Hobarts Transformation (fiddle tune)

Subject: Hobarts Transformation
From: Pinetop Slim
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 10:03 AM

Anyone know anything about the origins of the fiddle tune "Hobart's Transformation." I'm curious about who Hobart was and whether his transformation was something personal or applies to something musical within the tune. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Hobarts Transformation
From: GUEST,pdq
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 10:58 AM

Hobart Smith is a possibility, although that is a guess. He played banjo and fiddle. At one time, Folk Legacy had a record by Smith.

Subject: RE: Hobarts Transformation
From: Sorcha
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 10:58 AM

From Fiddler's Companion..........
"HOBART'S TRANSFORMATION. AKA - "Feldman's Haircut"?? Old-Time, Breakdown. USA. A Mixolydian. Standard. AABB. A hybrid tune, the first part of which is melodic material from the tune usually known as "Salt River" (recorded by Hobart Smith as part of the "Pateroller Song") while the second part is the coarse part of Henry Reed's "Kitchen Girl." Source for notated version: "Dennis Tang, who assembled it" [Spandaro]. Brody (Fiddler's Fakebook), 1983; pg. 136. Spandaro (10 Cents a Dance), 1980; pg. 49. Front Hall 010, Fennigs All Stars- "The Hammered Dulcimer Strikes Again."

Isn't it a neat tune?

Subject: RE: Hobarts Transformation
From: masato sakurai
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 11:17 AM

"Pateroller Song" (Mr. Hobart Smith) is on Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians [with sound clip]. "Kitchen Girl" [recording & transcription] by Henry Reed is at Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection (Library of Congress).

Subject: RE: Hobarts Transformation
From: masato sakurai
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 11:46 AM

Henry Reed also played "Salt River."

NOTES
"Salt River" probably refers to the river of that name in Kentucky. Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys recorded this fiddle tune in 1964 under the title "Salt Creek" (Decca 31596), modifying the original name in honor of the creek in Indiana near where Monroe held his annual Bean Blossom Festival. Monroe's banjoist, Bill Keith, apparently got the tune originally from West Virginia banjoist Don Stover. The Monroe recording has given the tune a new lease on life on the bluegrass circuit.

Henry Reed's set is melodically fairly simple, suggesting the possibility that the tune was usually played as a banjo tune. He begins on the high strain, as does Hobart Smith of Saltville, Virginia, in a 1956 recording called "The Pateroller Song" (on Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, Tradition TLP 1007) that sounds similar. The tune's distribution seems to have been limited to Virginia and West Virginia before its bluegrass diffusion in the later decades of the twentieth century.

See additional discussion and citations under "Muddy Roads" in The Hammons Family (Library of Congress, AFS L65-66). As a tune, "Salt River" is a scion of the large family of tunes best represented by the Irish and American reel "Paddy on the Turnpike" (see Bayard, Hill Country Tunes, #31 for comparative references).

Subject: RE: Hobarts Transformation
From: Pinetop Slim
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 06:02 PM

Thanks for all the background, sound clips, etc. Yeah, it really is a neat tune.