Folk Music of the United States: American Fiddle Tunes AFS
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FOLK MUSIC OF THE UNITED STATES Music Division Recording Laboratory AFS L62 American Tunes From the Archive of Folk Song Edited by Alan Jabbour LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON INTRODUCTION Traditional fiddling in America has its reper and record s have brought into their homes. torial and stylistic roots in the British Isles of the This record ing feat ures a small selectio n of eighteenth century, where, in sofar as the written older traditional fiddl e tunes from various parts record may be trusted, elemen ts of the part icul ar of the country. It can hardl y convey the amazin g cultural milieu conspired to generate a new cl ass variety of older traditional styles and repertory, of instrumental tun es out of the ancient stock of and it does not even attem pt to represent modern British folk melody and the new leaven of the developments in A merica n fiddling. But it can Baroque violin. T hi s new class of tunes proved perhaps se rve as a useful introduction to tradi· to be so popular and so te nacious that it ab tional fiddling fo r the scholar, student, or en sorbed and survived dozens of subsequent dance thusiast whose exposure has been limited to and instrumental vogues through the nineteenth books, co mmercia l recordings, and fiddl ers' co n and well into the twentieth century, creating in ve ntions, none of which co nvey adequately the meanwhile th ousa nds of tun es patterned on what a diligent collector is apt to enco unter on the earl y models. Indeed, a number of indi visits to the homes of older traditional fi ddlers. vidu al instrument al tunes th at fo und their way A ll th e tunes of thi s reco rd are fro m instan int o print in later eightee nth centu ry Brit ish taneous disc recordings made in the 1930s and publications not onl y survived but fl ourished 1940s by the staff of the Archi ve of Folk Song in folk tradition up to the present day. or by independent scholars who contributed The fidd le, whi ch was the most favored instru their work to the Archi ve. Nearly all the items ment for this class of tu nes, was brought to we re record ed in the fie ld, frequentl y under diffi America by British se ttlers and quickl y took cult conditions. Side A of the record fea tures hold. The vari ous A merican trad itional styles fidd lers from the Nort h, Mid wes t, and West; of playing the instru ment suggest that Irish and side B featu res the South. The styles range fro m Scottish or North Country influences predomin intricate to sim ple, fl uid to choppy, metricall y ate despite the numerical dominance of English regul ar to sy ncopated , and the technical abilit y settlers; groups with strong mu sical traditions ranges fro 111 dazzling to prosa ic. M ost of the may be expected to exert an influence out of popular or once-popular forms are represe nted pro portion to thei r numeri ca l strength . 1fi sh reel or breakdown, hornpipe, jig, quadrille, influence in repertory and style seems espec iall y schottische, highl and fling, and quickstep-but stro ng, but the co rrelation is not easy to reco n a few are omitted, co nsp icuously th e waltz, slow struct, for the branches of the traditional tree march in 4/4, and so ng ai r. have fl owered in different ways. Whether the The notes supply info rm at ion on the histo ri es va rieties of American fi ddling style preserve Iris h of the tunes a nd add comments on the tech styli stic habits or have developed indigenously nique and style of the pa rticular renditions. The cannot be answered sim ply by I istening to mod lists of tune va ri ant s are by no mean s complete, ern Irish fiddl ers, fo r fidd ling in I rei and cur but they give an idea of the age and geographical rently bears the stamp of Michael Coleman, dist ribution of th e tunes. No text or title va ri ants M ichael Gorm an, and ot hers who culti va te an are included, and I have see n or hea rd every tune intricate style peculi ar to Count y Sligo. The va riant listed. Vari ants fro m published reco rd alchemies of culLure in any case ca n be ex pected ings have been onl y sporadicall y included be to defy simple solution. cause they proba bly had little or no influence on Fiddling remains, in one fo rm or another, one these particul ar fid dlers' rend itions and th eir in of the mos