Preview Black Mountain Rag – Intermediate+:
About Black Mountain Rag – Intermediate+:
Black Mountain Rag according to Traditional Tune Archive
“One of the most popular fiddle tunes in modern history…” (C. Wolfe). The piece became popular in the late 1930’s. It was claimed by fiddler Leslie Keith (who is featured on the very first recordings of the Stanley Brothers), who said he wrote it in the early 1940’s after taking “a little bit of” the west Alabama group The Stripling Brothers recording ‘The Lost Child’, and ” a little of two or three of the Carter Family’s tunes.” He named it “Black Mountain Blues” after the name of a mountain in Cumberland County, Tenn., however, “Lost Child (The)” is the basic melody for the tune, although some credit “Lost Indian (1) (The)” as the ancestral tune. Curly Fox changed the name from “Black Mountain Blues” to “Black Mountain Rag” on his 1947 recording for King, which eventually sold over 600,000 copies (Charles Wolfe, The Devil’s Box, Dec. 1982, pp. 3-12). In 1952 the Stripling Brothers were recorded in the field by Ray Browne, on a collecting trip for the Library of Congress, and although they had never recorded “Black Mountain Rag” commercially, Browne did record them playing it that day.
