“Cattle in the Cane” is a traditional American fiddle tune from the 1800s, with one of the earliest documented recordings made in the 1920s by Texas fiddler Captain Moses “M.J.” Bonner (1847–1939) under the title “Yearlings in the Canebreak.” The cane in question is sugar cane or canebreak — the dense, tall stands of switchcane that grew across the lowlands of the antebellum and early-20th-century South — so the title image is of cattle wandering loose in the canebreak.
The tune’s distinctive feature is its modal alternation: a 16-bar A section in A major (with the flatted seventh G giving it a Mixolydian color) followed by a B section of the same length in the parallel key of A minor. This major–minor pivot gives the tune an unusually moody character compared to the more strictly major-key fiddle tunes of the same era.
The most influential modern reading is from Tony Rice and his brother Wyatt Rice, who recorded “Cattle in the Cane” as a duet on Tony’s 1983 album Church Street Blues. Norman Blake and many others have also cut the tune, and it remains a standard at both bluegrass and Texas-fiddle jam sessions where players are comfortable with the modal pivot between strains.
