Annotation:Peckerwood

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PECKERWOOD. Old-Time, Song and Breakdown. USA, Kentucky. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The song and tune were once-popular in the Cumberland Plateau region. Source Davenport (b. 1921) learned it from his father when he was a boy. Bawdy lyrics are occasionally sung to the tune, in keeping with the title, which the Urban Dictionary [1] explains:

A peckerwood is a rural white southerner, usually poor, undereducated or otherwise ignorant and bigoted, the term gained popularity in the deep south during the early twentieth century and was meant to be derogatory. It is a reversal of the name of the red bellied woodpecker which had a patch of red on the back of it’s head and neck, therefore a peckerwood is a redneck, terms that describe similar groups of people are trailer trash or white trash but neither of those have the same effect or ring to them as peckerwood does.

Source for notated version: Clyde Davenport (Monticello, Wayne County, Ky.) [Titon].

Printed sources: Titon (Old Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes), 2001; No. 122, p. 149.

Recorded sources: Berea College Appalachian Center AC002, Clyde Davenport – “Puncheon Camps” (1992). Field Recorders Collective FRC-104, "Clyde Davenport, vol. 2."

See also listing at:
Hear John Harrod's 1981 field recording of Davenport playing the tune at the Digital Library of Appalachia [2] and Berea Digital Content [3]