Tune of the Week for April 9, 2012

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Ed Cosner & Katie Bern
Saturday, April 14, 7:30, Room E324 in Old Town School East

Katie Bern & Matt Danaher

Katie Bern drove up to Lincoln Square from Palos Heights to enter our Midwest Fiddle Championship for several years running. (Her younger sister Kristen is still a regular entry, but Katie has missed the last few contests as she completed a degree in music education at Belmont University in Nashville.) In 2006, Katie placed fourth in the Fiddle Team division in a duet with her neighbor Matt Danaher. They came back the next year and took 2nd place.

This week’s tune of the week (submitted just in the nick of time) was played by Katie and Matt in the Championship finals in 2007 on the main stage at the Chicago Folk & Roots Festival. “Poor Muriel” was composed by local bluegrass and jazz guitarist John Parrott.

[Click the arrow to hear only Poor Muriel. Click the blue title to hear the whole medley, along with Katie’s introduction of the tune, in which she mentions their teacher. He, of course, was Ed Cosner.]

More info about Katie’s visit to Fiddle Club — and more tunes! — is posted below.

Tune of the Week for April 2, 2012

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Frank Hall

Emmett Lundy

Frank Hall, my good friend and fellow Hoosier-in-exile, visited a while back from Ireland, where he has lived for the past decade. Our session served as the maiden voyage for my then brand new Zoom digital recorder, which has since been a real work horse for Fiddle Club of the World. Here is a tune from that October 2007 session in my living room. Frank played one that was first recorded by the great Emmett Lundy of Galax, Virginia. Compare the versions below. Obviously the same tune, but quite different treatments.

Also, compare the photos above. Both men are quite dapper and accomplished. Frank, however, has recently become a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. Sláinte (to your health), Buddy!

Piney Wood Gal by Frank Hall (2007), with Lena Ullman, banjo

Piney Wood Girl by Emmett Lundy (1925), with E.V. Stoneman, harmonica

BTW Frank Hall has an open invitation to be a featured guest at the Fiddle Club of the World any time he flies in to O’Hare from Dublin.

Tune of the Week for March 26, 2012

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Paul Tyler

I’m a little late posting this weeks TofW. Sorry about that. Sometimes life in the fiddle-industrial complex gets hectic. But my mind is back home in Indiana, so I think it’s time for a Lotus Dickey tune.
Sugar Hill Serenaders
Lotus Dickey, Paul Tyler, John Bealle, Teri Klassen

Little Bess

X:13
T:Little Bess
M:C|
L:1/8
S:Lotus Dickey from Poindexter Ainsworth
K:D
D2f2 fgfe | d2F2 A3F | E2AB cBAc | d2F2 A3+EA+ |
+D2A2+fe fgfe | d2F2 A3+FA+ | +E2A2+AB cBAc | +F4d4+ +F4d4+ :|
K:A
e4 e3f | e2c2 +c4e4+ | B4 g2eg | aeae c’3c’ |
e4 e3f | e2+ce++ce+ +c4e4+ | B2ef gefg |1 +c4a4+ +c2a2+z2 :|2 +c3a3+z =+B3g3+z ||

Tune of the Week for March 19, 2012

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Let’s stay on the Irish theme for one more week. Here’s one of my favorite jigs, one we can play on Friday, March 23 with Deirdre Ní Chonghaile visits Fiddle Club. This was the first in a set played by Kevin Burke & Michael O’Domhnaill in Bears Back Room in Bloomington, Indiana in February 1982.

I was there. It was heavenly.

The Frost Is All Over

Note: Kevin didn’t give a name to this tune. I learned it from one of the first recordings of Irish traditional music I ever owned. The great piper, Seamus Ennis, played it in a medley with The Hare in the Corn and one more jig. He sang a bit of lyric with it.

“The praties are dug and the frost is all over,
Kitty, lie over, close to the wall;
How would you like to be married to a soldier?
Kitty, lie over, close to the wall”

I can’t find that record any more. Maybe Deirdre can help us through The Hare in the Corn.

