Annotation:Old Ketchum
OLD KETCHUM. American, Air/Listening tune or Jig (6/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. "Old Ketchum" is from a 1964 home recording made by Merle Reves, the nephew of fiddler George Mert Reves (or Reeves), from Denard, Arkansas. The elder Reves was born in 1894 near Marshall, Arkansas, and lived for decades in the Oklahoma Ozarks region near Tahlequah. Reves can be seen fiddling in the film "Where the Red Fern Grows" (c. 1960's) at approx. the 66 min. mark, where he plays "Ragtime Annie" before the Tri-State Coon Hunt.
This moderately paced 6/8 time tune, speculatively, could be a song air associated with the "Old Bangum" song family. It may also be associated with the town of Ketchum, Oklahoma, some sixty miles north of Reves home in northeast Oklahoma. Ketchum was founded in 1899 on the bank of the Grand (Neosho) River and named for a member of the Delaware tribe who was also a Methodist Minister. However, when the railroad came through the entire town was relocated in 1914 to Craig County, and later the original townsite was filled in by the creation of Grand Lake o' the Cherokees.