Vivian T. Williams's board-to-board with Andrew

Hi Vivian. Do you known if Myllie Barron's "Tina's Schottische" is the same tune as Don Messer's "Tina's Scottische"? The version I have at the TTA is in a Messer book from 1949, but the liner notes from Barron indicate "Composed by Alfred Bernowich a Serbian-born musician whom Myllie knew in Flin Flon, and named after Alfred's daughter." Sounds like they may be different tunes, but do have/can't access Barron's recording to tell if they're different.

Duplicate removed. I'm perfectly glad to do "admin" things like this anytime, but I'll point out that since you have administrator rights you can also edit. At the bar on the top of the TTA page (where it says "Traditional Tune Archive" on the left) you'll see a star, and to the right of the star are three dots. If you click on the dots it brings down a menu the included "Delete" and "Move". You can delete any page using that.

I noticed that my friend Mimi Boothby uploaded Culcuttie hornpipe after I had already done so, duplicating my page but with less accurate information. So the duplicate version needs to be deleted, and I don't know how to do that. I just added some more information to my version of the tune page; mine has both title words capitalized whereas she didn't capitalize "hornpipe."

Hi Vivian. Thought you'd like to know that I found a version of your Peter Beemer's "Evening Star Waltz" in a c. 1851 ms. from a man named Isaac Homan, from Bellport, Long Island. The tune got around! Its on the TTA with Peter's at "Evening Star Waltz [3]".

Thanks Vivian. Not the first time you've corrected my typos! Much appreciated.

P.S. I didn't put up the cross-tuned tunes or the solo version of Home Sweet Home at the end of the Adam/MelBay book, because I'm not good enough with abc's to deal with drones, left hand pizzicati, and other such complexities!

Actually what I have is the 1977 Mel Bay reprint, under the title of "Old Time Fiddle Solos." Apparently 6 tunes at the beginning of the Adam book were omitted from this reprint, and the tunes aren't numbered, which is why I didn't put in page or tune numbers. And I suspect that the chords in the Mel Bay book weren't in the original. It is still available, about $10 online.

Vivian, I'm so happy to see the Adam volume tunes go up on the TTA! I've searched for years for a copy of that issue, with no luck. I tried interlibrary loan, and local universities, but no one had a copy. Its frequently cited, and now its on the TTA -- Thanks!

Thanks, Vivian. This is useful information and helpful. I am acquainted with Frank from several workshops I've taken with him, and I'll write to him. He's a storehouse of information, so maybe he'll have some on Daley's as will.

Very interesting question about Dailey’s/Daley’s/Daly’s Reel! It is the same tune that Joe Pancerzewski recorded; the “Fiddling Moods” LP was issued in 1980. The Joe Greene recording is from 1969. Over the years the tune has become a standard among Western contest fiddlers and others; it’s hard to say which record was most influential locally: Joe G., Joe P., or Kenny Baker’s 1979 LP.

I have Joe Greene’s LP, and this is what the liner notes say: “Daley’s Reel and Money Musk are both Northern pieces. Daley’s Reel is a traditional Canadian tune, while Money Musk is played throughout New England and Canada and is derived from an English tune of the same name.” The liner notes were written by someone named Robert C. Fleder, who I don’t know anything about except that he also wrote the liner notes to the Stripling Brothers LP on County.

Other circumstantial evidence that it may be “traditional Canadian:”

I still have a copy of the description notes from the accumulated tapes that Phil and I recorded over the years, although the actual tapes are now at the State Historical Society of Missouri. Included is information for a tape labeled “Joe Pancerzewski Archive Tape [ca. 1973??]” where Joe plays Daley’s along with a bunch of Canadian and North Dakota tunes. Although it’s possible that he learned it from the Joe Greene LP (and Joe P. didn’t hesitate to learn tunes from any source, including several Kenny Baker tunes), the context seems to weigh against that – for an “archive tape” one would think that he would have chosen tunes that he had learned many years before, like most of the other tunes on that tape.

If you go to the Voyager website field recordings at https://www.voyagerrecords.com/nwffrmp3.htm , there’s a recording of a Senior division California fiddler named Alex Lieber playing Daley’s at Weiser, dated 1968. His version doesn’t sound much like Joe Greene’s: it’s much less “notey,” with better-defined phrasing than the bluegrass versions, so it does sound more “northern.” And Mr. Lieber didn’t get the tune from Joe Pancerzewski, because Joe P. didn’t get into the contest scene until 1970.

Another item listed in the Voyager tune archive is a jam session at the Astoria, Oregon fiddle contest in 1973 where Frank Ferrel is playing the tune – and at that time he was strictly into Canadian and Irish music. He could have learned it from Joe P. Hmmm, maybe you could e-mail Frank Ferrel and find out where he learned the tune!! His email is fferrel@aol.com .

One thing I did find out – the “Daly’s Reel” written by Joseph Daly and recorded by banjoist Fred Van Eps is a totally different tune, in spite of the occasional erroneous references I found online that called it the “original.”

I hope this is useful.

Hi Vivian-- First, Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you and yours have a good holiday despite the circumstances, and that everyone stays safe. I'm hoping you can help me track down a tune. I started with "Dailey's Reel" recorded by Kenny Baker, and "Daley's Reel" by Joe Greene, both recorded in the late 1970's. It was picked up by Fiddle Fever, and then crossed the sea and was recorded by Dermot Byrne and Pauline Cato (as "Daly's Reel"). It seems to have gotten around. I see that Joe Pancerzewski recorded a "Daly's Reel" on VRLP 327-S ("The Fiddling Moods of Joe Pancerzewski"), but I don't know if its the same reel or not, or when the recording was issued (prior to Baker?). I have a note that Joe Greene said it was Canadian in origin, but I can't trace it. Do you know anything about it? Thanks!