X:12
T:The Frost Is All Over
M:6/8
L:1/8
R:Jig
S:Kevin Burke
K:D
AFD DFA | B2d BAF | ABA F2D | FEE EFG |
AFD DFA | ~B3 BAF | ABA F2E |1 FDD d2B :|2 FDD D2e |:
fdd dcd | fdd d2e | ~f3 def | gag e2g |
fed Bcd | ABd F2G | ABA F2E |1 FDD D2e :|2 FDD d2B ||

Tune(s) of the Week for March 12, 2012

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, Guest at Fiddle Club of the World
Friday, March 23, 7:30p, Old Town School East

We’ll have an Irish session, with some craic and ceili (stories, talk and fellowship). This will be an easy-going introduction to the world of Irish tunes. Here’s another set of dance tunes that can be learned quickly. The first one is Sullivan’s, not the same tune as Tom Sullivan’s polka that Kathleen Keane taught us last year. Many of you already know the second tune Britches Full of Stitches. In this video, they’re played by Jackie Daly on accordion and Seamus Creagh on fiddle.

And here’s another performance of the same two tunes ending a set of four polkas played by Kevin Burke and Michael O’Domhnaill in 1982, in Bloomington (Indiana)’s beloved Bears Back room.

Tune(s) of the Week for March 5, 2012

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Paul Tyler

It’s that time of year when many of us wish we were Irish. That was one of my life goals when I was 15, due in part to a vague notion I had then that traditional Irish music might be found along my pathway to a satisfying and exciting future.

A few years later, at the end of 1969, I made first and only journey to Ireland, including a boat ride out to the Aran Islands off Galway Bay in the West. During my few days on Inishmaan, I tried to attend a dance or find a fiddle player, with no success, due to my own social clumsiness. I did hear a few sean nos (old style) songs at night, sung in Gaelic by one or another old man in an Aran Sweater, while we all nursed a pint in the island’s pub. Meanwhile, the young folks–most home for the holiday from work in England–were having a fine old time dancing away the darkness.

Last fall I had the great pleasure to meet Gaelic scholar, Deirdre Ní Chonghaile at an American Folklore Society meeting in Bloomington, Indiana. We played some tunes together with our fellows, and I had a chance to dance a bit with her. And since, Deirdre is from Inishmore, the largest of the three Arans, I finally fulfilled my 40-year-old quest to dance as they dance on the Aran Islands.

Here is a set of two tunes commonly played together on the Arans for a couple copy. The recording is taken from a YouTube video of a kitchen session in County Mayo with Caomhie Donlon on fiddle, her father Larry on banjo, and Cormac Gannon on pipes. The first tune is a common hornpipe, The Stack of Barley. Deirdre calls the second tune Some Say the Devil is Dead and Buried in Killarney.

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Guest at Fiddle Club of the World
Friday, March 23, 7:30p, Old Town School East

Tune of the Week for February 27, 2012

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Minuet after Matti Haudanmaa

I was taught this tune by Patrik Wekman on my visit to Finland in 2009. Later that year, Arto Järvelä taught it a workshop on archaic Finnish tunes at the Old Town School. Two years later, we had a magical session with the tune in my Fiddle 4 class when Arto and Kaivama dropped in. You can hear it on this earlier post.

Matti Haudanmaa was a master fiddler from the Ostrobothnian district in western Finland. An early Finnish folklorist made field recordings of his playing in the first half of the 20th century, thus preserving this wonderful tune for us to play in the 21st.

X:9
T:Minuet after Matti Haudanmaa
M:3/4
L:1/16
S:Arto Järvelä
K:G
FE | D3G {Bd}B2G2 {Bd}B2G2 | F3A {cd}c2A2 {cd}c2A2 |
D3G {Bd}B2G2 B2d2 | d2AB AGFE DCB,C |
D3G {Bd}B2G2 {Bd}B2G2 | F3A {cd}c2A2 {cd}c2A2 |
ABce d2c2 B2A2 | ABcA G4 G2 ::
Bd | g3g g2g2 g2ga | a3a a2f2 d4 |
e3d c2B2 c2e2 | d2c2 BcdB G2AB |
cBAB c2d2 e2c2 | BdcA A4 G2 :|

From Joe Thompson: Tune of the Week for February 20, 2012

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Paul Tyler

R.I.P.
Joseph Aquilla Thompson
December 9, 1918 – February 20, 2012
Joe & Odell Thompson
From Mebane, North Carolina, Joe Thompson was a gentleman, a family man, a fiddler and a saint. He started playing for house dances with his brother before his legs were long enough to reach the floor from the chair in which he sat while he fiddled. In the late 1970s, he was convinced to start performing again, teaming up with his cousin Odell on banjo.

