"John Brown's Dream", also known as "Brownlow's Dream", "Brown's Dream", "Brownstream", "Herve Brown's Dream" or "Johnny Bring the Jug Around the Hill" is an old-time breakdown in A Major. Fiddlers play it in AEae (Tommy Jarrell) or Standard tuning. The parts are played AABBCC (Brody), AABBCCDD (Phillips, Songer).
A Galax, Virginia, regional standard, but variants widely known throughout the upland South a under a variety of titles. One of a family of tunes that includes "Little Rabbit", "Pretty Little Miss" and others. The tune family is a common a popular one in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where it probably originated but has since been disseminated.
Hobart Smith, of Saltville, Va., also played the tune on the banjo. Tommy Jarrell, of Mt. Airy, North Carolina, suggested that "John Brown's Dream," which he learned from his father, fiddler Ben Jarrell, was derived from "Pretty Little Miss".
The title of the tune was probably originally "Herve Brown's Dream," but the name Herve was supplanted by John because of the notoriety of the famous abolitionist who was hanged at Charles Town, Virginia in 1859 for treason committed in the raid of the U.S. Arsenal at Harper's Ferry earlier that year.
The banjo tablature is by John Letscher. His comment:
Mostly from The New Lost City Ramblers and Brad Leftwich.
It was printed in Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook (1983), Milliner & Koken's Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes (1994) and Songer's Portland Collection (1997).
It was recorded by Da Costa Woltz's Southern Broadcasters on 1927 Recordings (the fiddler for this band is Ben Jarrell), Cockerham, Jenkins and Jarrell on Down to the Cider Mill, Tommy Jarrell & Fred Cockerham on Tommy and Fred: Best Fiddle-Banjo Duets (1992), Kirk Sutphin on Old Roots and New Branches (1994), Da Costa Woltz's Southern Broadcasters (reissue), New Lost City Ramblers on String Band Instrumentals (1964), New Lost City Ramblers on Across the Great Divide, Art Rosenbaum on The Art of the Mountain Banjo, Dan Gellert & Brad Leftwich on A Moment in Time (1993), Pete Parish on Clawhammer Banjo, Hobart Smith on Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians (1956), Jim Taylor on The Civil War Collection (1996).