[Alabama Girls Give the Fiddler a Dram] [music transcription] - Ragtime music

Meter: 4/4
Rendition: 1r-2r-1r-2r
Transcribed by Alan Jabbour, from a performance by Henry Reed.
Key: G
Strains: 2 (low-high, 4-4)
Compass: 10
Title change: The title appears on the transcription as "Unnamed" ["Ebenezer"].
Phrase Structure: ABCD QQRD (aabc ddef qrqr ssef)
Related Tune(s): Climbing up the Golden Stairs
Handwritten: Played thru twice; first time transcribed. Note occ. slightly raised 4th degree.
Henry Reed did not name this tune when he first played it, and the second time (AFS 13037a22) he called it "Alabama Girls Give the Fiddler a Dram." The tune is not widespread, but it has some distribution in Virginia and West Virginia. See for example the hillbilly record by Blue Ridge fiddler Kahle Brewer entitled "West Virginia Highway" (Victor 20237), and the set entitled "Ebenezer" played by West Virginian W. Franklin George on 31st Annual Old Fiddlers Convention, Galax, Virginia (Justice JLP 1002, 1966). The tune has the feel of a country rag; note in the first strain the implied shift from tonic to dominant at the end of the second phrase, then back to tonic at the end of the fourth phrase. It shares some melodic elements with the late nineteenth-century popular tune "Climbing up the Golden Stairs."