"Sandy River Belle", also known as "Tugboat and Pineywoods", "Stony Ridge Stomp" and "Sandy River Belles" is an old-time breakdown in G Major (Brody, Kaufman, Krassen, Phillips, Songer, Spadaro) or A Major. The parts are played AABB (most versions) or AA'BB' (Phillips).
Two theories about the name are:
1) that it's about a river boat called "Sandy River Belle" and
2) that it's about debutantes in the region of the Sandy River.
The Big Sandy River marks the border between West Virginia and Kentucky and then flows into the Ohio. Krassen (1973) states that this is "a fairly common tune in the Galax area". Ken Perlman (1979) states the tune comes from the region around the small Blue Ridge foothills town of Meadows of Dan, Patrick County, Virginia.
It was originally recorded for Victor Records in Bristol, Tennessee, by Ralph Peer from the playing of the Blue Ridge group Dad Blackard's Moonshiners in August, 1927.
I play the B part two ways on the banjo. In B1 the melody is played with hammer-ons and pull-offs with the thumb playing mainly the fifth string. In B2, everything is played on the two highest strings with the thumb playing mainly the B string and only occasionally playing the fifth string.
It was printed in Brody's Fiddler’s Fakebook (1983), Kaufman's Beginning Old Time Fiddle (1977), Krassen's Appalachian Fiddle (1973) (Krassen's version has the A and B parts reversed from Brody's version), Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1 (1994), Silberberg's Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern (2002), Songer's Portland Collection (1997) and Spadaro's 10 Cents a Dance (1980).
It was recorded by John Burke and the Yankee Carpetbaggers on Old Fashioned Dance Music (1968), Buddy Pendleton on Virginia Breakdown, Sharon Shannon on The Best of Sharon Shannon: Spellbound (1999), Sarah Grey and Ed Trickett on Sarah Grey with Ed Trickett (1970), Fennigs All-Star String Band on The Hammered Dulcimer (1973), Kretzner and Leibovitz on Pigtown Fling (1979), The Shelor Family and The Kimble Family on Eight Miles Apart: Old Time Music from Patrick and Carroll County, Virginia (1979), Hollow Rock String Band on Hollow Rock String Band (1974), Doc Williams on Old Originals, Vol. 1 (1978), Bert Edwards on Bert's Bombaree (1988), Dad Blackard's Moonshiners (78 RPM) (1927) and American Cafe Orchestra on Egyptian Dominoes (1992).