“Little Birdie” is a traditional old-time song, a staple of Appalachian banjo and string-band music long before it was ever recorded. Folklorists were collecting it in North Carolina by 1909, and it reached records in the mid-1920s.
Like much old-time material, the song is built largely from “floating” verses — couplets that drift among many songs — and it shares lines with pieces such as “East Virginia” and “Single Girl.” Its loose lyric circles themes of lost love, loneliness, and longing, addressed to a little bird as a kind of confidant; that, and a bright banjo setting, kept it a favorite at fiddlers conventions and jam sessions.
The song passed naturally from old-time into bluegrass.
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