The tune of the week for October 11 is Salt River. Bluegrass folks play this tune as “Salt Creek”, owing to a recording by Bill Monroe. Slippery Hill lists a tune called "Salt River Reel”, but I think it’s different tune. Salt River an A tune and can be played in standard A tuning or in A modal. I first ran across it on Kaia Kater’s album "Sorrow Bound” [1]. Her version is not particularly traditional and is played fairly slowly; to me it fits best in A modal. Most of the other recordings I have tried playing along with seem to want to be in standard A tuning.
There is a surfeit of historical recordings and references for this tune, so many it’s hard to guess where it really came from. Miles Krassen includes Salt River in his book Clawhammer Banjo - he attributes his version to Frank George. I found historical recordings by:
The Library of Congress link to the Henry Reed recording has some interesting notes. First, they point out that Reed starts with the high part. So do Kaia Kater and Bruce Molsky. The LOC also notes a relationship between Salt River and the tune Paddy on the Turnpike, and they indicate that the Salt River in question is the river in Kentucky (see notes later on).
When I mentioned Salt River to Adam Hurt, he mentioned that the Ed Haley recording bears a strong resemblance to another Ed Haley recording of a tune called No Corn on Tygart. You can hear that recording on Slippery Hill:
One of Hilarie's videos mentions a recording by a band called the Improbabillies, which featured Richie Stearns on banjo, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.
There is a Salt River in Kentucky just southeast of Louisville [1] as well as an unincorporated community in Bullitt County, KY [2]. There are also Salt Rivers in Arizona, California, Michigan, Missouri, Wyoming, and the US Virgin Islands. If the tune refers to any particular place, odds are it’s one of the locations in Kentucky.
Salt River and Salt Creek (the Keith/Monroe/Watson version) are two distinct tunes though they are similar and the titles are sometimes mixed and versions of the tunes combined. In the links above, for instance, Katie Davis Henderson plays the tune I call Salt River, while Stephanie Coleman is playing Salt Creek, though banjoist Steve Arkin, who posted it, calls it Salt River. You can clearly hear the difference. ... Below are links to the Monroe recording of Salt Creek and Salt River featuring fiddler Brittany Haas. Again, the tunes are distinctly different.
in listening to the old-fiddler versions linked above it’s clear that both tunes, or variants of each, were called Salt River. When the Salt Creek title arrived, I do not know. Anyone have that information?
There was a good discussion at Fiddle Hangout, discussing Salt River and Salt Creek. My conclusion from that discussion is that there are two or more different tunes that are named Salt , and Salt Creek is Monroe's version based on one of the Salt River versions.
In Traditional Tune Archive there is also a version mentioned (from Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook), that is based on one of the several versions of Sandy River Belle.
I tabbed out the high part as I've been working on it. This is my first time using Tabledit. I tried doing it by hand, but my handwriting is just too messy. I still have a lot to learn about tabledit, I think. I'll finish tabbing the low part later this week.
Bill Rogers wrote: "in listening to the old-fiddler versions linked above it’s clear that both tunes, or variants of each, were called Salt River. When the Salt Creek title arrived, I do not know. Anyone have that information?"
According to the book "The Music of Bill Monroe," written by Neil Rosenberg and Charles K. Wolfe, Bill Keith brought the tune to the band, having learned it from Don Stover. But Monroe had just issued Big Sandy River as a single, so he changed the name of the tune from Salt River to Salt Creek, to avoid confusion among his fans. I guess he was afraid that they would assume they had already bought it. Somewhere along the line I also heard that Monroe changed it so that his copyright would be more easily enforced. Both could be true at the same time.
I agree with you. Clawhammer songs have a way of merging into other Clawhammer songs called by the same titles. It sounds less melodically defined to me where as Bluegrass arrangements usually are pretty much the same melody. Bill Keith put his own spin on Salt Creek/Salt River and it became a permanent arrangement with few variations...
Everybody has fun calling songs by whichever name or region suits them...Showbiz I guess...Jack p.s. who really knows who did what first.
Here's a full tab, now that I've had some more time with the low part. I like starting with the high part because it's a little richer sounding. Eventually I'd like to learn a few more versions - there are some great ideas in some other folks' playing. This one's mostly based on Katie Davis Henderson's fiddling, which seems like it was pretty similar to what Bruce Molsky was doing.
Somehow I ended up with a double bar two bars from the end and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.
Just ignore those two bars. It seems to happen in many tabs these days. Probably just a glitch in tabledit I think. I could show you how to get rid of them but it's really not that important since you're just reading or writing a simple tune with no codas etc. etc....J
Here's a full tab, now that I've had some more time with the low part. I like starting with the high part because it's a little richer sounding. Eventually I'd like to learn a few more versions - there are some great ideas in some other folks' playing. This one's mostly based on Katie Davis Henderson's fiddling, which seems like it was pretty similar to what Bruce Molsky was doing.
Somehow I ended up with a double bar two bars from the end and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.
A rich choice, Mark. Glad to see you're learning to tab with TablEdit. You might get rid of the double bars if you went up to the MIDI tab, then the Reading List tab, and then deleted your reading list and re-enter it. (There's actually a way to put in a double bar if you want one -- it's under first Edit, then Insert, then Endings and Repeat. It leaves a little marker on the staff line that you can delete when in TablEdit, not the PDF version. I wish I knew how to put in just a single bar when I want one.)
Salt River has been a long-time favorite. I had a class in bluegrass banjo in the 70's and that was a tune covered. I adapted it later for clawhammer. For this TOTW there were B parts I liked more than what my version had evolved to, so I listened to some of your links and came up with another B part.
Doc Watson's is my favorite and I got to see him in concert back then with his son, Merle, and more recently with David Holt.
Very nice version of Salt Creek or Salt River as others call it. I have learned not to worry about the names of Clawhammer tunes a long time ago. Tabledit puts in those double bar lines for no apparent reason. I know how to take them out but I don't find it important enough to bother with it if it's in Tab. If I'm just creating a tab I just put in the repeat signs manually...Jack
A rich choice, Mark. Glad to see you're learning to tab with TablEdit. You might get rid of the double bars if you went up to the MIDI tab, then the Reading List tab, and then deleted your reading list and re-enter it. (There's actually a way to put in a double bar if you want one -- it's under first Edit, then Insert, then Endings and Repeat. It leaves a little marker on the staff line that you can delete when in TablEdit, not the PDF version. I wish I knew how to put in just a single bar when I want one.)
Salt River has been a long-time favorite. I had a class in bluegrass banjo in the 70's and that was a tune covered. I adapted it later for clawhammer. For this TOTW there were B parts I liked more than what my version had evolved to, so I listened to some of your links and came up with another B part.
Doc Watson's is my favorite and I got to see him in concert back then with his son, Merle, and more recently with David Holt.
Tabledit puts in those double bar lines for no apparent reason. I know how to take them out but I don't find it important enough to bother with it if it's in Tab. If I'm just creating a tab I just put in the repeat signs manually...Jack
