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 (Howe): G Major (Robbins). Standard tuning (fiddle) . AABB. The first part of the tune appears in the West Texas "Jack of Diamonds," although also shared with Don Messer's "Away Back," and "Old Time Straight Jig. 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." Paul Wells says "Norton is easily traced in [Boston city] directories from the early 1860's to the early 1890's. Often his business address was the same as [Boston music publisher Elias] Howe's" ^[1]. 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]).

Additional notes

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"). Howe (Musician's Omnibus, No. 6), Boston, c. 1880-1882; p. 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"). Robbins Music Corp. (The Robbins collection of 200 jigs, reels and country dances), New York, 1933; No. 161, p. 52. 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).

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↑ PAUL F. WELLS (2010). Elias Howe, William Bradbury Ryan, and Irish Music in Nineteenth-Century Boston. Journal of the Society for American Music, 4, p. 417.

[1] PAUL F. WELLS (2010). Elias Howe, William Bradbury Ryan, and Irish Music in Nineteenth-Century Boston. Journal of the Society for American Music, 4, p. 417.

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