One of my all time favorites. I am going to enjoy hearing what everybody does with this tune.
Here is some of what I wrote about the tune when it was our tune of the month back in 2019 (and I am happy to see it come around again!):
Flop Eared Mule was one of my 'go to' tunes when I played banjo back in the 1960's. I wasted a lot of time this month trying to come up with something that sounded like what I used to play. Finally I came to my senses. I mean why would I want to sound like a banjo? Why not sound like a mandolin? So I did a bunch of mix and match stuff from various versions and this how it ended up.
As I did my research on mules, I discovered that what everybody (well at least me) thinks of as the sound a mule makes is really the sound of a donkey. Mules sound more like a horse than a donkey. So all that effort to make the sound of a mule braying is kinda dumb because donkeys bray, not mules. Oh well.
I play it ABAB instead of AABB. For some reason I think it gets boring if played AABB.
https://youtu.be/3a2s8n92P7k
My blog post about this tune is at http://honketyhank.com/2019/07/30/20...op-eared-mule/