After 23 years of playing bluegrass, I figured there were few things left about the music that could truly surprise me. But finding out “Angeline the Baker,” one of my favorite fiddle tunes, was originally written about a slave separated from her lover at a slave auction? I can’t say it’s exactly unexpected given that bluegrass was largely built on Black culture, but it sure made me think twice about playing it.
Stories like these aren’t always known to the players at festivals and in jam circles. Luckily, Tristan Scroggins is changing that by putting down popular fiddle tunes, normally passed down between players in person, on paper. His new book of sheet music and mandolin tablature Bluegrass Jam Standard Fiddle Tune Favorites includes 10 songs commonly played in jam circles to make it easier for players of all skill levels to learn. Each song includes three increasingly complex versions of the tune and a bit of history, as well as notes from Scroggins about his personal connection to each.
Scroggins, an International Bluegrass Music Association Award-winning mandolin player recently elected to the IBMA Board of Directors, says when he began teaching music he was surprised at how many tunes he only knew certain versions of, instead of the core melody itself. Scroggins grew up in Colorado and learned many songs by playing in jam circles. He picked up the idiosyncrasies and versions specific to the region and people.
“The only way to learn this music was to have somebody teach it to you,” Scroggins says of bluegrass tradition. “Up until recently, you could draw direct lines from one person to who taught them [back] to who taught them — that goes back to original source material. … After the explosion of popularity [of bluegrass] in the ’70s, you started to have people who were learning the music by going to jams and weren't seeing these first-generation people.”
Scroggins, who recently helped archive and record John Hartford’s original fiddle tunes, says he wanted to make the music more accessible to more people. He also wanted to focus on the original melodies, or as close to them as he could get. Scroggins says since he’s published his book, he’s heard from a bluegrass fan that the original “Angeline the Baker” tune is a bit different — but he says the history is murky. The original was written by Stephen Foster, a minstrel and Civil War-era songwriter who often included racist stereotypes. Several statues of Foster have been taken down recently.
Scroggins says he’s stopped playing other tunes altogether because of their history, though he notes this song is now in public domain. It’s also one of the most popular fiddle tunes of all time. Still, it’s important to take cues about playing these tunes from marginalized communities — and at the least, Scroggins says we should acknowledge its origin. Other tunes written as minstrel songs may be just as concerning, but aren’t uncommon in the bluegrass lexicon. He points out that “Turkey in the Straw” is such a tune with a surprising modern use.
“It’s insidious, and part of the nature of our society — that this thing that has horrible roots sort of lives benignly in our existence as ‘the ice cream truck song,’ ” Scroggins says.
The tunes and their history aren’t easy to untangle. In his new book, Scroggins does an excellent job of making several of them easy to learn, while placing them in historical context that’s been easy to miss.
