% squirrel heads and gravy -
%
% http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/SPRI_SRU.htm
%
% SQUIRREL HEADS AND GRAVY. Old-Time, Breakdown. G Major. Standard or
% GDad. AABB. Composed by fiddler Chris Germain c. 1975, originally from
% Ferguson, Missouri, lately of Washington D.C., apparently as part of a
% joke. Ironically, the tune has entered tradition and is sometimes
% listed as a "traditional" melody. The rumor that there is an older
% tune by the same name only seems to be part of the joke. One story
% goes that Germain asked around at fiddlers gatherings and parties
% whether anyone had heard the 'old' tune called "Squirrel Heads and
% Gravy," then, a few months later started playing his composition
% allowing people to assume he had unearthed a long-lost piece. Germain
% played the tune in GDad tuning, although it has also been played in
% GDgd and AEae tunings.
% 
% Squirrel heads and gravy is a delicacy, said Missouri fiddler Taylor
% McBaine (1911-1994) of his favorite food: "You get a skillet with
% those squirrel heads in that gravy; you take a hammer and crack open
% those skulls and suck out those brains. Now that's good eatin" (Old
% Time Herald, vol. 4, No. 5). Missouri fiddler Howard Marshall is of
% the opinion Germaine was influenced by McBaine in his choice of the
% title. That squirrel brains were a delicacy to some is well
% documented. An Associated Press article by Charles Wolfe of 9/8/97
% quoted Janet Norris Gates, who said they were the choicest morsels of
% the game her father once hunted in Tennessee. "'In our family, we saw
% it as a prized piece of meat, and if he shared it with you, you were
% pretty happy. Not that he was stingy,'' said Mrs. Gates, an oral
% historian in Frankfort, 'but there's just not much of a squirrel
% brain.'' The article went on to warn that researchers had recently
% found a possible link between eating squirrel brains and the rare and
% deadly human variety of mad-cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It
% has been reported that in some rural traditions small-sized biscuits
% were called 'squirrel-heads'. Train on the Island Records, TI-12,
% Bovee & Heil - "For Old Times Sake."
% 
% See also listing at:
% 
% Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources

X: 1
T:Squirrel Heads And Gravy
M:C
L:1/8
R:Reel
N:From a transcription by John Lamancusa, by permission http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm
Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion
K:G
|: "G"G2G2 EDEF | G2G2 EDEF | G2GG E2G2 | "D"A3B A2 AA |
   "G"B2 BB A2G2 |"C"GAGF E2EE | "G"D2 EF G2D2 | "D"BGA2 "G"G4 :|
|: "G"d2de dcBc | d2de d2Bc | d2de dcB2 | "D"A3B A2Bc |
   "G"d2de dcB2 | "C"cBcd e4 | "G"d2 ef g2d2 | "D"BG A2 "G"G4 :|
N:http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/SPRI_SRU.htm 6/3/2007
N:Les Preston's key is A (this transcription is G)
N:G Major