Boil Them Cabbage Down is the first tune most fiddle teachers assign, and it may carry the oldest melody in the beginner songbook. The chords are simple, the notes sit under one hand shape, and the chorus takes ten seconds to learn. Under that plain surface runs a history that stretches from a 1765 English dance floor to the Grand Ole Opry.
Where it came from
Folklorist Ralph Rinzler traced the melody to “Smiling Polly,” an English country dance printed in 1765. The song grew up in Black communities in the American South. Early folk song collectors (White, Scarborough, and Brown) took down versions from Black singers, and Thomas Talley printed the words in his 1922 book Negro Folk Rhymes under the title “Cooking Dinner.” The song also passed through the blackface minstrel stage: Sam Lucas, a Black minstrel star, published “Hannah, Boil Dat Cabbage Down” in Boston in 1878. The title survives in several spellings. Old singers said “bile” for boil, so records and songbooks list it as Bile Them Cabbage Down, Bile ‘Em Cabbage Down, or Boil Them Cabbage Down. The hoecake in the chorus is a flat cornmeal cake, first baked on the blade of a field hoe. Uncle Dave Macon recorded the song for Vocalion in 1924, among the first records of it, and Fiddlin’ John Carson cut it for OKeh that same year. By 1940 the song had reached Key West, Florida, where a WPA field crew recorded it.
How it works
The tune is a two-part reel in cut time, played AABB. Most players call it in A major, though printed sources also set it in D and G. The chords move 1-4-1-5 (A, D, A, E), and some jams strip it down to two chords. Here is the lesson it teaches. The melody lives on the A and E strings, so a beginner can add the open string next door to most notes. That two-note sound is a double stop, the drone that gives fiddle music its full voice. Teachers pair those double stops with the Nashville shuffle, the long-short-short bow stroke that drives square dance music. Ozark fiddlers favored that shuffle on this tune before it reached a method book. One short tune covers tone, rhythm, and drones, which is why teachers start here. The singing half matters too. Musicians trade floating verses over the chorus “bile them cabbage down, boys, turn them hoecakes brown.” The same verses drift in and out of Old Joe Clark and Cindy. At a jam, anyone can offer one verse and pass the next break to a friend.
Recordings worth hearing
Start with Uncle Dave Macon’s 1924 banjo version for Vocalion, the record that put the song on disc. Fiddlin’ John Carson recorded it for OKeh that same year. Georgia’s Skillet Lickers and fiddler Earl Johnson both cut hot string band versions in 1928. Lowe Stokes’ Pot Lickers recorded it for Brunswick in 1930 under the name “Rocking My Sugar Lump,” proof of how titles wandered. Clayton McMichen built a contest version loaded with tricks, and fiddlers copied it for decades. The Library of Congress holds a 1940 field recording from Key West, Florida, where Robert Butler sang it with accordion for a WPA crew. For the modern jam standard, hear Tommy Jackson’s 1952 side for Dot Records. Jackson was a leading Nashville session fiddler, and his square dance records taught a generation of players how the tune should move.
Sources
Facts on this page come from the Traditional Tune Archive entry for Bile Them Cabbage Down and its annotation, which document the tune’s keys, the 1920s records, and the Rinzler and Talley research. The Library of Congress holds the 1940 Key West field recording. A Mudcat Cafe thread collects the floating verses and the Sam Lucas connection, and Clark Kimberling’s historical notes at IMSLP confirm the 1878 Lucas sheet music from White, Smith and Co. of Boston. Ballad of America covers the song’s mixed African and European roots, and the Internet Archive preserves Tommy Jackson’s 1952 Dot 78.