"Portsmouth Airs" is an old-time breakdown in cut time and G Major. The parts are played AABB (Titon), AB (Lamancusa) or AA’BB’. The source usually given for this is Jimmy R. Wheeler (1917-1987), a fiddler and instrument repairman who lived in the Ohio River town of Portsmouth, Ohio. Harmonica player John Lozier of Lewis County, Kentucky, said regionally influential fiddler Ed Haley used to play it in front of the Old Railroad YMCA in Portsmouth, Ohio (Hartford, 1996). Jeff Titon (2001) calls the tune a northern-influenced type of melody that is sometimes favored by fiddlers in the northeastern part of Kentucky. "Buffalo Gals" is a distantly related tune. The banjo tablature is by John Letscher. It was printed in Titon's Old Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (2001) and Lamancusa's The Gettysburg Collection of Old-Time Fiddle Tunes (2021). It was recorded by Roger Cooper on Snakewinder (1993), Jimmy Wheeler on Jimmy Wheeler: Recordings from the collection of Jeff Goehring (2015), Buddy Thomas (et al) on Traditional Fiddle Music of Kentucky, vol. 1: Up the Ohio and Licking Rivers (1997), Buddy Thomas on Kitty Puss: Old-Time Fiddle Music From Kentucky (1976), Roger Cooper on Going Back to Old Kentucky (1996) and John Hartford on Wild Hog in the Red Brush (and a Bunch of Others You Probably Never Heard) (1996. Learned from John Lozier).