Annotation:Homemade Sugar

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HOMEMADE SUGAR. AKA - "Home Made Sugar and a Puncheon Floor." Old-Time, Breakdown. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. There is a ditty credited to dance band musician and singer Archie Lee, active as a dance musician and as the personality Little Clifford on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance in the 1930's and 1940's. It references Creelsboro, a community in Russell County, Tennessee. While the connection between the ditty and the tune transmitted by Howdy Forrester is unknown, it establishes the 'home-made sugar' and 'puncheon' association in tradition [c.f. William Lynwood Montell, Grassroots Music in the Upper Cumberland, 2006, p. 23].

I went down to Creelsboro town,
Broke my yoke and the tongue fell down;
Do Johnnie Bugger help that fellow,
Do Johnnie Bugger do.

Puncheon Camp and homemade sugar,
Dance all night you curly-headed bugger;
Do Johnnie Bugger,
Do Johnnie Bugger do.

A tune named "Homemade Sugar" was also in the repertoire of Estill Bingham, and is a member of the large tune family that includes "Tucker's Barn" (Gaither Carleton), "Kitty Puss" (Buddy Thomas), "Puncheon Camps" (Clyde Davenport), "Kick Mr. Possum and He Won't Come Down" (Burl Hammons), "Mockingbird" (Norman Edmonds), "Old Coon Bunch" (Delbert Hughes), "Doc Chapman's Breakdown" (Snake Chapman), and others.

Source for notated version: learned by the late John Hartford from fiddler Howdy Forrester, who had the tune from his Uncle Bob [Devil's Box].

Printed sources: Devil's Box, vol.. 22, No. 2, Summer 1988; p. 49.

Recorded sources:

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