ATDTDA (17): Cripple (Creek) (465.35)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

From: Up on Cripple Creek, Notes by Peter Viney

The origins of 'Cripple Creek'

In the first version of this article, I started out speculating on the various 
places called Cripple Creek. As more and more references rolled in, it became 
apparent that the primary reference was the folk song, Cripple Creek. The 
arguments about the location of this or that Cripple Creek can still be argued 
over the folk song, but we'll come to that later.

David Powell

There's an old American folk / bluegrass song called "Cripple Creek." There are 
so many different versions with various verses, but the basic premise of the 
song is that the place called Cripple Creek is paradise on earth. The chorus 
goes: "Goin' up Cripple Creek, goin' in a run / Goin' up Cripple Creek, gonna 
have some fun." The water there runs cool, deep & wide. It's a place where you 
can meet a sweet young girl with eyes of blue, who'll make your gun shoot 
straight & true. You get the picture. 5

There are versions of this song by many artists with wide lyric variations, 
including Charlie Poole and The North Carolina Ramblers, 
Bill Monroe, Buffy Sainte-Marie, The Stanley Brothers, Etta Baker, Pete Seeger, 
Leo Kottke and even Scottish comedian Billy Connolly with the Humblebums. Note 
that the Band have covered a song by Charlie Poole (If I Lose)6 which The 
Stanley Brothers had also recorded.

To further the connection between Cripple Creek and Up On Cripple Creek, Buffy 
Sainte Marie had this to say on the older song:

Buffy Ste Marie

(Cripple Creek) is a traditional song known to fiddle players, banjo and guitar 
players, and me: a mouthbow player. I make mouthbows. It's the world's oldest 
stringed instrument, based on a hunting bow, and found all over the world. 
Different from a Jew's harp, the flexible stick part of a mouthbow can be bent 
while playing, which slackens the string. The changing melody is made by 
directing the harmonics off the string into your mouth.7

SADavid

I think it's interesting that Buffy Sainte-Marie prefaces the lyrics with a 
discussion of the mouthbow - what Garth calls a "bowed harp" in the 
Classic Albums discussion of his "clavinet through wah-wah pedal" technique.

These are the lyrics in the Buffy Sainte Marie version:

Hey, I got a girl at the head of the creek
Goin up to see her about two times a week
Kiss her on the mouth, sweet as any wine
Wrap herself around me like a sweet potato vine
Goin up Cripple Creek, goin on a run
Goin up Cripple Creek to have a little fun
Goin up Cripple Creek, goin in a whirl
Goin up Cripple Creek to see my little girl

Now the girls up Cripple Creek about half-grown
Jump on a boy like a dog on a bone
Roll my britches up to my knees
Wade ol' Cripple Creek whenever I please

chorus

Now, Cripple Creek's wide and Cripple Creek's deep
Wade old Cripple Creek before I sleep
Hills are steep and the roads are muddy
and I'm so dizzy* that I can't stand steady I'm... 

chorus

(* drunk in other versions)

SADavid

The folk song is all about young men bragging to other young men about 
access to the timeless diversions of getting laid and 
getting drunk - the Band's song brings it into the 20th century with a little 
added particularity in the details. I don't think there's any question but that 
the new song takes off from the old song 8

The song, like so many folk classics, is salacious. Alternate titles such as 
Goin' Up Brushy Fork and Goin' Down Shootin' Creek give a clue. A creek is a 
place where water flows. A creek is also a cleft between the buttocks according 
to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, but I don't think it's worth examining the 
Brokeback Mountain analogy. It does give a further interpretation of what going 
Up Cripple Creek... might mean.

There are various meanings of cripple. In Dorset, where I live, there is a 
village called Cripplestyle and in London, UK, you can find Cripplegate. Both 
meant a place where you had to 'bend down' (or 'cripple') to get through. The 
use for someone physically disabled derives from this bending action. A cripple 
is also a low area of swampy ground with rough thickets, the sort of area where 
you 
might find a creek. If we're thinking low, swampy ground it might take Cripple 
Creek to the Lake Charles area. Whatever cripple creek is not a unique name. 
There are at least six in North America, and probably many more.

http://theband.hiof.no/articles/up_on_cripple_creek_viney.html

http://theband.hiof.no/lyrics/up_on_cripple_creek.html

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"She's been movin around some, but the latest I heard, she's living in Cripple" 
(p. 465).

The historic City of Cripple Creek is a Statutory City that is the county seat 
of Teller County, Colorado, United States. Cripple Creek is a former gold mining 
camp located 44 miles southwest of Colorado Springs near the base of Pikes Peak. 
The federally designated Cripple Creek National Historic District is located in 
the city. 

[...]

During the 1890s, many of the miners in the Cripple Creek area joined a miners' 
union, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). A significant strike took place 
in 1894, marking one of the few times in history that a sitting governor called 
out the national guard to protect miners from forces under the control of the 
mine owners. By 1903 the allegiance of the state government had shifted, 
however, and Governor James Peabody sent the Colorado National Guard into 
Cripple Creek with the goal of destroying union power in the gold camps. The WFM 
strike of 1903 and the governor's response precipitated the Colorado Labor Wars, 
a struggle that took many lives. [...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Creek,_Colorado

http://tinyurl.com/2mdut6