Arkansas Traveler

A legendary American fiddle tune and accompanying story that emerged around 1840, popularized by Colonel Sandford C. Faulkner (1803-1874) of Arkansas. The tune tells the famous tale of a lost traveler who encounters a squatter at a leaky cabin, leading to a humorous dialogue about mending the roof. The traveler ultimately wins the squatter’s hospitality by playing the second half or “turn” of the fiddle tune. The tune’s composition is unattributed: the 1847 Cincinnati sheet music (“The Arkansas Traveller and Rackinsac Waltz,” arranged by William Cumming) names no composer. Joseph Tosso (1802–1887), a Cincinnati concert violinist famous for performing the piece from at least the early 1850s, claimed and was widely credited with authorship in the Cincinnati press over the roughly sixty years he lived in the city, but the tune may well predate him in the folk/minstrel tradition. Faulkner and Mose Case, a guitarist who performed the piece in the mid 1800s, were also credited by contemporaries.

The story became a cornerstone of American folk culture, performed in minstrel shows, vaudeville, and even appearing in the 1932 Laurel and Hardy film “The Music Box,” where Stan and Ollie perform a memorable dance to the tune. The 1922 version by native-Arkansan “Eck” Robertson was among the first fifty recordings named to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Over the years, the “Arkansas Traveler” has become one of the most recorded tunes in American history, with versions ranging from classical symphonic arrangements by the Boston Pops Orchestra to bluegrass standards.

The tune served as Arkansas’s de facto state song from 1949 to 1963, though no evidence exists of official legislative adoption during this period. It was designated as the official state historic song in 1987.