Sorry, my title was too long.
TOTW 10/24/2025 Tippy or Johnny or Gippy Get Your Hair Cut/Hey or Pretty, Betty Martin
My introduction to this tune (other than not realizing I had learned this in grade school) was with Melvin Wine in about 1974, when I was starting to learn clawhammer banjo. We got invited to the Chicago Folk Festival in the winter of 1977 and below is a recording of that performance (banjo in old G; gDGDE: fiddle, GDAD).
Melvin also solo on his first LP "Cold Frosty Morning"
https://roanerecords.bandcamp.com/album/cold-frosty-morning
From Drew Beisswenger's Thesis “Fiddling Way Out Yonder: Community and style in the Fiddle Music of Melvin Wine” (Univerisity of Memphois, 1997), he wrote that Melvin sang”
Tippy had a nickel and I had a dime
Tippy get your hair cut just like mine
https://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/TIN_TOL.htm
The tune was learned by Braxton County, West Virginia, musician Bob Wine, father of fiddler Melvin Wine, who heard mulatto fiddler Jilly Grace play it but once. According to Gerry Milnes (1999) the elder Wine “could not even bribe Grace to play the tune a second time, but he managed to learn it anyway.” Grace was a fiddler in the Burnsville area who occasionally played for horse-drawn travelling merry-go-rounds.
Back in 1990, I, along with two friends, got invited to play incidental music at the Goschenhoppen Folk Festival, a festival primarily showing how things were done in the old days.
https://goschenhoppen.org/experience-yesterday-today-at-the-folk-festival/
We decided to try and play as many local and Pennsylvania tunes as we could find. Lo and behold, in Samuel Bayard’s “Hill Country Tunes” (American Folklore Society, Philadelphia, 1944) is "Johnny Get Your Hair Cut”, one of the tunes collected from Sarah Armstrong. Here the tune played by Paul Kirk and Mike McNulty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiWDyqgJM5o
Bayard's description of the tune lead me to Carl Sandburg's “Songbag (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1927). In it was the song “Hey Betty Martin”. It's also in Ruth Crawford Seeger's “American Folksongs for Children” (Double Day and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1948) as “Johnny Get Your Hair Cut” subtitled “Hey Betty Martin”. Here's Peggy and Mike Seeger's rendition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YU6qxm1Mpg
and Alina Celeste with kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7JJEG9W2Rk.
There are other performances out there in internet space.
Bruce Molsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfqqcbYnjK0
Lonesome Stragglers
Old-time and Appalachian music group formed in Clifftop, West Virginia. Members have included Mark Rast (banjo), Patrick Pressley (guitar), and Neil Pressley (fiddle and vocals)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STC_wgCoep4&list=OLAK5uy_kSBNfFXY-v5DrAjwWlketCkAjcwbtN2Bo&index=5
Harold Hausenfluck
and
Clark Kessinger
Gippy Get Your Hair Cut
https://www.slippery-hill.com/content/gippy-get-your-hair-cut
and a Christian Wig notation
https://www.oldtimefiddletunes.net/tunes/TippyGetHaircut.pdf
This one is fun to play with the E-string on the fiddle tuned down to D.
That's a lot of history, Carl. The tune must be fairly old, maybe from England? I no longer have the Bayard book and can't look up where he traced the tune from. It sounds like the kind of thing they might sing about. It does sound like a children's folksong.
Here's an arrangement from Melvin Wine's playing. All the versions would be a fun challenge to arrange!
Edited by - JanetB on 10/24/2025 17:16:00
Hi Janet,
Wonderful tab. Any chance of putting some chords so I can add guitar to this neat piece of music....muchas.....Jack
Originally posted by JanetBThat's a lot of history, Carl. The tune must be fairly old, maybe from England? I no longer have the Bayard book and can't look up where he traced the tune from. It sounds like the kind of thing they might sing about. It does sound like a children's folksong.
Here's an arrangement from Melvin Wine's playing. All the versions would be a fun challenge to arrange!
Jack, here's tab with chords. I checked the chords using Garage Band with my recording and added cello banjo accompaniment. Some of the chord changes occur quickly, but I hope this helps you.
Thanks for the Bayard page, Don. "Granny Does Your Dog Bite" certainly comes to mind with the melody and meter. If the song was popular in Pennsylvania, it's not surprising that Carl knew of it as a child. I wonder which lyrics you might remember, Carl.
I was able to get a free download of Carl Sandburg's American Songbag. Here's page 158 that gives early American background on "Hey Betty Martin". Notice that "Tippy Get Your Hair Cut" rhymes with the lyrics below -- "Chippy Get Your Hair Cut", referring to bobbed women's haircuts, probably rare at the time. So far I'm concluding that this family of tunes may very well be American. The mulatto female fiddler, Jilly Grace, who played for Melvin Wine's father may have learned it when there was still slavery and perhaps it came from that background.
Edited by - JanetB on 10/25/2025 14:35:38
