“Back Up and Push,” also called “Rubber Dolly” and “Rubber Dolly Rag,” grew out of a ragtime piece. J. Bodewalt Lampe, a Danish-born violinist, published “Creole Belles” in Detroit with Whitney-Warner in 1900, and fiddlers across the country picked up the catchy second strain under new names. The Fiddler’s Companion notes that “Rubber Dolly” was first collected as an Anglo-American children’s game, with words that may have come from a music-hall song of the 1890s, and that the melody was a favorite Texas and western swing piece in the 1930s and 1940s.
Two recordings under the title “Back Up and Push” date from 1929. The Georgia Organ Grinders, a band with Clayton McMichen and Bert Layne on fiddles, cut it for Columbia in Atlanta on 9 April 1929, and the Augusta Trio recorded it in Richmond, Indiana, the same year. Uncle Bud Landress recorded it as “Rubber Dolly Rag” for Victor in Atlanta that November. On 29 March 1934, at the Texas Hotel in San Antonio, Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers recorded it for Bluebird, with Gid and his son Gordon on fiddles, Riley Puckett on guitar and Ted Hawkins on mandolin; Gordon Tanner, then seventeen, was not credited on the record. Coupled with “Down Yonder” (Bluebird B-5562), it was the third best-selling country record of 1934, according to the Fiddler’s Companion.
Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys recorded it at the Kimball Hotel in Atlanta on 2 October 1941, with Pete Pyle on guitar, Art Wooten on fiddle and Bill Westbrooks on bass. The Stanley Brothers recorded it at the King studio in Cincinnati on 16 July 1964, with Earl Taylor on mandolin and Art Stamper on fiddle. Kenny Baker, Benny Martin and Marion Sumner with Jesse McReynolds are among the fiddlers listed with recordings of it in the Fiddler’s Companion.
