Annotation:California Hornpipe (1)
Tune properties and standard notation
CALIFORNIA HORNPIPE [1]. AKA and see "California Dance," "Limber Neck Blues," "Mason-Dixon Schottische," "Nightingale (Clog) (2)," "Parkersburg Landing," "Peacock Rag," "Rustic Dance-Scottische (3)," "Rustic Hornpipe," "Starlight Clog." American, Hornpipe. F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The name California was given to the land on the Pacific coast of North America, supposedly by Cortez, who officially called it Santa Cruz. Cortez mistakenly thought the rather parched bit of real estate was an island (i.e. Baja California) and he and his men began to refer to it as California after a Spanish romance book about an island populated by women. There is a "California Hornpipe" in Kohler's Violin Repository (Edinburgh 1881-1885), credited there to the great 19th century Tyneside, Newcastle, fiddler and composer James Hill, but it is a different tune (see "California Hornpipe (2)"). Since Hill died in the early 1850's one might surmise the name of the tune was inspired by the California Gold Rush of 1849.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; p. 113. Ryan's Mammoth Collection, 1883; p. 150.
Recorded sources: