ad f/e/d/f/|ad/d/ fd|
ef g/f/g/a/|ba az/A/|Ad f/e/d/f/|ad/d/ fd ef g/e/c/e/|fd d2:||

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