“Beaumont Rag” is a Texas fiddle tune named for the town of Beaumont. Samuel Morgan Peacock, a fiddler from Cleburne, Texas, made the first recording, with John Peacock on guitar, as Smith’s Garage Fiddle Band. They cut it in Dallas on 26 October 1928 for Vocalion (Vocalion 5268, backed with “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”). According to the Fiddler’s Companion, Peacock was a barber by trade who ran a large barbershop in Corsicana, and he died in 1932 after collapsing on the sidewalk in front of it.
Bob Wills is credited with popularizing the tune. Wills and his Texas Playboys recorded it in Dallas on 28 November 1938, with Wills, Jesse Ashlock and Sleepy Johnson among the fiddlers and Tommy Duncan, Eldon Shamblin and Leon McAuliffe in the band; Vocalion issued it as 04999 in 1939. The Fiddler’s Companion also names an influential version by Oscar Harper, a fiddler from Terrell, Texas, who was also a barber, and notes that some versions add a fourth part featuring double-shuffle bowing.
Eck Robertson, who had first recorded for Victor in 1922, played it for a field recording at his home in the summer or fall of 1963, issued on the County LP Famous Cowboy Fiddler. Doc Watson, Mark O’Connor, Marion Sumner and Natalie MacMaster are among the later players listed with recordings of it.
