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"Sugar Tree Stomp" is an American reel in 4/4 time and G Major. The parts are played AABB.
The tune is named for the tiny community of Sugar Tree, Tennessee, southwest of Dickson City, Dickson County, It was composed by Tennessee fiddler Arthur Smith and recorded by the Arthur Smith Trio in 1936. Bluegrass fiddler Kenny Baker says "Sugar Tree Stomp, that's from Arthur Smith. Now I'll tell you what, you know, Arthur was one of the world's greatest fiddlers, in my mind, but I didn't play it like Arthur played it. I heard a little different way of going about playing it, not that I thought I could rearrange it and make the tune better; it's just what I heard and I wanted to record it that way.”A 'stomp' was a general term for an up-tempo dance tune with a prominent beat, noy any particular dance step. Tunes named "stomp" are related to the group of "rags" developed in the early twentieth century using the syncopated rhythms of the ragtime tradition. It was printed in Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 2 (1995). It was recorded by The Arthur Smith Trio (1937) and on Fiddlin Arthur Smith and His Dixieliners (1978), John Ashby and the Free State Ramblers on Fiddling by the Hearth (1979), Kenny Baker on Master Fiddler (1998), Cecil Plum on Cecil Plum (2005) and Marcus Martin on Marcus Martin (2004). |