Rye Straw

Rye Straw is a traditional Old Time breakdown, most often played in D but moving between D and A tonal centers, so the key can be hard to pin down. The title is a shortened, cleaned-up form of a longer one that fiddlers would not say in front of company, referring to a set of crude comic verses about a dog and its digestion. The many alternate titles are all polite substitutes, either a fragment of the original or a coy nod to the dog’s predicament. Most versions have three parts, the third being the first part played up the octave. The melody appeared in print in the nineteenth century in George H. Coes’ Album of Music under the title “A Whoop from Arkansas.” Alan Jabbour recorded Henry Reed playing it at the Reed family home in Glen Lyn, Giles County, Virginia in May 1967, a version now held at the Library of Congress, and Gray Craig with Kinney and Doug Rorer recorded it as “Run Boy Run!” on North Carolina Boys (Leader LEA 4040).Notes on alternate titles and sources:“Acrobat” from Morris, Old Time Violin Melodies, #28; “Preacher’s Favorite” and “Ladies Fancy” from Thede, The Fiddle Book, p. 98; “The Joke on the Puppet” from AFS 3047b3, Stephen B. Tucker of Meridian, Mississippi, which Alan Jabbour flags as probably a mishearing of “Puppy”; “Alabama Waltz” from AFS 3044a2, Charles Long near Quitman, Mississippi, with Sam Neal beating straws; “Unfortunate Puppy” from AFS 2634a2, Elmo Newcomer, Bandera County, Texas; “The Dog in Difficulty” is Henry Reed’s alternate title.