I've started working on this tune today. It was popularized by Benny Martin, a great bluegrass fiddler who replaced Chubby Wise in Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys, and who also invented the 8-string fiddle (yikes!). It's primarily a bluegrass tune, but has fairly recently been adopted by Texas style fiddlers.
Check out this video of Benny playing the tune on his 8 string fiddle. Just look at the guitars on his glittery jacket. That's pizazz if I ever saw it.
Here's a more standard version of the tune performed by Benny on a regular 4 string fiddle. Still pretty dynamite!
Michael Cleveland is a true fan and student of the old bluegrass masters, so you can really here the ghost of Benny Martin in his playing. He's got the smoothness and all the old Benny licks in there, plus a few of his own.
Now to round out this video sequence of Me and My Fiddle is the Texas style version, performed by Bubba Hopkins. As you can see the Texas version takes out a lot of the flash from the bluegrass version, eliminating many of the difficult double stops and running fifths. It still sounds great though and fits in perfectly with that Texas groove.
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