Annotation:Plowboy Hop

Back to Plowboy Hop

---

PLOWBOY HOP. AKA - "Plow Boy Hop." AKA and see "Plowboy Rag." Old-Time, Country Rag. USA, southeast Missouri. B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB'. The tune is sourced to fiddler Ben Tinnon (1891-1975), born in the village of Holcomb, New Madrid County, near the Missouri-Arkansas border. He had a local reputation as a dance fiddler and as a fiddle repairman, according to music researcher Charles Wolfe. Tinnon, with his band the Grinnell Giggers (who took their name, writes, Wolfe, "from a type of fishing done in the area; in the spring of the year, the river would flood, leaving large ponds of backwater. Locals would find in these pools a "trash fish" called grinnel, and they would catch them with old-time three-pronged forks -- a practice known as gigging. The term "grinnel giggers" was thus a phrase that had about the same meaning as "Skillet Lickers." It was not an image, though; most members of the band were cotton farmers and fishermen who had actually done such gigging." The Grinnell Giggers recorded only once, producing eight sides, most of them Tinnon originals.

Source for notated version: Ben Tinnon with the Grinnell Giggers (southeast Mo.) [Phillips].

Printed sources: Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 2), 1995; p. 102.

Recorded sources: County 548, Grinnell Giggers - "Ridin' in an Old Model T" (orig. rec. 1930). Marimac 9111, The Grinnel Giggers - "Goin' Up Town: Old Time String Bands, vol. 2."

---