"Cripple Creek" is an Appalachian-style old time tune and

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be c ...

, often played on the

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

, listed as number 3434 in the

Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...

. The lyrics are probably no older than the year 1900, and the tune is of unknown origin. It has become a standard among bluegrass musicians and is often one of the first songs a banjo picker learns.

Origin and context

Battle Mountain mines, Cripple Creek, Colorado, ca

Its time of composition is unknown, and according to Bob Coltman, the tune is probably older than the lyrics. The most famous Cripple Creek is

Cripple Creek, Colorado Cripple Creek is a statutory city that is the county seat of Teller County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 1,155 at the 2020 United States Census. Cripple Creek is a former gold mining camp located southwest of Colorado Sprin ...

, where a mining town was formed after gold was discovered there in 1891. However most traditional

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

musicians believe that the song refers to Cripple Creek, Virginia.

Score

Simplified version of the basic melody (A part followed by B part). << \new ChordNames \new Staff \relative c'' >>

Lyrics

The following are lyrics from a 1909 version included in the Journal of American Folklore, 1915.

Goin' to Cripple Creek, goin' ter Rome (roam), Goin' ter Cripple Creek, goin' back home. See them women layin' in the shade, Waitin' fer the money them men have made. Roll my breeches ter my knees En wade ol' Cripple Creek when I please. "(From East Tennessee; mountain whites; from memory; 1909)": Goin' to Cripple Creek, going in a run; Goin' to Cripple Creek to have my fun. "(From South Carolina; country whites, MS. of Mr. Bryan; 1909)":

: When

Cecil Sharp Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was an English-born collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was the pre-eminent activist in the development of t ...

collected folksongs in the Appalachian Mountains in 1917 he found two versions of "Cripple Creek", one from Lizzie Abner of

Oneida Oneida may refer to: Native American/First Nations * Oneida people, a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy * Oneida language * Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York * Oneida Na ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

and another from Alice Wilson of Pineville,

, a variant which begins "Buck Creek Girls, don't you want to go to

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

Recordings

The first recording was in 1924 by Sam Jones, also known as Stovepipe No. 1, a black one-man-band. The

Skillet Lickers The Skillet Lickers were an old-time band from Georgia, United States. When Gid Tanner teamed up with blind guitarist Riley Puckett and signed to Columbia in 1924, they created the label's earliest so-called "hillbilly" recording. Gid Tanner ...

recorded the song later in the same year. Luther Strong was recorded in 1937 by the Library of Congress singing the song.

Buffy Sainte-Marie Buffy Sainte-Marie, (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American (Piapot Cree Nation) singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. While working in these are ...

recorded "Cripple Creek" on her 1964 Album ''

It's My Way! ''It's My Way!'' is the first album by folk musician and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. It was released in April 1964 by Vanguard Records. It was later released in Britain in the spring of 1965 by Fontana Records. Though the album did not chart, ...

Leo Kottke Leo Kottke (born September 11, 1945) is an acoustic guitarist. He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He overcame a series of personal obstacles, including parti ...

performed a fingerpicked acoustic guitar arrangement on his 1971 long player ''

Mudlark A mudlark is someone who scavenges in river mud for items of value, a term used especially to describe those who scavenged this way in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries. The practice of searching the banks of rivers for items cont ...

''. "Uncle" Homer Walker performed the song in 1978 for ''Virginia Traditions - Non-Blues Secular Black Music'' (

Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was fou ...

) U.S. Senator

Robert Byrd Robert Carlyle Byrd (born Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr.; November 20, 1917 – June 28, 2010) was an American politician and musician who served as a United States senator from West Virginia for over 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010. A ...

recorded the song on his album ''Mountain Fiddler''.

Rising Appalachia Rising Appalachia is an American Appalachian folk music group led by multi-instrumentalist sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith. Leah also performs as a solo artist. Based between Atlanta, New Orleans, and the Asheville area of North Carolina, the ...

recorded the song on their 2015 album, ''Wider Circles''.

References

{{Authority control Appalachian culture Old-time music Appalachian folk songs