Soldiers Joy by Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers

 If you are looking for a song that makes you want to throw on a pair of overalls and head to the local hayfield for a square dance Soldiers Joy is the song for you. This song comes from the early 1900's and listening to it is a history lesson in the culture of the time. One of the first lines of the song states "Don't Let Them Dance On Your New Carpet You Make Them Roll It Up" this is an interesting statement because in todays society when we think of carpet we think of fabric that has stapled down to the floor while in this song they are talking about rugs which were probably expensive at the time and easily damaged. So having people dance around on them was likely less than desirable. A majority of this song is instrumental with very little lyrics. This shows that this song was meant to be background to dancing and very little was meant by the lyrics. The key instruments in this song are the violin and the banjo. Both have a very quick tempo so you know the dance that went along with the song was also very fast. This song has the lyrics "Grasshopper siting on a sweat potato vine" I believe these lyrics were put into the song as something that the majority of listeners could connect with. In this time period many people were farmers so things like Grasshoppers were a common thing to them. Near the end of the song the author talks about how much a beer costs. I find it funny how even in today's country music almost every song has to do with drinking a beer.