“Sawing on the Strings” is credited to Lewis Compton. Don Reno, Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups recorded it on 15 April 1957 at the Bradley Film & Recording Studio in Nashville, and Dot released it the following month as a single, Dot 15588, with “Sweethearts in Heaven” on the other side. Smiley sang lead, Reno tenor and the fiddler Mack Magaha baritone. The session brought in Hank Garland on mandolin, Benny Martin as a second fiddler and John Palmer on bass, and the discography credits Gordon Terry with a sack of marbles. Dot included the song on the band’s 1963 LP Bluegrass Hits.
The Mayfield Brothers of West Texas also sang it. Their performance, with Edd Mayfield singing lead and playing lead guitar, Herb Mayfield on rhythm guitar and Smokey Mayfield on fiddle, appears on Patuxent’s 2006 collection Vintage Recordings, 1948–1956, again credited to Compton. Edd Mayfield is best remembered as a guitarist with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in the 1950s.
The words sketch an old fiddler from back in the hills, known as Fiddlin’ Will. He could play nearly anything, and some said he could sing, but what he liked best was sawing on the strings. When the old folks held a shindig, nobody considered the party complete until Will arrived, and when he came down from the mountains he might pick up the five-string banjo and play until daybreak. The chorus calls for the fiddle bow to be rosined, and in a later verse for the banjo head to be tightened, while Will taps his foot and fills the room with music.
David Grisman recorded the song at his home in Marin County, California, on 9 January 1976 for The David Grisman Rounder Album, with Tony Rice singing lead and Ricky Skaggs tenor, and Vassar Clements, Bill Keith and Jerry Douglas among the pickers. Don Reno came back to it in March 1984 at Harbor Sound in Sausalito, California, with Byron Berline on fiddle and Ronnie, Dale and Don Wayne Reno in the band, for the album Family & Friends (Kaleidoscope, 1988). Later recordings include the Rice Brothers’ on The Rice Brothers 2 (Rounder, 1994), Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder’s on History of the Future (2001), and Alison Krauss’s, made at Blackbird in Nashville with Sam Bush and Dan Tyminski singing harmony, for A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection (Rounder, 2007).
