Devil Eat the Groundhog

Old-time breakdown in G major from the repertoire of eastern Kentucky fiddler Owen “Snake” Chapman (1919-2002) of Chapman’s Hollow near Canada, Pike County, who learned it from his father, George “Doc” Chapman, born around 1850. Jeff Titon’s Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes carries Chapman’s account of the title: a hunter left his skinned game in the same room as his dog, came back to find the dog had eaten it, and cursed the animal in a couplet ending with the devil eating the groundhog. The A part sits low on the G and D strings and the B part answers an octave above it, which is why some players move the whole tune to D by shifting it over one string. Chapman recorded it on Fiddle Ditty (June Appal JA0061), cut in January 1990 at the Appalshop studio in Whitesburg, and again on Up in Chapman’s Hollow (Rounder CD 0378, 1996). His frequent accompanist Paul David Smith used it as the title of his own Rounder CD 0409, Devil Eat the Groundhog, and the Hoover Uprights recorded it on Known for their Reputation (5 String Productions 5SP05002, 2005). It appears in print in Phillips’s Traditional American Fiddle Tunes vol. 1 (1994) and Titon’s collection, and in a transcription John Hartford made from Chapman’s playing for the Devil’s Box, Summer 1994.