Little Brown Jug (Instrumental) Ukulele Play Along

For educational use. Optimized for GCEA ukulele. Key of C.

As performed by the Ozark Old Time Music Fiddle Band.

Every now and then, you find a song that appears to be a part of the standard repertoire, and then you start to look at the words and realize that you couldn’t use the song in a school setting. That’s the case with the Little Brown Jug—you can’t escape the meaning of the jug being full of whisky, or verses about drinking in general. I found a couple of versions of the song that had cleaned up words—but we know better. I saw that this is part of the Hal Leonard Ukulele Method, and on one of the ukulele forums just saw a few people writing about how this was the first song they learned. It has also become a jazz standard...pretty amazing for a song written in 1868 (listen to Tom Roush’s version for an idea of the original lyrics, as well as Glenn Miller’s version).

What we can do is play the music for the music (without the lyrics), and I used the Ozark Old Time Music Fiddle Band’s version for the play along.

One of the oldest trophies in college football is the Little Brown Jug, which goes to the victor of the Michigan/Minnesota football game. As I am a alumnus of the University of Minnesota (Ski U Mah) [PhD, 2006], I featured the paint job of the Little Brown Jug (on one of the rare occasions that the University of Minnesota has beaten the University of Michigan) as the “bouncing ball icon”.

Check out the Ukulele Video Play Along Podcast, where I talk about ukulele education and my own ukulele experiences. Available on Apple Podcasts and Google Play.