“Arkansaw Traveler” and “Sallie Gooden”--Eck
Robertson (1922)
Added to the National Registry: 2002
Essay by Wayne Erbsen (guest post)*
“Sallie Gooden” label Eck Robinson “Arkansaw Traveler” label
Eck Robertson - Cowboy Fiddler
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the photograph. By the next year he established the Edison Speaking
Phonograph Company to sell record players in furniture stores across America. Improvements by such
inventors as Alexander Graham Bell and Emile Berliner helped to make “gramophones” coveted items
for home entertainment. Sales of records went to four million units in 1900, up to 30 million in 1909,
and over 100 million by 1920. By 1922 alone, consumers could purchase such hit records as “Way
Down Yonder in New Orleans,” “Carolina in the Morning,” “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister
Kate” and “Somebody Stole My Gal.”
But people who liked their music on the rustic side found it impossible to purchase phonograph records
of old-time fiddling or stringband music in the early years of the twentieth century. This was because
in those days record companies were mainly located in New York City, and they simply did not realize
there was a market for the music of rural America. All this changed in 1922, when into the New York
City offices of RCA records walked Eck Robertson and Henry Gilliland. But wait, we’re getting ahead
of ourselves.
The story actually begins in the late 1880s when Alexander Campbell “Eck” Robertson was growing
up in north central Texas. Every one of his five brothers and two sisters played music and sang. Both
of his grandfathers, as well as his uncles and his father, actively competed at local and regional fiddlers
conventions in the late 19
th
and early 20
th
century. Eck later claimed that he taught himself to play the
fiddle before he ever saw one. As a kid he killed a tomcat, tanned its hide and stretched the skin over a
long-necked gourd to make himself a home-made gourd fiddle. One of his brothers traded a pig for a
genuine factory-made fiddle, and Eck was soon playing that. Eck later recounted his innate ability to
play tunes on the fiddle. He said, “It was just natural with me to play them. I didn’t have to learn
them.... I already knew them. I mostly improved every old hoedown tune that was ever put out. I
generally played better than anyone else, [and had] better arrangements of the tunes.”
In 1903, 16 year-old Eck decided then and there to become a professional musician. He soon left home
and joined a traveling medicine show. Over the next several years he worked with a half-dozen
different medicine shows. In 1906, Eck got married and he and his new wife, Netty, started out
traveling around Texas and adjacent states, playing fiddle and piano in silent-movie houses. Never shy
about promoting himself, Eck was a superb showman who billed himself as “The Cowboy Fiddler” and
outfitted himself from head to toe in the style of a western cowpuncher. When interviewed in the mid-
1960s, Eck remembered that, “I was the most popular dang fiddler ever was on the road. I could book
every dang town I came to, it didn’t make any difference where it was. There were lots of places where
they turned musicians down, but I came right along and booked them.”
After Eck had honed his fiddle chops to a fine edge, he started winning the fiddler’s conventions that
were held all over the southwest. Competition at these fiddle contests was notoriously fierce, and
winning was no mean trick. One story has Eck in a showdown playoff with John Wills, the father of
legendary fiddler Bob Wills. In a last-ditch effort to give himself an edge, legend has it that Eck broke
off a piece of a wooden match and stuck it under one of his strings, so that he could bow three strings at
once. The trick worked and Eck was victorious.
At another popular fiddlers convention held in Munday, Texas, John Wills and Eck were running neck
and neck, so the judges decided that the pair should play a run-off. This was a prestigious convention
and a lot of prize money was at stake. Eck was up first and he likely played “Beaumont Rag,” one of
the numbers he often performed when the competition was stiff. John Wills got up next and played
“Gone Indian,” which was his lucky tune that had helped him win many fiddle competitions. When
John reached a certain point in the tune, he let out a high-pitched cry that he held for what seemed like
several minutes. Of course, when he finished fiddling, the audience went wild and the judges awarded
him first prize. When Eck was leaving the festival grounds someone hollered out to him, “Eck, did
John out-fiddle you?”
Eck shot right back with “Hell, no! He didn’t out-fiddle me. That damned old man Wills out-hollered
me.”
In addition to competing at fiddlers conventions, by 1919 Eck started attending reunions of
Confederate veterans. In June of 1922, Eck traveled to a Confederate reunion in Richmond, Virginia.
