Annotation:Hamilton Iron Works

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HAMILTON IRON WORKS. Old-Time, Breakdown. USA, Missouri. D Major/Mixolydian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAAABBBBC. According to Missouri fiddler and writer Howard Marshall, John Hartford learned this tune from Missouri fiddlers Gene Goforth and Roy Wooliver in the late 1950's, although it had originally been in Wooliver's repertoire (the latter was Goforth's mentor). "John Harford always felt that Roy Wooliver probably authored this tune," says Marshall, "But the feeling or the culture of fiddlers was that fiddlers who made up tunes generally attributed them to someone else, usually older fiddlers than themselves. So Wooliver never owned up to having composed it." Goforth himself said that he and brother Cecil Goforth, along with Clifford Hawthorne, learned it from Wooliver in the 1950's, but that the tune never spread from beyond their local region. For some time no one knew where the Hamilton Iron Works had been located, although Marshall believed it would have been in the upper eastern Ozarks and south or southwest of St. Louis. Drew Beisswenger (2008) finds that the Hamilton Iron Works was located near Sullivan, Missouri, in the present location of Meramec State Park, and dated to the 1880's. See also the similar "Piper's Lass" in Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883). Hartford thought the tune was a distant cousin to "Cumberland Gap."

Source for notated version: John Hartford [Phillips]; Cecil Goforth [Beisswenger & McCann].

Printed sources: Beisswenger & McCann (Ozark Fiddle Music), 2008; p. 186. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), vol. 1, 1994; p. 107.

Recorded sources: Rounder CD-0388, Gene Goforth - "Emminence Breakdown" (1997). Rounder 0442, John Hartford - "Hamilton Ironworks" (2001). Rounder CD 0435, Cecil Goforth - "Fiddle Music of the Ozarks, vol. 1" (1999).

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