Annotation:Poor Little Mary Sitting in the Corner
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POOR LITTLE MARY, SITTING IN THE CORNER. Old-Time, Breakdown. USA, Mississippi. A Major. AEae tuning (fiddle). AA'B. Tom Rankin (1985) could find no recorded or printed versions of this tune, which sounded to him like a children's game song "with its narrow melodic framework in the coarse phrase." Enos Canoy (1909-, Simpson County, Miss.), the source, learned the tune from his uncles and mentors, Love Kennedy and Robert Runnels of Simpson County, Mississippi. On the 1939 field recording (by Herbert Halpert) a friend, Jim Myers, beat two straw on Enoy's fiddle while he played. There is a picture of Canoy and his family band c. 1940 in the extensive liner notes of "Great Big Yam Potatoes" (1985).
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Bolick (Mississippi Fiddle Tunes), 2015; p. 245.
Recorded sources: Marimac Recordings 9014 (cass.), Joe LaRose - "A Southern Catalog" (1988). Mississippi Department of Archives and History AH-002, Enos Canoy and the Canoy Band - "Great Big Yam Potatoes: Anglo-American Fiddle Music from Mississippi" (1985. Originally recorded for the Library of Congress in 1939).
See also listing at:
Hear Enos Canoy's 1939 field recording at Slippery Hill [1]
Various versions on youtube.com [2][3]