I Got a Gal at the Head of the Holler
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-09-28

Day 194 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Earliest Date Collected or Published:1913 (collected by Olive Dame Campbell); and 1909 (Journal of American Folk-Lore #22). The Baptist church disapproved of dancing, but allowed playparties (dances with sung tunes instead of instrumental music)

Sandburg writes: "This arrangement of Sourwood Mountain is based chiefly on one from Mary Leaphart. Company square dances, hoedowns, shindigs, or individual clogs and shuffles, work out to this tune. A yodel in steady staccato, a piece of mountain born pleasantry and jubilation, it is out of the human cloth from which Tom Jefferson wrote, "All men are free and equal", and should not be interfered with “in the pursuit of happiness." Those who make a song like this don’t care a hoot whether it is called good music. Their answer to any criticism might be,"Ho-dee-ink-tum-diddle- ah-de-day." . . . This Kentucky version may trace to North Carolina mountains where R. W. Gordon heard a verse as follows: 

I have a lover in Sourwood,
She's gone cripply and blind,
She broke the heart of many a poor feller
But she ain't broke this'n of mine. "