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Bear Creek Hop/Alabama Gal/ Alabama Gal Give the Fiddler A Dram/Alabama Gals/Give the Fiddler A Dram/Dance all Night
Traditional Old-Time; Breakdown, Song. North Ga., central Ala.
ARTIST: Bear Creek Hop- Texas Tophands
Listen: Bear Creek Hop- Texas Tophands
Lyrics: Alabama Gal from J.E. Mainer from The Legendary J.E. Mainer Vol. 8; For other lyric versions
MP3: Listen Alabama Gal by J. E. Mainer
MP3: Listen To: Tanner/Puckett "Alabama Gal Give The Fiddler A Dram"
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes.
DATE: Buffalo Gals Dates To Mid-1800’s. Used in the 1850’s at minstrel shows.
OTHER NAMES: (The “Buffalo” name can be changed to any city’s name, and was used as New York Gals etc.)"Round-Town Girls/Gals," “Buffalo Girls/Gals,” “Portsmouth Airs”;
RELATED MELODY: “Bear Creek Hop” "Dance All Night With a Bottle In Your Hand" "Give The Fiddler A Dram" "Alabama Gal/Gals"
RECORDING INFO: Alabama Gal
Seeger, Pete;, Mike Seeger, and Larry Eisenberg. American Playparties, Folkways FC 7604, LP (1959), trk# A.04
Alabama Gal 2
Rt - Dance All Night [with a Bottle in my Hand]
Hall, Kenny. Gray, Vykki M,; and Kenny Hall / Kenny Hall's Music Book, Mel Bay, Sof (1999), p 57
Alabama Gals [Me IV-D 3]
Us - Buffalo Gals/Gal
Alabama Girl
Kraus, Richard / Square Dances of Today, Barnes, Bk (1950), p107
Alabama Girl [Ain't You Comin' Out Tonight] [Me IV-D 3]
Us - Buffalo Gals/Gal
RECORDING INFO Buffalo Gals: Seeger, Pete;, Mike Seeger, and Larry Eisenberg. American Playparties/Play Parties, Folkways FC 7604, LP (1959), cut#A.04; Stoneking, Lee R.. Missouri Old Time Fiddling, Stoneking, LP (197?), cut#A.04 (Alabama Gals); Warren, Paul. Devil's Box, Devil's Box DB, Ser (196?), 12/1, p55 (Alabama Gals)
SOURCES: Lyrics from "Folk Song USA" John and Alan Lomax. Woodring and Neithammer (Pa.) [Kuntz]. Kuntz (Ragged but Right), 1987; pg. 323. Marimac Cassette, "Tuesday Nite Live." Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc.
NOTES: As far as I know Bear Creek Hop (Listen: Bear Creek Hop- Texas Tophands)
is strictly an instrumental version of the melody known under various titles as Alabama Gal/Give the Fiddler A Dram/Dance All Night With A Bottle in Your Hand. The melody originated from the famous, "Buffalo Gals."
Alabam Gal (G Major; Irregular verses) was aken from J.E. Mainer from The Legendary J.E. Mainer Vol. 8. The lyrics (below) easily scan to Bear Creek Hop.
TEXAS TOP HANDS by J. E. Jordan, Handbook of Texas Online:
The Texas Top Hands, one of the state's oldest continuously performing western-swing bands, debuted in 1945 with Clarence J. "Sleepy" Short on fiddle, George Edwin "Knee-High" Holley on string bass, Walter Kleypas on piano and accordion, and William Wayne "Rusty" Locke on steel guitar. Manager Johnny H. "Curly" Williams played acoustic guitar. The Top Hands had an early-morning spot on WOAI radio, which was at that time a 50,000-watt clear-channel station in San Antonio.
The group had performed since 1941 under the name Texas Tumbleweeds. Then Bob Symonds, the former manager of the Tumbleweeds, came home from a stint with the Marines in World War II. When he filed a lawsuit to reclaim his band name, the group changed its name over a weekend, appearing under the old name on Friday and showing up Monday morning as the Texas Top Hands, the name that they still retain.
They traveled to New York in 1946 to record for Savoy and to back singer–songwriter "Red River" Dave McEnery on his Continental recording sessions. With McEnery, the Top Hands made several film shorts in 1947. That year they also co-starred in a ground-breaking movie filmed near San Antonio. The film, Echo Ranch, departed from the usual Hollywood westerns of the day in that it used no artificial scenery but was shot in natural outdoor settings. San Antonians made up the entire cast. Longtime Top Hands manager Ray Sczepanik owns a copy of the film.
In 1949 the Top Hands began recording on their own label, Everstate, on which they subsequently produced more than fifty recordings. The first—"Bandera Waltz" by O. B. "Easy" Adams—became a regional smash and remains a dance hall classic. The lament rode for fifty-two weeks at the top of the Hillbilly Hit Parade on KMAC. Slim Whitman, Ernest Tubb, Rex Allen, Jimmy Wakely, Adolph Hofner, David Houston, and nine other performers have recorded the song.
Tired of seven-night-a-week performing, with the Top Hands and with a band of his own, Kleypas left the band in 1952. Rusty Locke then managed the band until 1955, when he formed his own group. That left Easy Adams as leader until 1979, when he suffered a heart attack. Ray Sczepanik replaced him and still led the band in 2009. Locke later rejoined and played with the group for several years.
The Top Hands backed Hank Williams at his last Texas concert, on December 22, 1952, at the Macdona Shooting Club, near San Antonio; Williams died a few days later. The Top Hands have opened for or backed other well-known singers such as Webb Pierce, Tex Ritterqv, Moe Bandy, Johnny Rodriguez, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Morgan, Jacky Ward, and Mel Tillis. During the early 1950s, while the band played over radio station KABC, Gene Autry, William Boyd (known as Hopalong Cassidy), Wild Bill Elliot, Chill Wills, and other movie stars appeared with the band.
