Viritä Viikon helmikuun 6, 2012

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Finnish for Tune of the Week for February 6, 2012

I first heard this tune as the Priazhan Katrilli on the first Arto Järvelä album I ever heard, some 20 years ago. It’s a great European square dance tune. Here is the recording, by Pinnan Pojat. It can be found in the Old Town School Tune Archive.

Austrian fiddler Rudi Pietsch, another guest featured by the Fiddle Club of the World, also played the tune. What follows are recordings from Swedish, Finnish and Estonian musicians.

Finnjorka, a 1917 recording by Swedish-American artists Hugo Johnson & Fritz Aase

Frank Hietala with folklorist Elli Köngäs Maranda

Indrek Kalda & Tiit Kikus

NB: Arto Järvela with Kaivama will be featured guests at a Fiddle Club of the World meeting on Saturday, March 3 in room E324 in Old Town School East (4545 Lincoln).

Tune of the Week for January 30, 2012

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Paul Tyler

A little gem from Missouri
The Rhythm Rats on Marimac

From the Rhythm Rats 1994 cassette on Marimac Recordings. It has been reissued on CD by 5-String Productions (click for the catalog). The band featured fiddler Kenny Jackson with Whitt Mead on banjo and Paula Bradley on guitar. Sometime in the 1980s, Kenny Jackson and Brad Leftwich learned this tune on a visit with Ed Sutherland, a Missouri fiddler. Kenny’s fiddle on this recording has the G string run up to an A (ADAE).

Note: this is not the more famous Indian War Whoop recorded by Hoyt Ming & his Pep Steppers circa 1930 and reprised by David Holt in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Ritmo de la semana para Enero 25, 2012

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Here is a simple, but lovely dance tune from Cleofes Ortiz, taken from a cassette album recorded in Bernal, New Mexico in 1986 by Jeanie McLerie & Ken Keppeler.

Cleofes Ortiz
The album due to be reissued on CD by Ubik Sound. Until then, a CD is available from the webite for Bayou Seco, Ken and Jeanie’s band. There you will find this biographical sketch of Señor Ortiz, and more.

“Cleofes Ortiz was born in 1910 on Pajarito Plateau near Rowe, New Mexico. When he was eight years old, he made his first fiddle from a lard bucket, with screen wire strings. He learned most of his tunes from his cousin, Emiliano Ortiz, a well known fiddler who taught him both the local dance traditions and tunes he had picked up in lumber camps throughout New Mexico and Colorado. When he was 14, Cleofes began to play for local bailes and continued until his marriage, and a growing family of nine demanded all of his time. Around 1975, He resumed his violin playing, performing at weddings, funciones (feast days), festivals and senior centers in his area.”

Valse de los Paños is a waltz danced with handkerchiefs. A description of the dance from the early 1900s can be found in a book by Aurora Lucero-White, Folk-dances of the Spanish-colonials of New Mexico.

Valse de los Paños

Here are the ABCs. Note the key change to D for the B part . . .

Mélodie de la semaine pour les Janvier 16, 2012

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Paul Tyler

In the summer of 1982, I attended Northern Week of the Fiddle and Dance Workshops in Ashokan, New York (better known ‘Root Camp’) in part to study French Canadian fiddling with Lisa Ornstein. She taught a number of crooked and straight tunes with compelling melodic turns and interesting bowing. One of the simplest, but loveliest, was Sheepskin and Beeswax, a short modal tune from Eric Corrigan from a little town in Quebec called Stoneham. Even though Mr. Corrigan was of Irish ancestry, he is culturally Quebecois.

Sixteen years later, I met Mr. Corrigan at another fiddle camp across the continent in Port Townsend, Washington. He and fellow fiddler, Eddie Whalen, had traveled from Quebec to lead workshops at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes sponsored by Centrum. So here’s their version of the tune of the week. Isn’t that just the coolest name for a tune? I wish I knew the story behind the name.

The whole medley played by Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Whalen can be found on my DrDosido.net website. The page also contains a link to Lisa Ornstein’s performance of the tune, recorded in 1982.

Tune i ugen for Januar 9, 2012

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Danish for Tune of the Week.
From one of my all-time favorite CDs.
Gunner Friis, Kalejdoskop
(click here to visit CD Roots catalog)

This CD was put together in honor of Gunner Friis‘ 60th birthday in 2005. He is a highly-respected dance fiddle in Denmark. This wedding march, 1 of 2 in a medley, was learned from Jens Frederiksen, who I assume was a fiddler from the previous generation.

Brudemarch fra Himmerland 1
Gunner Friis on fiddle with Ben Melvij Nielsen on harmonika, a variety of pump organ.

The ABCs are below. A simple tutorial on Abc is can be downloaded here.

Paul Tyler, convener

X:2
T:Brudemarch fra Himmerland 1
S:Gunner Friis efter Jens Frederiksen
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:G
D | GBD GBd | g2B BAB | c2A AGA | B2G G2D |
GBD GBd | g2B BAB | c2A def | g2g gag |
e2c c2e | edc B2d | dcA def | g2g gag |
e2c c2e | edc B2d | dcA def | g2g g2 ||

New for 2012, Tune of the Week

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Paul Tyler

Happy New Year to all you Hoss-Hair Pullers and Friends

And my resolution is to provide you all with a rare and interesting Fiddle Club Tune-of-the-Week. Here’s the first one for week of January 2, 2012 . . .

Sleeping Giant Two-Step

By Andy De Jarlis (1914-75), a Métis fiddler from Canada’s Red River country, one of two hundred or so tunes he composed and recorded. Some people give him credit with popularizing “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” a tune that started out in the mixed Native and French communities of Western Canada. Many other Andy De Jarlis tunes can be found on YouTube.

Sleeping Giant

As played by Glenn Berry of Seabeck, Washington. I met and recorded Mr. Berry in 1998 at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington.

At the bottom of this post are the notes for “Sleeping Giant” in ABC notation, a good tool to learn and use.

And now a word from our sponsor. The new session of Old Town School classes starts next Monday (January 9). It’s important that you don’t wait until the last day to sign up. Low enrollment classes will be cancelled 3 days before the first class. My Fiddle 4 Old Time class on Mondays at noon still needs a least one student, as does my Fiddle 4 Cajun class on Tuesdays at 8pm. Other fiddle classes are on the bubble, so don’t wait only to find out the class you wanted to take was cancelled. They are listed here.

Paul Tyler, convener

X:1
T:Sleeping Giant Two-Step
S:Andy DeJarlis
M:C|
L:1/8
K:D
A2d2 | f3g f2d2 | A4 F4 | G3G G2F2 | E4 E2F2 |
G3G G2F2 | E4 D2E2 | F3G F2E2 | F2F2 A2d2 |
f3g f2d2 | A4 F4 | G3G G2F2 | E4 E2F2 |
G3G G2A2 | c2A2 B2c2 | d4 d4 |1 d4 :|2 d2d2 c2=c2 ||:
B4 d4 | g6 g2 | f3g f2d2 | A4 d4 |
e4 e3f | e2c2 B2A2 | d2A2 F2G2 | A2d2 c2=c2 |
B4 d4 | g6 g2 | f3g f2d2 | A4 G2F2 |
E3F E2F2 | G2A2 B2c2 | d4 d4 |1 d2d2 c2=c2 :|2 d4 ||

Fiddle Club of the World

(Chicago Chapter)

Category Archives: Tune of the Week