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Band 1, Item 3
Catfish
Joe Patterson, vocal and panpipe.
Recorded 1965 in Ashford, Ala., by Ralph Rinzler.
The text of "Catfish" is part of a large repertoire of animal songs of which
phrases, lines, and stanzas move freely from
song to song. It can be found in association with stanzas like the following:
As I come down the new-cut road,
I met Mister Bullfrog and Miss Toad,
And every time Miss Toad would sing,
Old Mister Bullfrog cut a pigeonwing.
(Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, II, p. 354)
Such songs seem like condensed references to the allegorical figures of the
Br'er Rabbit stories, many of which have direct
African forebears.
The panpipe (syrinx) is one of the world's oldest and most widespread
instruments (NW 80252-2 Roots of the Blues) and is
still played in Rumania, Peru, and elsewhere. Joe Patterson learned to play the
panpipe as a child from his father, who
often played panpipe duets with Joe's uncle. In 1965, when he was sixtyeight,
Joe Patterson was the only performer in this
country known to play a ten-note panpipe. His repertoire consisted primarily of
dance tunes (of which "Catfish" is an
example), songs, and "whooping pieces" (NW 223, I'm on My Journey Home: Vocal
Styles and Resources in Folk Music, Side One,
Band 1) in which he alternated playing notes with singing falsetto or "whooped"
notes. The whoops were sung to fill in
gaps in the limited scale of the home-made instrument. Patterson also picked up
a few melodies from the calliope of a
traveling circus. He sometimes accompanied his music with a home-made tambourine
of tincan tops nailed onto a crude
wood paddle.
At one time the panpipe—often known as "quills" in the South—was quite common in
the United States, in both its
double (ten-tone) and single (fivetone) forms. Bluegrass musician Bill Monroe
(NW 225, Hills and Home, and NW 287,
Country Music South and West), who played a four-note set as a child, has said
that when he was growing up in western
Kentucky, children made quills and tuned them with a mixture of sand and pitch.
He also heard them played by adult
roustabouts with traveling tent shows.
Catfish, catfish, swim up the stream.
I ask that catfish, "What do you mean?"
Grabbed that catfish by the snout.
He just kept a-wigglin' his tail about.
I love sweet watermelon, (3 times)
Just as sweet as it can be.
Ring Games and Jump-Rope
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