The Lore of Peanut Butter Jeff and His Melancholy Slide Whistle

[The_Bumble_Bard]

Okay, so @gi_gi_ asked in the challenge thread what the thoughts were behind the title for my original tune this month and they’re so ridiculously elaborate that I thought I would create a separate thread for it. 😂

I’ll repost the tune here and let you know again, the title is: Peanut Butter Jeff’s Melancholy Slide Whistle. LOL.

When I’m thinking of a title for something, I try to include aspects of the underlying feeling of the tune and also concrete imagery that relates to whatever story, character, or scene the tune is about. I spend a lot of time pondering these kind of things and often when I create something there is a mixture of genuine feelings about something I’m really experiencing underneath a mask of fictional sillines. 😅

Since this ended up being a clawhammer tune, I wanted to pay homage to the traditional clawhammer titles that I find very funny because they’re things like “Cornbread and Butterbeans” (that’s a real clawhammer title) or “Old Man Barneby’s Fiddlestick Jamboree” (that’s made up, but not too far off from real titles). 😅 So I started thinking of funny foods that would work in that context and for some reason peanut butter came to mind. So my first song title was “Ol’ Jeremiah’s Crusty Peanut Butter Jar.”😅😂 But when I realized I was going to keep my original melody with the slides, but turn it into clawhammer (after trying it and liking it, eventually), I started pondering what comical, Southern-sounding instruments would emulate the slides in the tune and naturally a slide whistle came to mind. 😂 But the melody is still melancholy because the song is about Peanut Butter Jeff being infatuated with a lady but he can never tell her how he feels – so he lets out his feelings in a song, while stress-eating peanut butter, while still playing his slide whistle, which makes it greasy, which is why the notes keep getting higher and higher as the slide whistle gets greasier and greasier and harder to control – which fits with what happens in the song structure, IMO. 😅😂 ANYWAY, I wanted to preserve the original melancholy sound of the melody, despite the silly, percussive sound of clawhammer, and hope I succeeded in that. Oh and the name Jeff was somewhat random. I picked it mostly because it flowed well with the rest of the title and I wanted a “J” name that sounded like “Jiffy” brand peanut butter, but I love the jelly connection. 😅 That’s brilliant, I never would have thought of that. This is why our silliness works so well together. 😂

So, in short, both in writing the title and the song itself, it is a mixture of true feelings I’m experiencing, excessively convoluted fictional silliness, and also trying to emulate techniques and movements included in the song itself. 😂

This is why I’m more of a writer than a musician. 😅😂😅😂 If you read all that, bless you and thank you!! 😂💕

[dianna]

Awe….@The_Bumble_Bard I did read all of it…..I love that in a way, you are giving homage to the roots of clawhammer……and also that in all of its ‘silliness’ there is so much thought and feeling behind it…….oh, and also a full story! It makes me wonder what the creators of some of those old-time tunes were actually thinking: “Grasshopper Sittin’ on a Sweet Potato Vine,”….”Shove another pig’s foot on the fire….” Or this one….’Nail that Catfish to the Tree’ (Yikes!)…

[The_Bumble_Bard]

@dianna, hahaha!! Yes, those are perfect examples of exactly what I mean! Thank you! 😂😊 Very specific and sometimes pungent imagery. 😂 I feel like something like “Grasshopper Sittin’ on a Sweet Potato Vine” is pretty goofy, but also poetic in its sound and flow, and of course follows the clawhammer rhythm, even with that title. Hahaha those examples definitely illustrate some of the interesting cultural implications of clawhammer tunes; it’s true, you have to wonder, how many of these things actually happened? Probably more than you’d maybe want to believe… But that’s what makes them so interesting, fun, and unique. 😅😂🤢😉😂💕

And thank you so much for your kind words, I really appreciate that! It really means a lot. I’m so happy that you and others here appreciate the silliness and that the feelings I hope to convey somehow do, but I’m not always sure how. That’s part of what makes music, and the ukulele, so magical. 😊💕

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