vrteach - Posted - 12/06/2013:  08:36:41

For this weeks TOTW I'm choosing Little Dutch Girl, one of my favorite A-tunes. I learned this tune only 5 or 6 years ago from my fiddling friend Steve, and I'm not sure where he got it from.

The Fiddlers Companion states that there are two Ozark tunes by this name, both collected (perhaps) from the same family. Marion Thede has one in her fiddle book, from Willie Collins, but also includes the melody that I'm doing here in her book under the title Liza Jane No. 3. However, the FC goes on to say that both Earl Collins (Willie's son) and Bob Holt remember hearing this melody under the title Little Dutch Girl Douglas County, Mo., when they were young.

Earl Collins recorded his version on a 1975 LP, and this is probably the source of all the other versions. Collins was the topic of a 1970 documentary called Say Old Man Can You Play the Fiddle, by Bess Lomax Hawes. This documentary has been released as a dvd called The Films of Bess Lomax Hawes, and you can read more about this at media-generation.net/DVD%20PAG.../Bess.htm, and you can also view a clip of Earl playing Black Mountain Rag. Also you can download the liner notes as a pdf toward the bottom of that page. The notes include an article  about Collins which originally appeared in the program book of the 1975 Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife. Here is the Collins biography from that article, which then goes on to include several pages of interview. It makes good reading.

 Earl Collins was born in Douglass County, Missouri in 1911. In 1917 his family

moved to Oklahoma, where they sharecropped and Earl augmented their income by

playing fiddle at square dances through the bitter early years of the depression. He

married 1931 and he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California in 1935 where Earl

turned his hand to any lob he could get: hod carrier, truck driver, trash hauler, machinist,

welder mechanic. He retired in 1969 because of his always fragile health. For years he

tried to convert his skill as a fiddler into a money-making occupation. He never made it,

and in 1949, he put his fiddle away and did not play again until 1965, when his sons

persuaded him to take it up again. Earl’s extraordinary technique and musicianship

made him a star on the old time fiddlers circuit in California, almost every weekend until

his death in 1975 he played at one or another local contest or jam session. In the

following, Earl tells his story in his own words, which have been excerpted from a series

of taped interviews conducted by Barbara LaPan Rahm.

 OK, a few versions that I found. I'm sure there are many more.

• Chris Carney teaches a version on YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=mNpbmMU4-lg‎


• Earl Collins, probably the definitive recording, from the Slippery-Hill page of tunes from the Milliner-Koken Collection: slippery-hill.com/M-K/AEAE/Lit...hGirl.mp3. This is from Collins' 1975 LP That's Earl.


• JanetB has a great version here on the hangout. She also has more information on Earl Collins.


• Ron Novit has a full band version on the hangout, I think with 3-finger banjo behind the fiddle?


• On my personal site I have a banjo version from 2007, soon after I had learned the tune. Also there is a 2010 fiddle version, again fairly soon after I had decided to try it on fiddle. And then I'm also attaching a video banjo version which I did last night.


• Drew Beisswenger & Gordon McCann have the musical notation for Little Dutch Girl in the Mel Bay book Ozarks Fiddle Music, which is a nice resource.


• LyleK has tablature for this tune on his site.

 Erich

Edited by - vrteach on 12/07/2013 11:58:03

VIDEO: Little Dutch Girl (click to view)

bjcole - Posted - 12/06/2013:  09:11:42

There is a tab for this in the November 2003 BNL by Hugh Strawn which I combined with the Boiled Buzzard's version on the Marimac Anthology to come up with how I wanted to play the tune.

stevel - Posted - 12/06/2013:  09:13:23

member lylek has a tab available:



lylewk.home.comcast.net/~lylew...0Girl.pdf

Edited by - stevel on 12/06/2013 09:14:17

tfaux - Posted - 12/06/2013:  09:14:11

Thanks for posting this good old mid-western tune, Erich. Nicely played.  I like Earl Collins' solid rendition of Black Mountain Rag. He sure could do a lot with 5 inches of bow.  

Did you paint that banjo head in 1976?

Tom

vrteach - Posted - 12/06/2013:  09:50:46

stevl: I've added the link to Lyle's tablature to my first post, thanks for reminding me of it.

Tfaux: That is an official (licensed) Bicentennial banjo. It was my second banjo, and I bought it new for fairly cheap in 1977 in my home town of Duluth. The store I got it in is long gone, but I can still picture it hanging on the wall. They also had an electric guitar made from a toilet seat in the front window. It is not a good banjo, but it finally found it's voice when I strung it with nylaguts.

J-Walk - Posted - 12/07/2013:  11:42:37

Another good ToTW choice. Can't believe this one hasn't been done before.

Here's a recording from last night's jam. That's Dan Levenson on fiddle.

Little Dutch Girl

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 12/07/2013:  15:52:12

Great job on the banjo, John.

It really pops.

