"Tater Patch" is an American reel in cut time and A Mixolydian. It is played in either AEae or Standard fiddle tuning. The parts are played AAB (Brody), AABBB (Johnson, Phillips). It is a Blue Ridge Mountain regional dance piece.
Mt. Airy, western North Carolina, fiddler Tommy Jarrell related to musician and folklorist Mike Seegar:
There was a fellow by the name of Ike Leonard...he was a working in the potato patch and this tune come in his mind. And he just throwed down what ever he was a doing and went to the house and got his banjo and played it. It must have happened about 1910... before 1920. I got it through (his uncle) Charlie Barnett Lowe...along in the '20's. Charlie Barnett's brother married Ike Leonard's widow so I got the straight story to 'The Tater Patch Tune'... the way it was told to me now.
In The Portland Collection the tune is attributed to Jarrell’s frequent playing partner banjo player Charlie Lowe, with the same story). This latter attribution comes from Mt. Airy region fiddler Ernest East.
It was printed in Brody's Fiddler’s Fakebook (1983), Johnson's Kitchen Musician No. 2: Old-Timey Fiddle Tunes (1982 - revised 1988 & 2003), Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1 (1994), Songer's Portland Collection (1997) and Lamancusa's The Gettysburg Collection of Old-Time Fiddle Tunes (2021).
It was recorded by Tommy Jarrell on Pickin' on Tommy's Porch (1984) and Highwoods String Band on Dance All Night (1975).