Twenty years ago, I got to see him perform in Philadelphia, many cultural miles away from his home district of small tobacco farmers. A dozen years ago I got to dance as he called an old-time frolic (ie, square dance) from the family and community tradition he grew up with. In 2005, I attended the Black Banjo Then and Now conference in Boone, North Carolina, where Joe was received as an honored elder (and where the Carolina Chocolate Drops got their start). A couple of times in the following years, I got to see him play in Chicago, once at the Old Town School in an afternoon program sponsored by the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College. Afterwards, I sat beside him at a jam session in the back room of the Grafton as he tried to teach us to play Georgia Buck.

Georgia Buck, Joe & Odell Thompson, 1987

The notes are simple. The rhythm and ornaments are complex. The form and variations are fluid. The tune has two parts (what we normally call ‘A’ and ‘B’), but they are played with a logic different from the regular progression of repeated alterations. The transcription that follows is roughly taken from the last three times through the performance recorded above. It is meant to give you an idea of some of the variations use. The slides are more important that the actual starting pitches indicated by the grace notes. The Bb is more bluesy and not a tempered Bb. Listen to the recording a lot, as you learn to play the tune.

X:8
T:Georgia Buck
M:C|
L:1/8
S:Joe & Odell Thompson
K:G
“A” ^A-| B2dd G2AA | BAGG E2GG |”slide” {^A}B2dd G2B=A | G2GG E2GG |
“slide” {^A}B2dd G2B=A | D2EE DEGD | G2G4 G2 | G2DD E2G2 ||
“B slide” {^A}B2dd d2ee | =f2fA G2GG | “slide” {^A}B2dd d2B=A | G2GG E2G2 |
“slide” {^A}B2d4 e2 | =f2GG EGGE | G2G4 G2 | G2AG E2GA ||
“A” _B2dd B2AA | _BAAG E2GG | “slide” {A}_B2dd d2=BA | G2GG E2GG |
“slide” {A}_B2dd d2eA | G2AG EGGE | G2G4 G2 | G4 G2z ||

Tunes from David Greely

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Here are a couple of Cajun classics we can all play together with David Greely, when he makes his appearance at the Fiddle Club of the World, on Friday, February 24.

The first tune is a fiddle version of a tune made famous by the great accordionist, Iry Lejeune (1928-55) from Pointe Noire, Louisiana.

Lacassine Special, a two-step

Lacassine Special, a two-step

And here’s a bluesy waltz from the playing of one of my favorites, Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot (1922-95) of L’Anse aux Vaches. The song was penned by Douglas Bellard.

Barres de la Prison, a waltz in 3/4

Barres de la Prison slow

For notes for these tunes, click here.

Dues for the February 24 meeting are $15 – you can register here (02/24/12).
Save money with a yearly subscription of $60. It gives you admission to all Fiddle Club events.

Tune of the Week for February 13, 2012

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Some island fiddling from the Indian Ocean

From a record of field recordings from Seychelles Islands, Danses et Romances de l’Ancienne France, from the great series of field recordings on the Ocora label from Radio France. The inhabitants of the Seychelles are a Creole people, whose culture has roots in Europe, Africa and Madagascar. A map locating the Seychelles and a short description of the music and the band can be found by clicking this link to a pdf, testimony from England.

The tune given here is a tropical rendition of a 19th-century social dance in 3/4, the mazurka, that originated in Europe. The distinctive Kamtole band sound of the Seychelles was used for dances, especially to celebrate Christian weddings. In the word of one anonymous internet author: “There was a time when Seychellois married couples came out of the church with their guests and they all left in a procession with musicians- two fiddles, a guitarist, an accordion, a drummer and a triangle.”

Fiddle Club of the World

(Chicago Chapter)

Category Archives: Tunes