Annotation:Shady Grove (3)

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SHADY GROVE [3]. Old-Time, Breakdown. A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. According to folklorist and musicologist Alan Jabbour (notes to the tune at the Henry Reed collection) the ‘A’ part of the tune is derived from “The Boyne Water.” Jabbour believes that Henry Reed’s tune possibly derived from a version or versions of “Foggy Dew (3) (The)” (also a “Boyne Water (1)” relative). This set of “Foggy Dew” is found in P.W. Joyce's Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (No. 58), and, finds Jabbour, a “Foggy Dew” that is similar to Henry Reed’s “Shady Grove” was fiddled by J.H. Chisholm of Greenwood, Virginia. The second strain of Reed’s “Shady Grove” corresponds to the usual Appalachian song given in “Shady Grove (1),” albeit, as Jabbour points out, the part does not begin on the tonic, as is usual with the song. Finally, the musicologist notes that Reed’s tune begins on the high strain, followed by the low (“a stylistic choice that is particularly characteristic of the old Upper South frontier”), a reversal of the usual British Isles practice of low-to-high strain order.

Additional notes

Source for notated version: - fiddler Henry Reed (Glen Lyn, Virginia) [Johnson].

Printed sources : - Johnson (The Kitchen Musician: Occasional Collection of Old Timey Fiddle Tunes for Hammer Dulcimer, Fiddle, etc., No. 2), 1982/1988; p. 4.

Recorded sources: -Rounder 0024, “Hollow Rock String Band” (1974. Learned from Henry Reed). CD, Alan Jabbour, James Reed, Bertram Levy – “A Henry Reed Reunion” (2002).

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