Hard Times - Shape-shifting Tune

[Ian Bell]

I've been working up "Hard Times" out of the Briggs Book. It's a good tune with a lot of triplets and a B part that ends on a repeated five chord. 

 

What I find most interesting is that it also turns up in at least four other tutors, and while it remains recognizable is quite different in each one.

 

Buckley's 1860 - Simplified A part and B part that consists only of the last bar of the Briggs' version repeated 8 times!  Attributed to G.S. Buckley

 

Converse Green Book 1865 - Simplified  A part (not as simple as Buckley's) B part follows same general contours of Briggs but doesn't hang around on the five chord at the end.

 

Dobson's 1877 - Starts off with something that is recognizably "Hard Times" but quickly stretches it into a fairly crazed set of variations. Attributed to Mr. Dobson.

 

Eclipse 1905(?) - Retains very little of the Briggs tune except a bit of the chord structure and one of the characteristic triplet riffs in the B part. That said, you can still tell it's related.

 

(Music for most of these can be found at the Banjo Clubhouse)

 

So...

 

How did this tune get so bent out of shape between 1855 and 1865? We all know lots of these tunes that are very similar in whatever book they may turn up in.  Tom Brigg's Jig is essentially the same in a Scottish fiddle book of the 1880s as it is in Dan Emmett's Manuscript.

 

I wonder if this is a really early banjo tune that was already ensconced  in the folk tradition before the Briggs, Buckleys, and Converses of the world got hold of it - and that they learned different versions of it out of their respective musical environmentsn - as opposed to learning it from each other.

 

This tune doesn't appear in any of my other tune books of the period - only the banjo books.

 

Does anyone know the origins of this tune?

 

 

[John Masciale]

Ian, I'm not sure about the origin.  However, looking at the Olio portion of minstrel shows, it is perhaps the single most popular solo piece (Inside the Minstrel Mask, p144 - Bob Winans was the author of this chapter). 

[Ian Bell]

John - That's interesting - one of the reasons I started learning it in the first place was because it's mentioned in playbills for performances in Ontario - always as a banjo solo. 

John Masciale said:

Ian, I'm not sure about the origin.  However, looking at the Olio portion of minstrel shows, it is perhaps the single most popular solo piece (Inside the Minstrel Mask, p144 - Bob Winans was the author of this chapter). 

[Tim Twiss]

I have nothing to base this on, but I bet we could find the source tune if we looked hard enough. The triplets may be masking the original melody.