Cluck Old Hen

5/11/2022

Hi everyone,
The song of the week is 'Cluck Old Hen' in the key of A.
Cluck Old Hen is an old-time tune that has made its way into Bluegrass circles. Although there are lyrics for Cluck Old Hen, it will be played as an instrumental when I call it at the jam as the song of the week.

Recordings
Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby - key of A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxGjLIPBOLs

Fletcher Bright & Bill Evans - key of A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE2zPlDtKyg

Ralph Stanley - key of A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEqpuvBwLIk

Jason Homey & The Snake River Boys - key of A
Cluck Old Hen - Jason Homey and the Snake River Boys - YouTube

Jam Videos
Here are three youtube jam videos I have made for Cluck Old Hen. In the one list listed first, I am on guitar:
Jason’s YouTube Links – Alphabetical Listing – Parisology (cyberplasm.com)

Form & Progression
Like Shortnin' Bread and Cripple Creek, Cluck Old Hen follows the form AABB (i.e., there are two parts, each of which is repeated before the next part is played), with each A Part and each B Part being 4 measures long.

The progression we use at the jam for playing Cluck Old Hen is:
A-Part:
1 1/4 1 5/1

B-Part:
1 1/b7 1 5/1
In the key of A: 1 = A; 4 = D; 5 = E; b7 = G. In the key of G: 1 = G; 4 = C; 5 = D; b7 = F

Melody & Breaks
While the chord progression for Cluck Old Hen uses only major chords, the melody is not major, but minor.

There are 7 melody notes in the version of the melody given in the attachments for Cluck Old Hen. In ascending order of pitch, these are: G, A, C, D, E, G, A.

A,C,D,E,G are the notes that make up the A Minor Pentatonic Scale. (By contrast, the A Major Pentatonic Scale consists of the notes: A,B,C#,E,F#). Even if one is not playing the melody per se in one's break, sticking to the notes of the A Minor Pentatonic Scale, and playing no other notes in one's break will make the break sound like it 'belongs' in the tune.

For those with instruments usually capoed to the second fret for playing in the key of A (guitar, banjo, dobro), you will need to lower each note in the preceding explanation by a whole step in order for the information to correspond with what you see on the melody sheets in the attachments written in guitar and banjo tab.

So, for instance, in place of "A,C,D,E,G are the notes that make up the A Minor Pentatonic Scale. (By contrast. the A Major Pentatonic Scale consists of the notes: A,B,C#,E,F#)", think: "G,Bb,C,D,F are the notes that make up the G Minor Pentatonic Scale. (By contrast, the G Major Pentatonic Scale consists of the notes: G,A,B,D,E).

This does not mean that one should never include notes from the A Major Scale that are not in the A Minor Pentatonic in one's breaks for Cluck Old Hen (Ralph Stanley, for instance, includes several C# notes and a few F# notes in his breaks on the recording given here), but only that one needs to be careful about using those notes.

It is common in Bluegrass for breaks to contain notes from both the Major Scale and the Minor Pentatonic Scale, even when the melody of the song is either entirely major or entirely minor, so long as the chord progression is major (i.e., the progression uses 1 chords rather than 1m chords).

On the other hand, if you are playing 'Cluck Old Hen' in the context of an Old-time jam you may find that you have less leeway to make use of notes outside the Minor Pentatonic Scale than what you do when playing the tune in the context of a Bluegrass jam.

In connection with this, one may observe that, for playing Cluck Old Hen, most Old-time (clawhammer) banjo players tune their 2nd string up a half step from where it would normally be tuned when in G tuning (capo 2 for A) precisely to avoid the resonance of the distinctively major scale note that is on the open 2nd string when in G tuning, whereas Bluegrass banjo players (at least when playing in a Bluegrass context) tend not to do this. If tuned this way (G modal tuning: GDGCD capo 2 for A = AEADE), then, in reading the banjo tab melody sheet in the attachments, just simply substitute 0's in place of the 1's that are written on the line representing the 2nd string.

Key
Although the melody of Cluck Old Hen consists only of the notes of the Am pentatonic scale, it is called at jams in A (Major) rather than A Minor because the '1' chord that is used in the chord progression for the song is an A Major Chord rather than an Am Chord ('1m'). To call Cluck Old Hen in A Minor instead of in A (Major) at a jam would imply that 1m Chords are to be played in place of 1 Chords.

In the attached standard notation melody sheet for Cluck Old Hen, I have used the key signature for Am (no sharps or flats, same as the key signature for C Major, the Relative Major of Am) instead of the key signature for A Major (3 sharps) to avoid the need to write natural signs in nearly every measure. I hope that my doing this makes the sheet music easier to read than if I had used the key signature for A Major.

Song List
16 songs were played at last night's jam: 11 from the main list, 4 from the additional songs list, and 1 that is on neither list:

Cluck Old Hen - A
Foggy Mountain Top - G
Gathering Flowers From The Hillside - G
Liberty - D
Lonesome Road Blues - G
Long Journey Home - A
A Memory Of You - A
Old Joe Clark - A
Will You Be Loving Another Man - A
Worried Man Blues - Bb
Wreck Of The Old '97 - A
All The Good Times Are Past And Gone - C
Blue Ridge Cabin Home - A
Bury Me Beneath The Willow - A
Forked Deer - D
Lonesome Feeling - G

Happy Pickin',
Jason