An attempt to conjure a golden September from this year’s grey English summer – if we all play it like mad, the sun will come out!
My beautiful namesake tune is from Playford’s Dancing Master of 1651. Two very different arrangements – it is traditionally played with the A and B parts in different time signatures. And (might have guessed!) any tune involving women and fruit had sexual connotations. Who knew…
Leveret
Andy Cutting (melodeon), Rob Harbron (concertina), Sam Sweeney (fiddle)
The tune is on Leveret’s 2015 CD New Anything, available from their website.
Leveret are touring in the UK in October – starting with a gem of a format: an acoustic set, performed in the round. Cecil Sharp House, 1 October. Details and booking here. Don’t miss it! Full tour dates here (scroll down to Gigs/Autumn Tour 2015).
Blowzabella
Andy Cutting (diatonic button accordion, triangle), Jo Freya (vocals, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, whistle), Paul James (border bagpipes, soprano and alto saxophones, whistle), Gregory Jolivet (alto hurdy-gurdy), Dave Shepherd (violin, octave violin), Barn Stradling (acoustic bass guitar, octave bass guitar), Jon Swayne (border bagpipes, soprano and alto saxophones)
Played here with the traditional time-changes, first in a set with Half Hanniken
This mercurial old-time tune was composed in the 1980s by North Carolina fiddler/luthier Joe Thrift, who named it after a favourite calf. It was first recorded by Joe’s band the Red Hots in 1989, and released on their album Ready to Roll.
A three-part tune, key Em (fiddles in standard tuning). Though it’s usually played fast, it’s not too complicated if you break it down – and it’s such a great tune to play!
Two fiddle videos: first Joe himself (audio plus stills), and then a very clear, slightly slower video of Rachel Eddy (who featured in the previous Fiddletails old-time post).
The old-time database Old Time Frederick has a very clear fiddle audio file from Centralia Parlour Pickers, as well as useful multi-instrumental chord suggestions and audio/video links.
As well as being a wonderful fiddler, Joe Thrift is an acclaimed luthier working in Dobson, North Carolina. You can see more about his violins here.
Rachel Eddy is a great player and teacher of old-time fiddle, banjo and guitar. Watch out for her various workshops in the UK! Her latest CD is Nothin’ but Corn. (Also featured in Fiddletails post Road to Malvern, 16 Aug 2015.)
The many lives of an English hill and its tune: morris meets mediaeval meets mazurka in this varied trio of videos – topped off by a slow audio teaching file.
Idbury Hill is an Iron Age hillfort near the village of Bledington in Oxfordshire, England. The tune is a Cotswold Morris dance tune originating in the village.
Charles Benfield (1841-1929), fiddler with the Bledington Morris in the second half of the nineteenth century. (Portrait by A. van Anrooy*)
Paul Martin (Dunholmpiper) (vielle/mediaeval fiddle)
Lively version – with a belting rhythm section! Paul says he plays mostly in GDGD or GCGD (but nb this is a 5-stringed fiddle…) [Correction: Paul’s instrument is a 4-stringed medieval fidel – see his comment below.]
See also Fiddletails 8 Julyfor details of Laurel’s forthcoming fiddle and multi-instrumental retreats.
* Reproduced under Creative Commons license from The Traditional Tune Archive, which has fascinating notes on the history of the tune and the characters associated with it, including a lovely story about Charles Benfield and his fiddle.
A lovely crooked ‘new’ old-time tune that’s becoming more widely known. The recording below is from the Stockholm session founded by West Virginia old-time fiddle, banjo and guitar player Rachel Eddy.
The tune was composed by another Virginia fiddler, Jim Childress, and named for his wife who was born in Malvern, Arkansas. Jim originally recorded it on the 2004 CD Turkey Sag with old-time stringband Uncle Henry’s Favorites. He plays it cross-tuned (AEAE), but it works very well in standard tuning too.
You can hear more great tunes from the Stockholm sessions at Bengt von Andreae’s Soundcloud page here.
