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mandobanjolibrarian - Posted - 01/20/2023: 05:49:17
I chose a favorite little reel of mine for this week’s TOTW: “Dance All Night with A Bottle In My Hand,” also known as “Dance All Night,” “Dance All Night with A Bottle in Your Hand,” and even given an AKA in at least one case with “Give the Fiddler a Dram.” For that last one, I don’t really hear enough similarities to warrant “alternate title” status . . . but I digress. My favorite alternate title for the tune is “Give Me a Bottle of I Don’t Know What.”
Some of my recorded encounters with this tune have been through The McGee Brothers & Arthur Smith on the album Milk ‘Em in the Morning (Folkways, 1968), Clark Kessinger on the album The Legend Of (County Records, 1971), and Wade Mainer in the 1979 Brandywine Festival recordings. Here’s a few others:
While the tune was reportedly a favorite of Gid Tanner and his crew, The Stripling Brothers (Charlie on fiddle and Ira on guitar) also made an early recording in 1929, which is available on The Stripling Brothers: Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order- Vol.1, 1928-1934 from Document Records. The New Lost City Ramblers with Cousin Emmy recorded it on their eponymous 1968 album (Folkways).
The Digital Library of Appalachia has numerous recordings of this tune by individuals and ensembles not listed above. There are also many, many online recordings of this on the Yoober-Toober. Banjo-specific ones are harder to isolate, but a couple of our BHO folks have posted audio tracks of this tune:
The Traditional Tune Archive provides standard notation for three different settings of this tune, including the aforementioned Wade Mainer and Burrell Reed versions. From TTA’s annotations:
DANCE ALL NIGHT. AKA- "Dance All Night with a Bottle in Your Hand," "Danced All Night with a Bottle in My Hand," "Give the Fiddler a Dram (1)," "Give Me a Bottle of I Don't Know What." American, Song/Reel (cut time). USA: West Virginia, Virginia, western North Carolina, north Georgia, Alabama, Nebraska. G Major (most versions): D Major (Silberberg). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Silberberg): AABB (Brody, Christeson, Phillips) or AABAACCB (Kuntz, Brody). A fairly wide-spread song/instrumental Guthrie Meade thinks the tune has some relation to "Buffalo Gals." Rosenbaum (1989) points out that the 78 RPM recording by Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers [1] for Columbia was very influential, especially in Georgia (in fact, the melody is known as a north Georgia tune). His source, Georgian Lawrence Eller, learned the tune/song from family tradition and Rosenbaum concludes (apparently on the strength of the floating verse about hanging Jefferson Davis) from this that the lyrics bespeak Unionist loyalties in parts of the southern Appalachians.
The lyrics mentioned above are located here, below the annotation.
The first tab I ran into a couple years ago was via Tom Joad’s Clawhammer Banjo Tablatures. This is a raucous, woozy, syncopated, slide-y version that seems to really reflect the song’s title musically. I found this version can be played with literally one finger in the fretting hand, but the challenge comes with getting the rests, slides, pull-offs, and up-the-necks to come together, and it’s a bit of a workout for a player at my level – but a ton of fun! Below is a recording of my attempt.
A second tab came my way via Stephen C. Parker’s Clawhammer Banjo String Band Favorites collection, which I purchased about a year ago. This one’s quite different from the Tom Joad version (and utilizes a lot more fretting fingers), but is also fun to play. Steve credits renown fiddler Brad Leftwich as his source the tab is based upon. I can’t reproduce the tab for that one, but I do recommend Steve’s collection linked above that includes it; here’s a couple of BHO reviews of that collection and another one in Banjo Newsletter. I’ve included my recorded attempt below as well, with warts and all.
Finally, here are two tabs that are available in the BHO Tab Library:
A note on both of my recordings: the tabs are notated for open-G tuning, but I decided to capo up to the 2nd fret to play them in A. For some reason I just liked it better that way.
Enjoy, and be sure to make time to dance all night -- with or without a bottle in your hand!
Edited by - mandobanjolibrarian on 01/21/2023 09:35:13
JanetB - Posted - 01/21/2023: 11:54:52
Great choice and historic samples, including your own discoveries learned via tabs. I liked the Highwoods String Band version offered by Carl and also remember listening to the Chieftains (here is a modern finale version of their Give the Fiddler a Dram). Because the instrumental of the Highwoods band is slightly different from the vocals, I arranged the A part twice.
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