[[File:Carroll County Blues.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Don Richardson]]
|f_tune_name=Colonel McBain's
"Carroll County Blues" was the Mississippi fiddle and guitar duo Narmour and Smith's biggest hit recording. The original melody is said to have been composed by fiddler Will Narmour (1889-1961) and was named for his home county, Carroll County, north-central Mississippi, but whether Narmour actually composed it is in dispute. Narmour, however, did record the tune with a man named Shell (Sherril) Smith, whose wife, it has been written, recalled that Narmour may have heard the tune either being whistled by a black farmer (according to David Freeman), or hummed by a black field hand (remembers Henry Young). This farmer claimed authorship and called the tune "Carroll County Blues." Narmour and Smith then "worked the tune out," presumably meaning that they arranged it for fiddle and guitar. Narmour is known to have been friendly with black bluesman Mississippi John Hurt, who lived in nearby Avalon. It has also been maintained, ostensibly by older community members in Avalon, that Narmour's mentor, Gene Clardy, an older local fiddler, was the one who composed "Carroll County Blues." However, the story about the black farmer is also disputed, and, further, it may be that Gene Clardy neither wrote nor played the tune.
Gary Stanton, in his article "All Counties Have Blues: County Blues as an Emergent Genre of Fiddle Tunes in Eastern Mississippi" ('''North Carolina Folklore Journal''', vol. 28, no. 2, Nov. 1980), points out that the tune is not what one would consider to be in conventional twelve or sixteen bar blues, but was rather built on several 'riffs' (melodic statements) separated by long held notes or a contrasting musical figure. This results in a piece which has alternations of motion and repose, that Stanton contrasts with Anglo-American fiddling, which is almost constant melodic and rhythmic motion. Joseph Scott points out that:
|f_notes=The tune was first recorded by Galway melodeon player Peter Conlon in 1921, under the title "McBan's Reel" (thought the different spelling may be due to an error by the record company).
<blockquote>
|f_caption= Annotated index of all four volumes of the Goodman collection
''It seems to be fairly widely accepted among old time music enthusiasts''
in the order of the manuscripts by Hugh & Lisa Shields.
''that Narmour and Smith's "Carroll County Blues" is not a "true blues,"''
''increasingly dominated within blues over the decades... "Carroll County Blues"''
'' is based on the same basic progression, the 8-bar I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I, as were ''
''some 'Blues' by 'black' Mississippi musicians born around the same era, such ''
''as "Sundown Blues by Alec Johnson, "Pretty Mama Blues" by Cannon's Jug ''
''Stompers, and "Vicksburg Blues" by Scott Dunbar.''
</blockquote>
In addition the tune features 'blues notes', flattened thirds and sevenths slurred into the natural note. The timing is rather odd (ten measures in the 'A' part instead of the usual eight, among other irregularities) with respect to the majority of fiddle tunes, but despite this Freeman (1975) says it has become one of the most famous fiddle tunes in the United States. He notes it was mentioned in Talking Machine World, an old trade paper, as having been one of the biggest selling records of 1929. Narmour recorded other "Carroll County Blues" tunes (see abc's below) attempting to ride the popularity of "Carroll County Blues #1" but they never achieved such widespread acclaim as the first. Due to its popularity #1 was covered by a great many fiddlers, including Kentuckian Doc Roberts (it appears that the Gennett company gave a copy of Narmour's recording to Roberts and told him to learn it for their next recording session). Subsequently, it has been found in local fiddlers' repertoires throughout the South and Mid-West. As previously mentioned, the 'A' part is irregular, though Phillips notes that Narmour sometimes omits the 2/4 time measures (in an otherwise 4/4 tune) or adds two beats to them, so that his performance can be considered inconsistent as well, a not uncommon phenomenon among traditional fiddlers who seldom play a tune the same way twice. "Carroll County Blues" also seems to be related to bluesman Furry Lewis' "Turn Your Money Green." Other than Narmour & Smith's 1929 recording, another early version was by the Doc Roberts Trio (1933). S'
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[[Annotation:Carroll County Blues|CARROLL COUNTY BLUES full Score(s) and Annotations]] and [[Featured_Tunes_History|Past Featured Tunes]]
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The reel's popularity was not confined to Scotland for we find it named '[[Duke of Clarence Reel (The)]]' in Lavenu's '''New Country Dances for the Year 1798''', published at London. "Colonel Mac Bean's Reel" is also contained in vol. 2 (p. 156)[http://goodman.itma.ie/volume-two#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=159&z=1464.1112%2C852.6783%2C7429.8284%2C2584.8765] of the large c. mid-19th century music manuscript collection of County Cork cleric and uilleann piper [[wikipedia:James Goodman (musicologist)|James Goodman]], who had obtained it from a manuscript provided him by Dublin bookseller John O'Daly, according to Hugh & Lisa Shields[https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/prints.itma.ie/goodman/TMP_Full_index_March_2022.pdf] (Goodman's "Miss Westrop's Reel", in volume 1 of his mss. is cognate with "Colonel McBain's" in the first strain only).
The reel also was entered in to Goodman's contemporary, fiddler and piper [[biography:Stephen Grier|Stephen Grier]] (c. 1824-1894) x, 1883 music manuscript collection as "Captain McBain."
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A setting of this noted reel as played by the experts of the Irish Music Club of Chicago may be found on page 116 of O'Neill's '''Dance Music of Ireland'''.
[[File:Carroll County Blues.mp3|thumb|left|Carroll County Blues]] {{break|4}}
{{#lst:Carroll_County_Blues|abc}}
In composition and fluency of rhythm the variant above presented compares very favorably with the original especially when given expression on the fiddle in the inimitable style of the genial Paddy Stack from whom the manuscript was obtained."
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Latest revision as of 19:29, 9 March 2025
Annotated index of all four volumes of the Goodman collection in the order of the manuscripts by Hugh & Lisa Shields.Colonel McBain's
Played by: Hasse Jonsson Source: Soundcloud Image: The tune was first recorded by Galway melodeon player Peter Conlon in 1921, under the title "McBan's Reel" (thought the different spelling may be due to an error by the record company).
The reel's popularity was not confined to Scotland for we find it named 'Duke of Clarence Reel (The)' in Lavenu's New Country Dances for the Year 1798, published at London. "Colonel Mac Bean's Reel" is also contained in vol. 2 (p. 156)[1] of the large c. mid-19th century music manuscript collection of County Cork cleric and uilleann piper James Goodman, who had obtained it from a manuscript provided him by Dublin bookseller John O'Daly, according to Hugh & Lisa Shields[2] (Goodman's "Miss Westrop's Reel", in volume 1 of his mss. is cognate with "Colonel McBain's" in the first strain only).
The reel also was entered in to Goodman's contemporary, fiddler and piper Stephen Grier (c. 1824-1894) x, 1883 music manuscript collection as "Captain McBain."
A setting of this noted reel as played by the experts of the Irish Music Club of Chicago may be found on page 116 of O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland.
In composition and fluency of rhythm the variant above presented compares very favorably with the original especially when given expression on the fiddle in the inimitable style of the genial Paddy Stack from whom the manuscript was obtained."
