REEL DE (LA) TUQUE BLEUE. AKA and see "Blue Cap Reel," "Showshoer (The)," “Tuque Bleue.” French-Canadian, Reel. F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Carlin): AA'BB' (Begin, Cuillerier). "Reel de la tuque bleue" is a variant of Francis O'Neill's "<incipit title="load:garters" width=850 link="https://tunearch.org/wiki/Blue Garters (The)">Blue Garters (The)</incipit>," a reel from the repertoire of Chicago fiddler John McFadden, originally from County Mayo. According to Anne Lederman (entry on “Fiddling”, Encylcopedia of Music in Canada, 1992), Montreal fiddler Joseph Allard’s (1865-1947) 1930 version of this tune became popular in English-speaking Canada as “Snowshoe Reel/Snowshoer's Reel (1) (The).” Quebec fiddler Pascal Gemme remarks in his blog entry on the tune, the reel "is the only tune in F that's left in the general repertoire of [Québécois] square tunes." See also note for “annotation:Tuque Bleue.” Joseph Allard
Additional notes
Source for notated version: - fiddler Dawson Girdwood (Perth, Ottawa Valley, Ontario) [Bégin].
Printed sources : - Bégin (Fiddle Music in the Ottawa Valley: Dawson Girdwood), 1985; No. 6, p. 20. Carlin (Master Collection), 1984; No. 70, p. 49. Cuillerier (Joseph Allard), 1992; p. 16. Jean Duval (La Musique de Jospeh Allard 1973-1947), 2018; No. 41, p. 21. Songer (Portland Collection, vol. 2), 2005; p. 210.
Recorded sources: -Philo 2022, Louis Beaudoin - "Beaudoin Family" (1976). Victor 263674-a (78 RPM), Joseph Allard (1930).
See also listings at:
Alan Snyder’s Cape Breton Fiddle Recordings Index [1]
Jane Keefer’s Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [2]
Hear Joseph Allard's 1930 recording at the Virtual Gramophone [3] and at youtube.com [4]
See Pascal Gemme's blog entry and standard notation transcription [5]