Looks like a different tune. I separated them out and added the first several bars of "Bohemian Polka (1)" to the TTA to illustrate.

I just posted "The Celebrated Polka Dance" a.k.a. "Bohemian Polka." I don't have the "Plain Brown Tunebook," so I don't know if this is the same tune as the "Bohemian Polka" already up on TTA. On the one hand, the key and number of parts are different; on the other hand, the date of the London Illustrated Times publication of the tune and its subsequent popularity hint that it might be the same tune. I didn't put (2) on the alternate title - but I might have guessed wrong! If so, please fix! Thanks.

Done! Thanks for the heads up Vivian.

Oopsy, found another typo that I can't fix. The title of Blue Skirt Waltz is mis-spelled!

Thanks! The latest bunch of tunes is from a messy and long-neglected file drawer, containing an accumulation of exceedingly miscellaneous tunes on unbound sheets of paper. Some of them are handwritten, some of them were sent to me decades ago by people I don't even remember, some were copied from unidentified books, some are clippings from fiddle association newsletters, many of them are total mysteries as to how I got them! Lots of fun, I never know what's going to turn up next!

Done! Embarrassing misspelling corrected! Thanks for the heads up. I'm finding your contributions to the TTA extremely interesting, Vivian. You're filling in a large region of fiddling that desperately needed more representation in the index.

I just added the complete score to Centennial Waltz. The title of the tune in the already existing entry is mis-spelled, and I can't fix it. I guess there's one advantage to all this lock-down and social isolation stuff; it allows more time for playing with the TTA!

So right! Thanks for brining the confusion of the St. Kilda's to my attention Vivian. I separated them out now.

Yikes, I found a big fat mistake in TTA that is beyond my ability to fix. The entry for "The St. Kilda Wedding" has the wrong tune in it. "St. Kilda's Reel" is a totally unrelated tune. So I didn't want to just graft the real St Kilda Wedding score and info into that entry, because it's in a different key and the history is different. But I don't have the ability to change the tune title, or the confidence to move all the info into a new tune entry for "St. Kilda's Reel." And I don't want to create a new tune entry for The St. Kilda Wedding because that would be hopelessly confusing.

We'll clean up the coding, Vivian, and glad to do it. Thanks for posting such interesting material. When I accessed the Mount material at the Long Island Museum I did not find "notebooks" per se, rather I found a large amount of single sheet music, or a couple of pages tied together at a time. There was a lot of it, but it wasn't organized (by either him or the museum). They vaguely told me at the time that his "notebooks" may have been lent to another researcher, but they didn't seem to know very much about them. Perhaps they were just putting me off, but they allowed me to photocopy whatever I wanted, and I did copy quite a bit. I got the impression that, like me, he had a lot of music lying around, with perhaps only his "working repertoire" organized and the rest just shoved into folders. Anyway, I'll look to see if the Cachuca tune is among them. I also got to play his "Cradle of Harmony" violin -- his attempt at improving the instrument--but I wasn't particularly impressed. It hadn't been played in a while, and maybe it would open up with some playing.

I’ve just posted a bunch of info about “Fanny Elsler’s Spanish Chacuca” on TTA, plus I added a waltz tune derived from it, “My Daddy Was a Dutchman” (among many other names) as a separate tune. Naturally, since I am techno-ignorant, there are some problems with my entries – they don’t want to link to other TTA tune titles (except where I didn’t want them to, and I “fixed” that by adding (2) to the title), and there are some extraneous weird things like <brdata-mce-bogus="1" /> that I can’t get rid of. I’m sure that you guys will have no trouble fixing these minor issues!

I’m curious about another version of the tune, which seems to be intermediate between these two tunes. It’s William Sidney Mount’s version, where the second part of the tune sounds similar to the “My Daddy Was a Dutchman” version, rather than the original Cachucha. This is very odd, since Mount attended one of Elssler’s performance in 1840 or 1841 and wrote down the tune from his memory of that performance. I have written down abc’s of what I heard from the Smithsonian “Cradle of Harmony” recording. But the violinist, Gilbert Ross, plays so un-rhythmically that it’s hard to know where the first beat of the bar actually is! You have had access to Mount’s notebooks; do you have a copy of his version of the tune?

This is my interpretation of what Ross played:

X:1 T:La Cachuca second part % from William Sidney Mount M:3/4 L:1/8 K:G F GA|B3Ac2|B4 G2|B2c2d2|e2dc BA|A2^G2B2|A4 AA|A2B2c2|e2d2BB| B2A2c2|B4 G2|B2c2d2|e2d2 AB|A2^G2 B2|A4^G2|A2B2c2|e2d2||

I love the Arcand tunes, Vivan, and play a couple. I'm looking forward to playing through the ones you recently posted. We play "Grey Owl" in our Quebec session, and I play "Deer Hunting Song", which is more of a march than a reel. Crooked, but melodic. Anyway, I think he's a very fine, underrated, tunesmith.

Vivian, what great information you found for "Helter Skelter"! I love these kind of cross-genre/transnational connections. Great sluething on your part!

Hi Vivian, you can always post the tunes anyway, even if they don't display the way you want them to. Valerio or I will troubleshoot the abc's so they are correct for the TTA.