Hamilton Iron Works
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Hamilton Iron Works", also known as "Hamilton Ironworks" is an American<br> reel in D Major/Mixolydian. The parts are played AABB Hartford/Devil's Box:<br> AAAABBBBC.<br> According to Missouri fiddler and writer Howard Marshall, John Hartford<br> learned this tune from Missouri fiddlers Gene Goforth and Roy Wooliver in<br> the late 1950's, although it had originally been in Wooliver's repertoire<br> (he had been Goforth's mentor). <br> Missouri fiddling researcher Howard Marshall writes:<br> John Harford always felt that Roy<br> Wooliver probably authored this tune, but the feeling or the culture of<br> fiddlers was that fiddlers who made up tunes generally attributed them<br> to someone else, usually older fiddlers than themselves. So Wooliver<br> never owned up to having composed it.<br> Goforth himself said that he and brother Cecil<br> Goforth, along with Clifford Hawthorne, learned it from Wooliver in the<br> 1950's, but that the tune never spread from beyond their local region.<br> John Hartford himself explained:<br> Gene and Cecil Goforth, Clifford Hawthorne and us learned this from<br> Roy Wooliver in the 1950's and it never seemed to spread out of our area.<br> We never figured out if Roy learned it somewhere or made it up himself.<br> Roy worked for Cousin Emmy one time on KNOX but she fired him because he<br> wouldn't wear socks. He was in the pen twice for stealing the same watch<br> (so the story went). The warden at Jeff City, MO., loved fiddle music<br> and was always glad to see Roy come and he would check him out on<br> weekends and carry him around to fiddler's contests and then would lock<br> him up during the week. Roy always played on borrowed instruments and<br> made his rounds through the country side staying with a family for a<br> week sleeping in the barn, cutting a little wood and playing for some<br> dances.<br> For some time no one knew where the Hamilton Iron Works had been located,<br> although Marshall believed it would have been in the upper eastern Ozarks<br> and south or southwest of St. Louis. Drew Beisswenger (2008) finds that<br> the Hamilton Iron Works was located near Sullivan, Missouri, in the<br> present location of Meramec State Park and dated to the 1880's.<br> Hartford thought the tune was a distant cousin to "Cumberland Gap".<br> The banjo tablature is from John Letscher.<br> The tune was printed in Beisswenger & McCann's Ozark Fiddle Music (2008),<br> Stephen F. Davis Devil's Box, vol. 26, No. 4, Winter 1992 and<br> Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1 (1994).<br> It was recorded by Gene Goforth on Emminence Breakdown (1997),<br> Jane Rothfield on IFiddle, TheyBanjo (2008),<br> John Hartford on Hamilton Ironworks (2001) and<br> Cecil Goforth on Fiddle Music of the Ozarks, vol. 1 (1999).<br>
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