Sourwood Mountain

Song and tune have been collected all over the South, especially from banjo players, and were long used for play parties. Where it began is unknown. One Russell County, Virginia, family credits a Confederate veteran and fiddler, William "Blue Bill" Combs (1840 to 1924), and North Carolina fiddler Bill Hensley credited a Virginia fiddler he called Blind Wiley Laws. Neither claim can be checked.

Cecil Sharp noted it from Will Biggers in Rome, Georgia, in 1913, with the nonsense refrain that every singer uses. Around 1880 a writer on a fishing trip on West Virginia's Elk River heard the fiddler Old Sol Nelson play it.