Annotation:Fireman's Dance Cotillion (The)
Tune properties and standard notation
FIREMAN'S DANCE COTILLION, THE. American, Cotillion (cut time). USA, Pennsylvania. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody may or may not be based on the similarly-titled "Philadelphia Fireman's Cotillion (The)", an 1822 composition by Philadelphia African-American composer Francis Johnson (1792-1844). See also "Fireman's Quickstep", which may also be a derivative tune in the first strain, albeit obscure. There was a "Fireman's Dance" published in Trifet's Cornucopia of Music (1888) that has a first strain that is derivative of Johnson's tune, and this may perhaps be the ultimate source for Kirkhuff's tune. Directions for a "Fireman's Dance" were also published in Henry Ford's Good Morning: Music, Calls and Directions for Old-Time Dances (1943), but that tune is a version of Johnson's cotillion.
Source for notated version: fiddler Jehile Kirkhuff (Pa.) [Phillips].
Printed sources: Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), vol. 2, 1995; p. 50.
Recorded sources: