Annotation:Red Shoes (The)

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RED SHOES, THE. Canadian, Reel. Canada; Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton. A Minor (MacQuarrie): A Mixolydian (Fitzgerald). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. "The Red Shoes" was composed by Cape Breton fiddler and composer biography:Dan R. MacDonald (1911-1976), the first tune he composed (as he told Allister MacGillivary (quoted in his The Cape Breton Fiddler). The title of the reel was inspired by a pair of homemade shoes fashioned by Angus D. MacEachern of Glendale, Cape Breton., which the maker had stained a bright crimson with Sherwin-Williams paint. MacDonald evidently composed it as a minor-mode tune, as it appears in MacQuarrie's The Cape Breton Collection (1940), had minor intervals throughout, but it can be played in dorian mode (one sharp), and Winston Fitzgerald set it in mixolydian mode (2 sharps), or pipe tuning. In its mixolydian form (a la Fitzgerald) it remains a popular and frequently recorded reel among Cape Breton musicians.

Source for notated version: Francis MacDonald (b. 1940, Morell Rear, North-East Kings County, Prince Edward Island) [Perlman]; Winston Fitzgerald (1914-1987, Cape Breton) [Cranford].

Printed sources: Cranford (Winston Fitzgerald’s Collection), 1997; No. 90, p. 38. MacQuarrie (The Cape Breton Collection), 1940; p. 50. Perlman (The Fiddle Music of Prince Edwards Island), 1996; p. 105. Shears (Cape Breton Collection of Bagpipe Music),

Recorded sources: Rounder Records 7008, "Jerry Holland" (197?).

See also listing at:
Alan Snyder's Cape Breton Fiddle Recording Index [1]
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [2]
Hear Natalie MacMaster and Buddy MacMaster play the tune on youtube.com [3]