Annotation:Kitty O'Neill (3)
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KITTY O'NEILL [3]. AKA and see "Old Time Straight Jig," "Away Back," "Snapping Jig." AKA - "Kitty O'Neil." Irish, Reel. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle) . AABB. The first part of the tune appears in the West Texas "Jack of Diamonds." There are some minor similarities with the Lewis Brothers old-time tune "Bull at the Wagon." As "Kitty O'Neil," the tune first appeared in print in Howe's 1000 Jigs and Reels c. 1867 in a group of tunes from the Boston stage fiddler Jimmy Norton, known as "The Boss Jig Player." The tune may have been named for the Dublin-born singer/actress Kitty O'Neil, who was active on the New York and Boston stage in that period. Much of this tune was later incorporated into the seven-part "Kitty O'Neil's Champion" in Ryan's Mammmoth Collection. The Kitty honored in the name of that tune, however, was another performer, a Buffalo native famed for her "sand jig" dancing (see [1]).
Source for notated version: the 1938 typewritten manuscript from New Hampshire musician John Taggart (1854-1943), entitled "Recollections of a Busy Life" (New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, N.H.). Taggart wrote in his ms. that the tunes "were all taught me during my boyhood days in Sharon (N.H.), by the various fiddlers in that vicinity" [Miller]. Miller points out that Sharon is in "the heart of the Monadnock Region of southwestern New Hampshire, where fiddlers and contra dances abound to this day" (pref. iv) [Miller].
Printed sources: Bayard (Hill Country Tunes), 1944; No. 53 (the second part of an untitled quadrille). Bayard (Dance to the Fiddle), 1981; No. 285 (first part of "Saratoga Hornpipe (The)"), pg. 238. Christeson (Old Time Fiddlers Repertory, vol. 1), 1973; No. 37 (the first part of an untitled "breakdown"), p. 28 and No. 23 ("Duncan's Reel"), p. 18. Ford (Traditional Music in America), 1940; p. 82. Harding's All-Round Collection, 1905 & 1932; No. 138 (appears as "Old Time Straight Jig"). Howe (1000 Jigs and Reels), c. 1867; p. 50 (appears as "Kitty O'Neil Jig"). Messer (Anthology of Favorite Fiddle Tunes), 1980; No. 28 (appears as "Away Back"). Miller (Fiddler's Throne), 2004; No. 187, p. 118 (appears as "Kitty O'Neil"). White's Unique Collection, 1896; No. 2, p. 1.
Recorded sources: N.H. Fiddler's Union, Miller & Peery - "The Music of John Taggart" (1989). Also recorded by Canadian fiddlers Don Messer and Ameen "King" Ganam. Perhaps the earliest recording is a 1913 Edison blue amberol cylinder by violinist Charles D'Almaine. D'Almaine (1871-1943) immigrated from England to the United States in 1888, and by 1890 had established himself as "instructor on violin" in Evanston, Illinois; by 1910 he had removed to Yonkers, and in 1920 was a chiropractor in New York City (info. from Paul Gifford).