t vita l folk music traditions in America clusion would greatly swell the size of the pam today. Many old er fiddl ers and a few yo ung Ones phl et. To provid e a geographical sampling, how still play the traditional rcpertory that one would eve r, T ha ve included va ri ant s from un publ ished have encountered 50 or even 100 years ago, a nd reco rdings access ioned in th e A rchi ve of Folk many yo ung fid dlers have enthusiasticall y taken Song (AFS) through about 1950. In most cases up variet ies of in strumental m us ic such as blue· the list of va ri ants from the Archi ve co uld be grass or western swing which rad io, telev ision, doubled by in clu ding access ions up to the present day, but this would prove cumbersome. The A special word of thanks is due to seve ral AFS number is the accession number assigned people who ass isted in the preparation of this to the recording in the Archive's catalogs and recording and its notes: Mrs. Rae Korso n, for files, and the last name in an AFS entry is the merly Head of the Archive of Folk Song , init iall y name of the collector. Complete citations to the encouraged me in the project: Joscph Hickef>on, printed sources in the lists may be found in the the Archive's Reference Librarian, lent hi s skill bibliography at the end of the pamphlet. Because in gathering helpful inform ation and read the of its importance in the hi story of the tunes, the acco mpanying pamphlet criticall y in it s earlier original publication date of a reprinted or revised stages; Mrs. Patricia Markland , the Archive"!) work is give n in the list, but other bibliographic I ndexer-Secretary_ labored long over typing and information refers to the later edition. The fol reg ularizing fo rm at in the drafts of the pa m lowing abbreviations are used throughout the phlet: J ohn Howell , Assistant Recording Engi variant li sts: nee r for the Library's Reco rding Laboratory, worked valiantly editing the recording from the acc. accompanied gtr guitar original instantaneous di scs: and Guthrie Meade acen accordion hca harmonica supplied information about variants on early bjo banjo mand mandolin pu blished recordings. dbl bass double bass pno pian o dule dulcimer rec. record ed fdl fiddle vel vocal 2 Ai-FRENCH FOUR [Soldier's Joy]. AFS 4177 1941 by Robert Draves. The recordings include B I. Leizime Brusoe, fiddle, Rhinelander, a few items played by his orchestra, which Wis. , August 31, 1940, Robert F. Draves accompanied him on clarinet, double bass, and and Helene Stratman-Thomas. accordion. It is interesting to note that his tempos for reels and hornpipes are slightly slower when If one were to select the fiddle tune most he plays with the orchestra; possibly he delighted widely known and played in Great Britain and in showing off his splendid technique when he North America, the choice wo uld probably be played alone but relapsed into standard dance "Soldier's Joy." John Glen lists a Scottish publi tempos when bis orchestra accompanied him. cation of the tune in Joshua Campbell's 1779 In any case he is certainly not the only musician collection (see Glen, I, xvii). It appears in nearly to adopt different tempos when asked to play every sizable collection of fiddle tunes from the without the customary accompaniment. nineteenth arid twentieth centuries, usually classed The comments in Robert Draves's field notes as a reel or country dance, and it has passed to "Hornpipe" (AFS 4189 AI) throw some light into circulation on continental Europe (see upon Mr. Brusoe's musicianship and general Bayard, No. 21). The three eighth notes at the end relationship to fiddling tradition: of many of the phrases in printed sets suggest that the tune may originally have been conceived It was over ten years ago that someone at radio station as a hornpipe, but in America, at least, it is WGN set this number, one of Mr. Brusoe's own com generally used for reels, square dances, and other positions, in music notation. Mr. Brusoe produced the group dances; hence the dance title "French mu sic for me (he can't read a nOle) and it was inter esting to discover as I followed the score that there Four" in Leizime Brusoe's version. Sets recorded was not one single departure even after this period of in the field show considerable variation in detail more than ten yea rs. from performer to performer, but the main out lines of the tune are rarely altered.