This week’s tune is from Ivan Weddle of Floyd, Virginia. He was the Old-Time fiddler who played at Mabry Mill along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Every Sunday afternoon in season, the flatfoot dancers came mostly from the local area to dance to the music of Ivan’s string band known as the Korn Kutters. I got to play banjo with the band several times.
Ivan was in retirement when I met him in 1978. He lived on the edge of town with his wife, Halley. Shay Garriock and I visited there several times in the late 1980’s and recorded this and other tunes. This tune is one of those Blue Ridge standards with the same one part played high and low on fiddle in cross D tuning. It’s a fine one part banjo tune as well.
Ivan’s fiddle style was very danceable: rhythmic and simple, using lots of shuffles. The dancers back in the 1980’s loved it.
He called this tune Going Across the Mountain With a Banjo on My Knee. Other local musicians called it simply ‘Saro’.
Addendum:
Recently I was trying to figure out why two tunes in the repertoire of the Kimble Family have the same name and figured out that the following tune is a version of Ivan Weddle’s tune called Going Across the Mountain with a Banjo on my Knee. It takes a bit of careful listening and comparison to tell that they are related as the Kimbles make their version a rather detailed tune. Their version may be much older. Ivan’s version is simply a tune for flatfooting.
Although they are similar, I treat them as two different tunes. I mentioned earlier the alternate name to Ivan’s version was Saro.
This tune by the Kimbles is to be known from now on as Karo in the Cabbage Patch.
Reply from Andy Buckman
Yep, same tune for sure Mac. Good ear!
But I wonder how Saro got made over into Karo? Makes me think of Karo syrup, and the bottles or tins of “golden syrup” that used to be common on country folks’ kitchen tables…..
Andy