Saturday, July 18, 2026

Tiple vs. tipple blues

Does anyone hear a tiple on this recording, or have a picture of the Allen Brothers holding one?

It sounds to me that the Allen Brothers recording of the "Tiple Blues" was made with a guitar and a tenor banjo or banjo-mandolin, but record labels and artificial intelligence agents on YouTube spell the word with one letter P, and some conclude that the song is about the Martin (or Regal, etc.) Tiple, a 10-string instrument tuned like a ukulele, first sold in the 1920s and '30s. 

I just had a conversation with an A.I. stream at YouTube insisting that the Allen brothers played the tiple, and that there are discography sources that make that claim. 

I have never seen a picture of them with a tiple, and since the song lyrics that give the song its title are a reference to coal mining, it seems pretty clear to me that the song is about a coal tipple, a coal loading and sorting station.

"Ain't gonna work on no tipple, ain't gonna load no coal," makes no sense if it is talking about a ukulele.

Meanwhile, there is a fascinating Kentucky Ramblers recording of a very similar song from around the same time under the title Ginseng Blues, which replaces working on a tipple with digging ginseng, another Appalachian occupation.

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