Tackle a Challenging Arrangement of “Spotted Pony” by the Late, Great Guitarist Dudley Hill

Dudley Hill was an eclectic guitarist from Washington state, well known among traditional swing and gypsy jazz circles, and a founding member of the internationally celebrated band Pearl Django. A wide net of esteemed guitarists have praised Hill’s playing, including Scott Nygaard, who called him “one of the best guitarists I’ve known,” and Greg Ruby, who told me, “He could swing like nobody else.” But before becoming involved in the jazz scene, Hill was first a flatpicker. He released one fantastic solo album, From a Northern Family (1976), that featured a cast of great musicians including renowned fiddler Benny Thomasson. It’s a wonderful record, and in my opinion, one of the finest examples of fiddle music arranged for guitar.

If Hill’s name sounds familiar, it may be because I featured his story in the March/April 2021 issue of this magazine. In that column I described Hill’s unique arrangement of “Sally Ann,” which uses an open-G tuning. There is much more that can be gleaned from the record. One of my personal favorite tracks is the second on the A side, the traditional Missouri fiddle tune “Spotted Pony.” 

Dudley Hill and Mark O’Connor, Photo by Marty O’Connor from Mark O’Connor’s book ‘A Musical Childhood in Pictures’Hill’s rendition of “Spotted Pony” sounds straightforward but is deceptively tricky: the phrases start and end in places you don’t expect, and the notes twist and swirl around each other in ways that the fingers don’t always agree with. There are a lot of jumps between strings—for example, bar 15 covers five of the six strings all within a single measure. This is not an easy tune to play, so make sure to take it slow, memorizing one measure at a time and giving it the dedication that it deserves.

Hill’s recording places the capo on the third fret, resulting in the key of Eb, but most fiddlers will play this tune in D, so I’d recommend learning it with capo at the second fret. Notice that the A section is all in the open position (open strings and frets 1–4), and largely outlines the shape of an open C chord. The beginning of the B section uses a slide with the third finger along the fourth string to transition to the third position (frets 3–6) for one measure before quickly returning to the open position in bar 11. 

The goal for the right hand is alternating picking, where downstrokes are used to strike the string on the beats and upstrokes are used in between the beats (pick directions are provided in the notation). There are a number of slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs throughout, and these fretting-hand techniques help give the right hand a little bit of a break. These slurs are how Hill plays the tune on the record, but you may choose to drop them or add more depending on your own preferences.

Ruby, who played alongside Hill for several years in Pearl Django, says that Hill continued finding musical inspiration up until his untimely passing in 2005, and that he would spend nearly all his gig money at festivals purchasing CDs from other artists. Let’s pay this same high level of respect back to Hill by resurrecting his album and finding some inspiration in these timeless tunes.