“Birchfield’s Sally Ann” is named for the fiddler Joe Birchfield (1911–2001) of Roan Mountain, Tennessee, who played a version of “Sally Ann” in the key of C, according to the Fiddler’s Companion. Birchfield led the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, a family band whose members learned the old tunes and ballads from their father and uncles. A 1986 concert at the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music, issued in 2015 by the Field Recorders’ Collective as The Roan Mountain Hilltoppers: In Concert, has the band playing “Sally Ann” with Joe on fiddle, his brother Creed on banjo, his son Bill on guitar and Bill’s wife Janice on washtub bass.
“Sally Ann” is a title that covers several different old-time tunes. The Companion separates a D major breakdown known in West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, a three-part Round Peak version from the Galax, Virginia, area (the one Tommy Jarrell played), and a Kentucky version, and notes that the tune has been jokingly called the Surry County, North Carolina, national anthem. The Hill Billies, a band from the Galax area, recorded a version in 1925 that the Companion calls influential. In 2023 Natalie Padilla, Casey Campbell and Tyler Andal included a track titled “Birchfield’s Sally Anne” on their album Hell Broke Loose.
