Pike's Peak
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Pike's Peak", also known as "Prosperity Special" or "Rat Cheese Under the Hill" is an<br> American breakdown in C Major. The parts are played AB (Silberberg), AABB (Johnson,<br> Phillips, Songer).<br> It was ecorded under the title "Pike's Peak" in 1933 by fiddler Ted Sharp and his band,<br> It had previously been recorded in 1930 by Clark and Luches Kessinger under the title<br> "Rat Cheese Under the Hill" (a corruption of the tune name "Natchez Under the Hill").<br> Some fiddlers may have difficulty going into position playing for some measures of the<br> B part.<br> The "Prosperity Special" name for the tune comes from Texas fiddler and band leader<br> Bob Wills' 1938 recording (later recorded by Clarence "Tater" Tate under that title).<br> The title commemorates a unique event early in the 1920's. The Prosperity Special was<br> a train made up entirely of locomotives. Early in 1921 during a post-war recession,<br> the West Coast based Southern Pacific Co. placed an order for fifty heavy duty 2-10-2 <br> ocomotives with the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Eddystone, Pennsylvania. It was a leap<br> of faith in a poor economy, but the unprecedented order helped stir optimism and faith<br> that the American worker would prevail. The locomotives were completed in 1922 and in<br> May of that year half the locomotives were shipped in an almost half-mile long train<br> in a southern route to California. The entire train of twenty weighed in excess of<br> 6,000 tons. A large sign on the lead locomotive read "The Prosperity Special."<br> Six helper engines were necessary to move the train around the Horseshoe Curve in the<br> mountains west of Altoona. The train departed on May 22nd 1922 from Eddystone, traveled to<br> St. Louis on the Pennsylvania Railroad, then via the St. Louis Southwestern Railway to<br> Corsicana, Texas. From there the train moved via the Southern Pacific to Los Angeles,<br> where it arrived in June 1922.<br> The banjo tablature is by John Letscher who says that it is "Very similar to<br> 'Natchez Under the Hill" and sounds closely relate to Jim Taylor's version of<br> 'Step To the Music Johnny'.<br> It was printed in Beisswenger & McCann's Ozarks Fiddle Music(2008),<br> Johnson's Kitchen Musician No. 2: Old-Timey Fiddle Tunes (1982) (revised 1988 & 2003),<br> Lamancusa's The Gettysburg Collection of Old-Time Fiddle Tunes (2021),<br> Orme's Herman Johnson Master Fiddler: 39 Solos (1999),<br> Phillips' Fiddle Case Tunebook: Old Time Southern (1989),<br> Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1 (1994),<br> Silberberg's Fiddle Tunes I Learned at the Tractor Tavern (2002) and<br> Songer's Portland Collection (1997).<br> It was recorded by The Kessinger Brothers (1930) (78 RPM) and<br> The Kessinger Brothers: Complete Recordings in Chronological Order,1929 (1997),<br> Ted Sharp on Old-Time Fiddle Classics, vol. 2 (1973),<br> Sharp, Hinman & Sharp on Old Time String Band Classics (1975) and<br> Times Ain't Like They Used to be Vol. 7: Early American Rural Music Classic Recordings of<br> 1920'S and 1930's (2003) and<br> Ron Kane & Skip Gorman on Powder River (1993),<br>
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