The Top Hands became known throughout Texas for their many appearances at local festivals and rodeos. They were the only band to perform at the first Poteet Strawberry Festival in 1948. On April 1, 1997, Locke, age seventy-seven, returned to the festival, where he sang "Milk Cow Blues" and "Westphalia Waltz." Other appearances include the State Fair of Texas in Dallas (1955), where the show was broadcast live. Again, the Top Hands were the only band to perform. They also appeared at the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show in Fort Worth, the Central Texas Fair in Temple, the Stompede and Rodeo in Bandera, Buccaneer Days in Corpus Christi; the Oil Show in Odessa, the Wool Show and Rodeo in San Angelo, the Stockman's Ball in Laredo, the Peanut Festival in Floresville, the Watermelon Jubilee in Stockdale, the Horse Show and Fair in Junction, the rodeo in El Paso, and the Pecos Rodeo (where they were a regular act from 1950 to 1976). In their heyday they performed twenty-five to thirty evenings a month. Among notable Texans in their audiences, they entertained Allan Shivers, Beauford Jester, Bill Clements, and John Connally. Their road trip in early 1949 promoted the first San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, at which they also performed. The band returned for the show's thirty-fifth anniversary under the direction of Ray Sczepanik. In 1955 the Top Hands were selected to represent the Lone Star Brewery.
The Texas Top Hands were inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame on May 9, 1992, in Austin. Former members of the band include Johnny Bush (drummer), Charlie Harris (guitarist), and Buck Buchanan (fiddler), all of whom later became members of Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboy Band. Other band members have included Charlie Shaw (drummer), Leon Merritt (vocalist and rhythm guitarist), Bill Schlotter and Pete Frazier (pedal steel guitarists), and Larry Nolen. The band had several releases on the Melco label in the mid-1960s and three for TNT in the early 1960s. In early 2003, Kleypas and Locke were the only two surviving members of the original band. Kleypas lived at Canyon Lake with his wife, Lucille, with whom he had celebrated more than sixty wedding anniversaries. Lucille is credited with naming the Top Hands. (A "top hand" is the best worker on a ranch.) Locke lived with his wife, Cora, in Kirby, a suburb of San Antonio, where he owned and operated a television repair shop. Both Kleypas and Locke still made occasional guest appearances.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Billboard Encyclopedia of Music 1946–1947 (Cincinnati: Billboard, 1947). Paul Kingsbury, ed., The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Duncan McLean, Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (New York: Norton, 1997). "Texas Top Hands"
Notes on Alabama Gal: The first recorded version of "Alabama Gal" is the rollicking fiddle tune featuring the high falsetto lyrics and fast fiddling by Gid Tanner with Riley Puckett backing him up on the guitar. This version, recorded March 8, 1924 for Columbia in NYC shows the link between "Dance All Night With A Bottle in Your Hand" also known as "Give the Fiddler A Dram" and "Alabama Gals," a version of "Buffalo Gals."
One frequent name for “Buffalo Gals” in the south is Alabama Gals when played as a fiddle tune for dances. "G Major. Standard. AABB. This popular melody was in the repertoire of Fiddlin John Carson (north Ga., 1922) under this title. It was predicted (in the Chilton County {Ala.} News of June 1st, 1922) to "vie with the latest jazz nerve wreckers for first place" at a Chilton County convention (Cauthen, 1990). African-American fiddler Joe Thompson played this tune in GDGD tuning." Lyrics begin:
Alabama gals, won’t ya come out tonight,
Woncha come out tonight, won’t ya come out tonight?
Alabama gals, won’t ya come out tonight,
And dance by the light of the moon?
"Dance All Night With a Bottle in Your Hand" is usually in G Major. Standard. AABB (Brody, Christeson, Phillips) or AABAACCB (Kuntz, Brody). Guthrie Meade thinks the tune has some relation to "Buffalo Gals." Rosenbaum (1989) points out that the recording by Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers for Columbia was very influential, especially in Georgia (in fact, the melody is known as a north Georgia tune). His source, Georgian Lawrence Eller, learned the tune/song from family tradition and Rosenberg concludes (apparently on the strength of the floating verse about hanging Jefferson Davis) from this that the lyrics bespeak Unionist loyalties in parts of the southern Appalachians." Typical lyrics begin:
Dance all night with a bottle in your hand,
Bottle in your hand, with a bottle in your hand,
Dance all night with a bottle in your hand,
Put out the lights, give the fiddler a dram.
A fiddle tune under the title "Alabama Girls Give the Fiddler a Dram" was recorded by fiddler Henry Reed by Alan Jabbour in August 27, 1966 at Reed family home, Glen Lyn, Virginia (Giles County).
Reed's tune which resembles "West Virginia Highway" and "Ebenezer" is different than Gid Tanner's. Listen to Henry Reed; Here are some notes:
Notes: 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."
Alabama Gal- J. E. Mainer
[Fiddle]
Got a little a gal, got a wart on her chin,
*Wart on her chin;
Darned nice gal for the shape she's in
And I tell her to be comin' out tonight.
[Fiddle]
Got a little a gal got freckles on her face
Freckles on her face, freckles on her face
Ask where she got 'em from, she got em every place
And I tell her just to come out tonight.
[Fiddle]
Alabama Gal ain't you comin' out tonight,
*Comin' out tonight,
Alabama Gal ain't you comin' out tonight,
And dance by the light of the moon.
[Fiddle]
*Irregular- This line may be repeated as in the second verse
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