Turkey Sag is available from Jim Childress’s website, from Uncle Henry’s Favorites, and online, including from Amazon where you can also hear a sample of Road to Malvern as originally played.
Rachel Eddy plays fantastic old-time fiddle, banjo and guitar, and is a brilliant teacher – sometimes in the UK, if you’re lucky enough to catch her. Her latest CD is Nothin’ but Corn.
Boldwood play mainly forgotten tunes from 18th century England, painstakingly researched and liberated from lost manuscripts and the extraordinary (to us) phenomenon of dance fans. This 3/2 hornpipe was discovered by Becky Price in an unpublished handwritten manuscript in the British Library.
Boldwood
Becky Price (accordion), Miranda Rutter (fiddle, viola), Matthew Coatsworth (fiddle, viola)
(From Boldwood’s 2012 unreleased second album Mudlarking, available on Soundcloud here.)
The dots for The Miller of Perth are published in The Boldwood Dancing Master, available from the Boldwood website – along with a brilliant new CD – and also on Matthew Coatsworth’s fascinating website ‘English and French Music: an online manuscript’.
For more information and another great Boldwood tune, see Fiddletails post Jackson’s Shaving Brush (June 2015).
This Tennessee old-time tune is simple in structure, but its chiming arpeggios are great fun to play on fiddle and banjo – and hopefully on box/accordion too, which I understand often don’t gel with old-time tunes.
Three videos featured in this post: one solo fiddler, one fiddle/banjo concert performance, and a link to an excellent teaching video.
Newt Payne
Fiddler and banjoist Newt Payne (1904-1977) was born on South Pittsburg Mountain, Tennessee, and worked most of his life as a miner.
The only recordings of his music are on a 2003 CD* by another Tennessee fiddler, Bob Townsend, who heard Newt play as a child. One tune was untitled, so Bob called it Newt Payne’s Tune as it was known as a Payne family tune that Newt used to play at dances. (See banjohangout)
* Old Time Fiddlin’ Tunes From The South Cumberland, available here.
Cross-tuning
Newt Payne’s Tune makes a good introduction to playing fiddle cross-tuned – a traditional feature of American old-time fiddling,with that unmistakable sympathetic ring characteristic of open tunings. All three versions below are in either open G or open A, so you can take your pick of which you’d like to tune to and play along with! (It’s worth noting that fingering is identical in GDGD and AEAE – ie, the same fingering works for the different keys because the tunings are at different pitches.)
Of course, you can still play the tune in standard tuning GDAE, though it will be more difficult to catch the lower drones, and the glorious ring will be lost.
(Note for the financially-challenged: It’s cheaper to play cross-tuned in A (AEAE) as the lower strings are far more forgiving of being tuned back and forth. If you play in cross-tuned in G (GDGD), for example, there’s a tendency for the top string to break once you’ve retuned it back up to E a couple of times.)
(See below for more information on cross-tuning, and blog post ‘Falco’/25.6.2015 for a good English tune to try cross-tuned.)
Katie Henderson (fiddle)
A resounding version in G (fiddle tuned GDGD/Sawmill tuning), recorded for Katie’s long-running, encyclopaedic New Tune A Day project.
Katie’s newtuneaday.blogspot and Youtube channel are stuffed with brilliant tunes, and well worth rummaging around in. She has also compiled a NTAD tunes e-book, available through her blog.
Stephanie Coleman (fiddle), Adam Hurt (banjo)
Adam and Stephanie weave their magic around Newt’s tune at the Sore Fingers Summer School, Oxfordshire, UK, April 2010. (Love that quirky bass line!) Key: G (GDGD/Sawmill tuning)
Click for more information on Stephanie Coleman and Adam Hurt. (Adam will be teaching banjo at American Banjo Camp 2015, 11-13 September, at the stunning Fort Flagler State Park, Nordland, Washington State.)
