Annotation:Red Shoes (The)
X:1 T:Red Shoes, The C:Dan R. MacDonald M:C| L:1/8 B:MacQuarrie - The Cape Breton Collection (1940, p. 50) K:Amin A|EA,CA, CEA,C|DB,G,B, GB,G,B,|EA,CA, CEA,C|DB,GB, A,/A,/A, A,A| EA,CA, CEA,C|DB,G,B, GB,G,B,|A,B,CD EFGE|DG,B,D EA,A,|| a|eAcA cacA|gdBG Bcda|eAcA cacA|dBgB A/A/A Aa| eAcA cacA|gdBG Bcdg|afge fdec|dBgB A/A/A A|]
RED SHOES, THE. Canadian, Reel. Canada; Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton. A Minor (MacQuarrie): A Mixolydian (Fitzgerald). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. "The Red Shoes" was composed by Cape Breton fiddler and composer biography:Dan R. MacDonald (1911–1976) of Judique, the first tune he composed, as he told Allister MacGillivary (quoted in his The Cape Breton Fiddler). The title of the reel was inspired by a pair of homemade shoes fashioned by Angus D. MacEachern of Glendale, Cape Breton, which the maker had stained a bright crimson with Sherwin-Williams paint. MacDonald evidently composed it as a minor-mode tune—as it appears in MacQuarrie's The Cape Breton Collection (1940) it had minor intervals throughout—but it can be played in dorian mode (one sharp), and Winston Fitzgerald set it in mixolydian mode (2 sharps), or pipe tuning. In its mixolydian form (a la Fitzgerald) it remains a popular session reel in the Cape Breton repertory and is frequently recorded.
Early in the 21st century a pub in Mabou was renamed after this tune [1]. It is owned by Heather, Cookie and Raylene Rankin along with their eldest sister Genevieve Fakoory, of the musical group The Rankin Family.
