- Style
- Old-time
- Tradition
- Appalachian
- Form
- Breakdown
- Keys
- A and G
- Level
- 2
- Played on
- Fiddle
In the public domain. Source
Music
Learn the melody first. Each step adds to the one before it.
Adds old-time hammer-ons and pull-offs, open string drones and a triplet on the D.
Click any note to start from there
Chord chart
History
Nobody knows which creek the title means. In 19th century American speech a "cripple" could be a swampy thicket or a rocky shallow in a stream. Folklorist Alan Jabbour found that the oldest fiddlers he met could remember first hearing the tune, and wondered whether it came from the gold rush and labor fights at Cripple Creek, Colorado, in the 1890s and early 1900s.
Fiddlin' Cowan Powers recorded it for Victor in 1924 and for Edison in 1925. Fiddlers and banjo players have played it ever since, in several keys and tunings.