Annotation:Jim Shanks

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JIM SHANK(S). AKA - "Jimmy Shenk, "Jimmy Shanks." American, Reel (cut time). A Major. AEae tuning (fiddle). AA'BB'. A southern Kentucky tune in the repertoire of fiddler Bruce Greene, from his field recording of the playing of Tennessee fiddler Sam Dyer. See also the similar tune "Henry Richmond." Kerry Blech suspects the title may have derived from a mishearing of 'Gin Seng'. Source Dyer was from Macon County, Tennessee, northeast of Nashville, in the upper Cumberland Plateau on the border with southern Kentucky. Boyd Deering wrote in the Macon County Times a few years ago: "Sam Dyer was approaching eighty years in 1975 and had played Tennessee fiddle tunes all his life. He played old tunes like “Jim Shanks,” and Sam played them differently from dad and Harry Flippen and some of the other fiddle players in Macon County, Tennessee. Sam would complain about the Grand Ole Opry and it's commercial leanings. He longed for the old days and was quick to express this sentiment" ^[1]

Additional notes

Source for notated version: - Sam Dyer (Macon County, north-central Tennessee) [Milliner & Koken].

Printed sources : - Milliner & Koken (Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes), 2011; p. 335.

Recorded sources: -New Timey 2003, Ken Bloom and Harry Bollick - "That Banjo from Hell: Fiddle Tunes & Uncivil Songs of Conflict."

See also listing at:
Hear Sam Dyer play the tune in a 1972 field recording by Bruce Greene at Berea Sound Archies [1] and Slippery Hill [2]
See Donald Borchelt's banjo tab [3]

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↑ quoted by Donald J. Borchelt [4].

[1] quoted by Donald J. Borchelt [4].

[1]