Lew

J-Walk - Posted - 12/07/2013:  17:38:06

Thank you, Lew. That was my Ramsey banjo -- one that I rarely bring to jams. I need to play that one more.

What's cool is that I mentioned the tune name, and Dan was playing it 3 seconds later. That's one reason why he's my favorite fiddler in a jam.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 12/07/2013:  20:12:29

A great choice for TOTW, Eric.  Some great versions going here, from Janet, Eric, Ron and J-Walk.  I expect we'll see some more fine picking on this one before the week is over.  Here is my version, played on a fretless mountain banjo built for me by Chip Arnold.  I'm three finger picking in open G tuning.

VIDEO: Little Dutch Girl (click to view)

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 12/08/2013:  10:06:49

All hard acts to follow. 

I’ll take a crack at it anyway:

Stay warm.  It’s cold and we’re seeing snow and icy rain here in Augusta County VA. 

V/R,

Lew

Joe Newberry - Posted - 12/08/2013:  16:36:08

Here's a clip of myself, Rafe Stefanini, and Mike Compton playing Little Dutch Girl.  It is one of our favorites.  youtube.com/watch?v=In04m_dCSpc

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 12/08/2013:  16:48:04

Loved the "nuclear deterrent" remark.

And loved the playing,

Lew

JanetB - Posted - 12/08/2013:  18:20:46

All the playing is fantastic!  I'm happy to see Mike Compton on this forum, too.  Thanks, Joe, and especially thanks to Erich.

vrteach - Posted - 12/09/2013:  08:05:05

AH, what wonderful things have been added over the weekend! Thanks everyone.

xzr6f7 - Posted - 12/14/2013:  07:46:43

So I've been looking at the tab for this tune and am not quite getting it. In the A part, the 4th measure and the 8th measure have 3 beats while everything else has 4 beats. The B part is even more confusing.

Am I missing something? Or is there a real problem with this tab?

Thanks
John

janolov - Posted - 12/14/2013:  08:54:00

quote:

---

Originally posted by xzr6f7

So I've been looking at the tab for this tune and am not quite getting it. In the A part, the 4th measure and the 8th measure have 3 beats while everything else has 4 beats. The B part is even more confusing.



Am I missing something? Or is there a real problem with this tab?



Thanks

John

---

The tab seems to be correct for me. In the measures you mention, the first note is a prolonged note (watch the dot at the tab stem!). So if you count 1  & 2 & 3 & 4 & in a full measure the first note, in measure 4: strike the open first string on "1" and count "& 2", and then on the next "&"  make the hammer-on on second fret. And the similar on all the other measures.

Don't forget to use your ear when reading tab.

Another advice, don't take tabs too serious. I started with Lyle's tab above, and listened through all versions and studied some notation I found, and I came out with the attached version. And there are at least a hundred other ways to interpret the tune.

Little Dutch girl

LyleK - Posted - 12/14/2013:  21:32:30

quote:

---

Originally posted by janolov

don't take tabs too serious.

---

Amen.  Here's my current version, which bears rather little relationship to my tab.

VIDEO: Little Dutch Girl (click to view)

xzr6f7 - Posted - 12/15/2013:  08:26:16

I just wanted to say thanks for the explanation on the tabs. I knew someone would help me on this site.

vrteach - Posted - 12/15/2013:  09:26:31

Great playing Lyle, as always. Thanks for the additional tablature, janolav.

I'm pleased to see that there are currently 4 TOTWs active on the first page!

Uncle Sinner - Posted - 12/16/2013:  12:59:41

Huh. Most versions seem quite a bit different from the one I play. I learned the tune from Mike Seeger jamming with a bow harp player. I like the vocal on it--you know, threatening to send the girl home in a rocking and possibly leaky boat if she doesn't do you better. It's terrible, of course, and no one should do that to anyone, even if they ARE dutch. Still, it's fun to sing.

vrteach - Posted - 12/16/2013:  13:48:45

There are two tunes that were played under the name "Little Dutch Girl" in the Ozarks. The melody that isn't the one we've been playing here is a nice pentatonic tune, kind of in E I think. Drew Beisswenger has it under the title "Going Down the River" as recorded by the group "Dr Smiths Champion Hoss Hair Pullers", and reissued on Echoes of the Ozarks Vol 2. You can hear an excerpt of that on Amazon. Most of the verses consist of the singer complaining about a lazy wife. One of the lyrics is:



Oh little girl, if you don't do better

I'll build me a boat and I'll Sail down the river

Boat begin to rock and I begin to quiver

Oh, little girl, I'm going down the river



Jimmy Driftwood sang a version where "little girl" is replaced with "my little Dutch girl", and this is perhaps the source for Mike Seeger's version.

Edited by - vrteach on 12/16/2013 13:56:06

Uncle Sinner - Posted - 12/18/2013:  08:44:58

Yep, I looked it up and the version I learned from is Jimmie Driftwood with Mike Seeger.