Hamblen Collection (A Collection of Violin Tunes Popular During the Early 1800’s)

The Hamblen Collection preserves the repertoire of three generations of a fiddling family from southwest Virginia. David Russell Hamblen (1809–1893) was born near the Cumberland Gap and passed his tunes to his son Williamson (1846–1920). Williamson’s son Armeanous Porter Hamblen transcribed the family’s music and donated it to the Library of Congress in the 1950s, where it is held in the onsite collections (not available in the online catalog). The first three pieces in the series were transcribed by another family member, John Marshall Gillaspy.

The manuscript’s index lists 39 entries; the first is an introduction rather than a tune, so 38 tunes are indexed here. Some are early versions of familiar standards, others survive only in this collection, and several are untitled in the manuscript and indexed by page number.

• Some background on the collection from John Blasquez at Singingwood
• Digitized pages by Christian Wig
• Spencer and Rains, Tune Talk Episode 20: The Hamblen Collection (Video)
• Album: Old Virginia: Fiddle Tunes of David Russell Hamblen, Nikos Pappas on Bandcamp
• Further reading: A history of the Hamblen and allied families, A. P. Hamblen book available on Internet Archive, see page 200 for a picture of violins owned by Williamson Hamblen