Annotation:Old King's Reel
Back to Old King's Reel
OLD KING'S REEL, THE. Canadian, Reel. Canada; Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island. Tonality shifts between A Dorian and A Mixolydian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Dunlay): AA'B (Perlman). A popular and frequently recorded reel, usually played in a set with the similar sounding "King's Reel (The)." A bagpipe setting appears in Barry Shears' The Cape Breton Collection of Bagpipe Music.
Source for notated version: Buddy MacMaster (Cape Breton) [Dunlay & Greenberg, Dunlay & Reich]; Buddy Longaphie (b. 1950, Souris, North-East Kings County, Prince Edward Island; now resides in Charlottetown) [Perlman].
Printed sources: Dunlay & Greenberg (Traditional Celtic Violin Music of Cape Breton), 1996; p. 40. Dunlay & Reich (Traditional Celtic Fiddle Music of Cape Breton), 1986; p. 46. Perlman (The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island), 1996; p. 89.
Recorded sources: ACC-49398, Brenda Stubbert - "House Sessions" (1992. Appears as "King's Reel"). DMP6-27, Doug MacPhee- "Cape Breton Piano II" (1979). RF9001, John Morris Rankin/The Rankin Family - "Fare Thee Well Love." RMD-CAS1, Rodney MacDonald - "Dancer's Delight" (1995). Sea-Cape Music ACR4-12940, Buddy MacMaster - "Judique on the Floor" (1989). SM9107, Sandy MacIntyre - "Island Treasure-vol. 1." "The Sandy MacIntyre Collection: Cape Breton Fiddle: Steeped and Served (2010).
See also listing at:
Alan Snyder's Cape Breton Fiddle Recordings Index [1]
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [2]
Alan Ng's Irishtune.info [3]
See/hear Buddy MacMaster and Natalie MacMaster play the tune in a set on youtube.com [4] ("King George the IVth, "The Old King's Reel," "King's Reel (The)," "Miss Lyall's Reel")