The Big Mule

A traditional Old Time breakdown in D major documented from western Kentucky fiddler Jake Phelps (1885–1977) of Todd County, recorded by Bruce Greene in 1973 and transcribed in Jeff Titon’s Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes. The melody is notably asymmetrical, with a crooked B part, and belongs to a tune family that Titon identifies as including “Old Dubuque,” “Duck River,” and “Five Miles from Town”; the broader family has been linked speculatively to an 1840s minstrel tune called “Coonie in the Holler.” The tune also appears in the repertoire of Kentucky fiddler Street Butler, who attributed it to a man named Charley Latham.