Annotation:Grey Eagle (4)

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X:1 T:Grey Eagle [4] S:Cyril Stinnett (1912-1986, Braymer, Caldwell County, northwest Missouri) M:C| L:1/8 R:Reel D:MSOTFA CS 103, Cyril Stinnett - "Grey Eagle in C" (1992) F:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx-dx9AHRdk F:https://www.slippery-hill.com/recording/grey-eagle-5 Z:Transcribed by Andrew Kuntz K:C c2 ec dcA^F|G2ED CEGA|cdec dcAc|Gceg eage| cdec dcA^F|G2 ED CEGA|cdef gfef|gage fged:| [E2c2]eg- gcec|gcac gceg|gc'2e gcef|gage fged| cdef gcac|gcac gceg|gc'2e gcef|gage fged||

GREY EAGLE [4]. American, Reel (cut time). USA, Missouri, North Carolina. C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (Milliner/Koken): AABB (Devil's Box): AABB' (Phillips). A variation of "Grey Eagle (3)." It is on Missouri fiddler Charlie Walden's list of '100 essential Missouri fiddle tunes'. Compare Stinnett's version with that of North Carolina fiddler Manco Sneed (1885-1975) (see "Grey Eagle (6)"), from a 1964 home recording. Champion fiddler wikipedia:Benny_Thommasson (1909-1984), one of the most renowned Texas-style fiddler of his time, decided to play "Grey Eagle" for his first big fiddle contest, as told to Michael Mendelson in a 1973 interview^[1]:

Now I'll tell you a little story about that. There was a fiddle contest in Dallas. I guess I was about 18, 17-198 years old. And I thought, boy, I was a good fiddler, you know when you'r that age, and you do play...pretty well, you think, by doggies, its going to take somebody pretty hard to beat you, you know. I got up there, there's 250 fiddlers. Howdy Forrester, Georgia Slim, all these guys. And the top fiddlers in the nation you might say. And I got up there, and boy, I laid that "Gray Eagle" on there goin' and a-comin'. I come to find out that nobody even recognized me. The judges didn't even scratch me. So from that time on, I went to work on that thing.

I said, "well", to myself, "self, you got to do something now." And I just made it a point to keep to continue to work, working, working on those tunes.

Additional notes
Source for notated version : - Cyril Stinnett (1912-1986, Boone County, Mo.) [Phillips].

Printed sources : - Stephen F. Davis (The Devil's Box), vol. 25, No. 4, Winter 1991; p. 46. Milliner & Koken (Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes), 2012; pp. 274-275. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1), 1994; p. 106.

See also listing at :
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [1]
See a transcription of Stinnett's recording by Austin Rogers [2] [3]
Hear Cyril Stinnett's recording at Slippery Hill [4]
See/hear Charlie Walden demonstrating Stinnett's version at youtube.com [5]

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↑ Micheal Mendelson, "Benny Thommasson and the Texas Fiddling Tradition," JEMF Quarterly, vol. 10, Part 3, #35.

[1] Micheal Mendelson, "Benny Thommasson and the Texas Fiddling Tradition," JEMF Quarterly, vol. 10, Part 3, #35.

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