Sophie Enloe (fiddle), Maggie Lind (banjo), Patrick Lind (guitar)
A really clear and well-paced teaching video here, produced by a trio of tutors from the Portland Old Time Stringband Class. (I’ll embed the video once I’ve received full permissions from all players). Key: A (AEAE/cross-tuned).
Fingering note: unlike standard tuning, the fingering here plays the same notes (an octave apart) on both pairs of strings. (It’s worth noting that fingering is identical in GDGD and AEAE – ie, the same fingering plays in different keys because the tunings are at different pitches.)
The Portland Old Time Stringband Class YouTube channel habibanola has many old-time videos, with more accessible via their website neighborlymusic.net.
So you thought you could play violin…? – cross-tunings for those hell-bent on going over to the dark side:
Perhaps my favourite tune in the whole wide, sky-filled world.
Paul James’s wild rant*, named for falcons, whirls and tumbles and jinks like the Red Kites I watched playing on the Ridgeway thermals near Monks Risborough one summer evening.
Two videos: the first, dancetastic band Blowzabella recording the tune for their album Strange News; the second, Paul’s teaching video.
Blowzabella
Several of the band’s musicians are multi-instrumentalists. The line-up here is:
Andy Cutting (triangle), Jo Freya (bass clarinet), Paul James (bagpipes), Gregory Jolivet (hurdy-gurdy), Dave Shepherd (violin), Barn Stradling (acoustic bass guitar), Jon Swayne (bagpipes)
Paul teaching Falco on border pipes, fast and slow; first in F, then in G from 4:38.
(Note to fiddlers: I like to play this tuned GDGD – gets a little of that pipes/gurdy drone sound. However, E strings don’t last long with all that tuning back up again, so if you want to play cross-tuned, perhaps best to use AEAE, and stick to standard tuning if you want to play along with Paul’s pipes or other non A-friendly instrument.)
(‘Paul James of Blowzabella playing the tune “Falco” on border bagpipes’ YouTube video, 8:58. Posted by Paul James, 28 Nov 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aICsx8Ig820)
* Rant: a dance with a rhythmic, percussive step (not someone having a right go on social-media!)
For more information on Blowzabella’s gigs, recordings etc – and the fantastic all-dancing, all-playing Blowzabella Days:
This candidate for my Best Title Ever award dates from about 1800. It’s played here in a set with Wedding Shoes.
Boldwood
Becky Price (accordion), Miranda Rutter (fiddle, viola), Matthew Coatsworth (fiddle, viola)
Boldwood’s core repertoire stems from forgotten tunes played back into life from obscure manuscripts dating largely from 18th century England – a wondrous musical era when, their website says, “the worlds of folk and classical music happily co-existed and inspired each other to produce rich and fascinating instrumental music”.
This recording is from the group’s 2012 unreleased second album Mudlarking, available on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/boldwood)
They have a new EP out, full of wonderfully earwormy tunes; and their first CD, the dance-inducing Feet, Don’t Fail Me Now, is a real treat. For details of how to get your hands on a copy, see their website: http://www.boldwood.org
The dots for Jackson’s Shaving Brush can be found in The Boldwood Dancing Master – a musical treasure-trove of over 70 tunes available from the website. The cover photo alone taught me things I didn’t know about all those Austen balls: next time I’m in Oxford, in the Ashmolean, I’ll tear myself away from my old friends the Stradivarius guitar and Powhatan’s Mantle and the mediaeval bishops’ rings, and make the acquaintance of Dance Fan for the Year 1789!
Every couple of weeks or so I feature a tune that's caught my fancy – audio/video clips of brilliant musicians playing great, perhaps uncommon tunes to learn by ear. Most are from the English and American Old-time traditions; some hail from other musical worlds ‒ Scandi, perhaps, or French. But whatever you play ‒ fiddles or frets, free-reeds or fipples ‒ I hope you enjoy catching these wonderful tunes!
Jenny Glover's FIDDLETAILS 