Grapevine Twist - Cripple Creek

[Ian Bell]

For your consideration:

Is Cripple Creek a distant descendent of Grapevine Twist?

I was playing the GT and CC kept popping into my head.

It's a stretch.

[Greg Adams]

Ha! I never thought about it before. I agree that it is a stretch, but it's good to ask the question. Thinking about both tunes played on an early banjo, I can see why you'd think that. They are both within the same melodic range and share harmonic similarities--with the burst of the high D in the A part and the noodling around the I-V (with a little bit of IV at the cadence in Grapevine Twist) in the B part. Yet, as you suggest, I wouldn't necessarily call it a distant descendent of Grapevine Twist. While we can identify similarities from a structural perspective, it would take a lot of research in order for any of us to call it a descendent. To do that, we'd need to be able to effectively contextualize it historically with evidence of its transmission.

[Rob Morrison]

Ian-
The second parts to each tune have a lot of the same notes in roughly the same order and similar rhythms. With a bit of improvisation I could see one morphing into the other.