Spotted Pony

The D-major tune is a breakdown in two parts. It opens by walking straight up the first four notes of the D major scale, D, E, F-sharp and G. The banjo player Jeff Norman once wrote a blog post on twenty-seven ways to play that opening, noting that some players find the plain walk-up simplistic. The Companion also points to a related tune, “Snowshoes.” Written versions appear in Phillips’s Traditional American Fiddle Tunes (1994), taken from the playing of the Missouri fiddler Pete McMahan, and in Silberberg’s Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern (2002). It was already on record by then. The Dutch Cove Old Time String Band put it on their June Appal album Sycamore Tea in 1978. Bob Carlin, who learned it from Cindy Swiatlowski, paired it with “Sullivan’s Hollow” on Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer Banjo (Rounder 0132, 1980).