Spotted Pony is a tune I have known since I started playing this kind of music. Here’s a video of the tune with “virtual backup” from a host of Fiddle Camp staff members.

Here’s the “Spotted Pony” tune page from the Maine Fiddle Camp website that has slow and fast versions plus sheet music: Spotted Pony 

I thought I’d take a dive into the tune and really went down a rabbit hole.. Read on…

First of all the tune as it is presented above is how I have always known it. It’s in D major, played AABB in standard tuning on the fiddle. The tune is definitely “southern old time” and appears to be from the southern Midwest, the Ozark mountains to be more specific. My band, Scrod Pudding, played the tune pretty much this same way. Here’s a video from the Tuesday night online concert/jam. It’s set to start right when we play Spotted Pony. Pam learned the tune from Vermont Mountain Dulcimer player Margaret MacArthur. I love the way the melody slides up the fretboard on the dulcimer!

As I started reading more and more about “Spotted Pony”, there were a lot of references to a similar tune entitled “Snowshoes”, also a Missouri tune. It wasn’t that hard to search for “Snowshoes” and here’s a video of a very nice version played by a duo from Montana. They make a big deal about the fact that this tune is from the repertoire of Tommy Jackson (more about Tommy Jackson later). Here’s “Snowshoes”:

Anyway you can certainly see the resemblance to the tune we call “Spotted Pony”. This happens all the time with fiddle tunes. This is an oral tradition. Someone will hear a tune, take it home and remember it differently when they play it the next time. When tunes aren’t written down or recorded they can morph a bit. So you probably want to ask, “are these different tunes or different versions of the same tune?” and then,… “which came first?”

I guess it’s time to talk about Tommy Jackson.

He was a Nashville session fiddler who played on literally hundreds of recordings. He played with George Jones, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Carl Perkins(!), a regular at the Grand Ole Opry, and the list goes on. Here’s a short blurb Tommy Jackson – King of the 1950s Fiddlers – Native Ground Books and Music and here’s some info specific to the tune “Snowshoes”. Annotation:Snowshoes (1) – The Traditional Tune Archive Hard to know what to believe here, but it certainly seems possible that Spotted Pony is just a “misnamed” Snowshoes and they are just different versions of the same tune as the “folk process” does its thing. As far as how the tune got from Tennessee to Missouri, one plausible explanation is that Tommy Jackson took a job as a session musician at “Ozark Jubilee” , a TV show in Springfield, MO in 1955 . Ozark Jubilee was sort of a country music Lawrence Welk show, or more like the Grand Ole Opry or even Don Messer’s show in Canada that we talk about all the time.

So, I continued to try to track down “Snowshoes” and came across an amazing website with almost a thousand old time (and other) fiddle tunes with sheet music, midi files and recordings. This blew my mind but here ya go, now it can blow your mind too!: Old Time Fiddle Tunes Don’t get lost in there!!!!

Scrolling down to the S’s we find both Spotted Pony and Snowshoes listed. Here’s Snowshoes, played by Tommy Jackson himself:

and here’s Spotted Pony played by New Hampshire Fiddler Skip Gorman:

whoa… Skip’s version of “Spotted Pony” is kind of in between what I’ve been presenting as Snowshoes and Spotted Pony… All the more reason to think they are the same tune. Skip is best know as a “Cowboy Song guy” but back in the day, toured throughout New England and even played the North Whitefield contra dance. Here are some of his collaborators (notice anyone there?)

DAVID SURETTE – guitar and cittern, CHRISTINE HANSON – cello, RANDY MILLER – fiddle and accordion, GORDON PEERY- piano, CHRIS MURPHY- bodhran, JIM PRENDERGAST – guitar, DEDO NORRIS- piano, KIMBERLEY HOLMES- piano, NICK APOLLONIO- cittern, JANE ORZECHOWSKI- fiddle, TORY BRILLHART- guitar, ROGER KAHLE – guitar, feet.. Skip also played in the “New Hampshire Fiddler’s Union” with Gordon Peery, Rodney and Randy Miller.

Anyway, there ya go. “Spotted Pony” or “Snowshoes”. A great tune or two great tunes!