Miller Boy

A traditional Old Time breakdown in D often played in DDAD tuning, this tune is documented primarily from the playing of Earl Collins (1911–1975), a Missouri Ozarks-born fiddler whose family settled in Oklahoma in 1917. It is played at a walking or march tempo and is melodically similar to Bonaparte’s Retreat, which itself derives from an ancient Irish march tune. The tune carries a well-known set of song lyrics: “Happy is the miller boy that lives by the mill / The wheel goes around of its own free will / One hand in the hopper and the other in the sack / The ladies step forward and the gents step back” — a verse associated with a traditional square dance call. The primary documented recording was captured by Tom Sauber in 1974 from Earl Collins’s playing. Collins also recorded the tune on That’s Earl: Collins Family Fiddling (Briar LP BR 4204), released in 1975.

Earl Collins (1911–1975) was born in Douglass County in the Missouri Ozarks; his family moved to Oklahoma in 1917, eventually settling in Shawnee County. He played fiddle at square dances during the Depression years to supplement his family’s sharecropping income, then set the instrument aside in 1949 and did not play again until 1965, when his sons persuaded him to return to it. His LP That’s Earl became a source of musical inspiration to later generations of old-time musicians, including fiddler Bob Holt; it was released in 1975, the year Collins died.