Annotation:Old Yaller Hound
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OLD YALLER HOUN' . Old-Time, Breakdown. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The first stain of this tune is shared, in a general way, with O'Neill's "Always Welcome" and Roche's "Darkey's Dream." While these tunes appear in Irish or Irish-American publications, it seems likely they were derived from American black-face minstrel sources. Ira Ford (1940) printed the following verse with the tune:
Old yaller houn's barkin' treed, up the holler,
It's old mister 'possum, I'll bet half a dollar.
Fetch on the ax, boys, we'll see pretty soon,
He's worth half a dollar if it's old zipp coon. .... (Ford)
...and printed this story to go with it:
The following sketch was taken down according to family recollection of an old Tennessee fiddler who played "Old Yaller Houn'" as it was handed down from his "grandpap."
"Back yander in the time of Davie Crockett'n Dan'el Boone, folks never seed much money. Furs'n pelts, beeswax'n taller wuz the legal tender uv the day in the settlement whur we'uns lived.
"Most any time when store goods wuz a-runnin' low Pap 'ud say: 'Newt, yew'n Lem go out to the granary'n fotch in all the skins that air dry enough. We'uns air a-goin' over to Bald O'int'n do some tradin' atter dinner.'Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Ford (Traditional Music in America), 1940; p. 61.
Recorded sources:
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