It was perhaps there that he met, or was reacquainted with, 76-year-old Henry Gilliland (1845–1924),
who had fought in the Civil War and was later an Indian fighter and Justice of the Peace. Somehow, the
pair decided to travel to New York to try to convince RCA Victor to let them make records. They were
apparently undaunted by the fact that no record company had ever shown the slightest interest in
recording old-time fiddle music.
Part of the reason that Eck and Henry decided to make the trip to New York was that Henry was
acquainted with a lawyer named Martin W. Littleton, who did occasional legal work for the RCA
Victor label. He invited the musicians to stay with him after they arrived in New York and promised to
introduce them to the people at the office of Victor records. And that’s exactly what happened.
The staff at Victor must have been flabbergasted when Eck and Henry showed up unannounced at their
Manhattan office, with Robertson and Gilliland both dressed head-to-toe in full cowboy regalia. Trying
to dispatch the pair with impunity, one of the Victor officials bustled into the waiting room and said to
Eck, “Young man, get your fiddle out and start off a tune.” Eck responded by breaking into a rousing
version of “Sallie Gooden,” a tune he had used to win many a fiddle contest in Texas.
He later recalled that, “I didn’t get to play half of ‘Sallie Gooden,’ he just threw up his hands and
stopped me. He said, ‘By Ned, that’s fine! Come back in the morning at 9:00 o’clock and we’ll make
a test record.”
The next day, June 30, 1922, Eck and Henry returned and recorded “Arkansas Traveler,” “Turkey in the
Straw,” “Forked Deer” and “Apple Blossom.” Eck alone returned the next day and recorded “Sallie
Gooden” and several other tunes. With the September 1, 1922 release of “Sallie Gooden,” Eck and
Henry had truly broken new ground. The release marked the initial foray into country music by a
reluctant record company. In retrospect, Eck’s performance of “Sallie Gooden” justly deserves credit
for being not only one of the first recordings in country music, but also one of the very best. Even
today, some 90-plus years later, few fiddlers have come up to the level of Eck’s fiddling. Bill Monroe
himself paid homage to Eck’s skill when he rushed ace Oklahoma fiddler Byron Berline into the studio
in 1967 and recorded “Sally Goodin.” Himself a renowned contest fiddler, Byron showed his own debt
to Eck by basically playing a slightly souped-up rendition of the original 1922 version of the tune.
Even today, virtually every fiddler who plays this standard fiddle piece in some way owes a debt to Eck
Robertson. But even more than his influence on the tune itself, Eck set an extremely high standard that
fiddlers ever since have tried to follow.
The stories behind “Sallie Gooden” are almost as good as the tune itself. Eck Robertson later
recalled that, “Long ago there lived a beautiful maiden. She sent word to all the lands around about for
fiddlers to come together and have a big fiddlers contest. And to the one who played the tune that
suited her the best, she'd give her heart and hand. One young man won the contest, his name was
Gooden. And the tune thereafter was called ‘Sallie Gooden.’”
Byron Berline once told his own version of this same story behind “Sallie Gooden.” He said:
Once upon a time there lived a girl named Sally who had two boyfriends. The two boys were both
fiddle players, and one of the boys had the last name of “Goodin.” Sally couldn't decide which one
to marry, so she thought a fiddle contest between the two would be a good way to make her
selection. Of course, the fellow named Goodin won the contest, and Sally became Sally Goodin.
They were very happy and had a productive life with 14 children, so I'm going to play “Sally
Goodin” 14 different ways.
The North Carolina musician Bruce Green collected a different story about “Sally Gooden” from
Hiram Stamper, a fiddler from Knott County, Kentucky. Hiram was born in 1893 and learned to play
from several Civil War veterans, who told him the story behind “Sallie Gooden.” According to him,
the tune originally had several names, including “Boatin’ Up Sandy” and “The Old Bell Ewe And The
Little Speckled Wether.” The name was changed during the Civil War by several soldiers who were
attached to John Hunt Morgan’s unit of irregulars. Apparently the company set up camp on the Big
Sandy River in Pike County, Kentucky. Nearby was a boarding house that was run by a kind-hearted
woman named Sally Gooden. She went out of her way to be kind to the soldiers by allowing them to
camp and play their fiddles on her property. In appreciation of her hospitality, the solders renamed the
tune “Sallie Gooden” in her honor.
Even though the origin of the name of “Sallie Gooden” may be hotly debated, one thing is crystal clear:
the powerful way that Eck Robertson fiddled it on Victor Records in 1922 will endure for all time.
