Brian “Hawk” Hubbard (1952–2024) collected this tune from Otis Reynolds (1899–1992)  at a gas station in Geff, Illinois, in December of 1977. You can read his account of the day by clicking through to the video on YouTube:

The tune as played by Reynolds is very different from how I’m playing it here, having been through at least two significant transformations. Here’s how Hawk Hubbard’s band The SkirtLifters played it:

From there, it went to Chirps Smith, who I don’t have a recording of playing it, unfortunately. By the time it got from him to the Canote Brothers’ string band class, though, it had morphed again:

(Recording via stringband.mossyroof.com)

This is how I heard it recently when someone on a Facebook fiddling group asked if anyone had sheet music for it. There must be people who play this tune locally, since it’s a Canote class tune, but I’d never heard it or even heard of it until then. It caught my fancy, I transcribed it for the fiddler who’d asked for it, and thought it would be a good Tune of the Month here.

Pond Creek is in southern Illinois, I believe in the area sometimes called “Little Egypt” (where the tune “Down in Little Egypt” comes from). Its bottoms, the land near the stream with nutrient-rich deposits from its meandering, was the site of the ambush of a member of a notorious gangster family in 1947, which may be why it has a tune named after it.