Mississippi Snagboat

Traditional Old Time reel in D major, AABB, from the repertoire of Kansas fiddler Bertsel “Bert” Payne (born 1873). The source is a set of home recordings made in the early 1960s in Hill City, Kansas, capturing Payne on fiddle with his daughter on piano; those tapes reached Tricia Spencer and Howard Rains through J.F. Stover. Spencer has noted the tune’s resemblance to John Salyer’s “Rose in the Mountain.” Spencer & Rains recorded it on The Spotted Pony: And Other Tunes From the Midwest Corridor (Old Time Tiki Parlour, 2016), and Howard and Isaiah Rains have also played it as a twin-fiddle piece. A snagboat was a purpose-built river vessel that hauled sunken timber out of navigation channels on the Mississippi and Ohio.