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Thread: Old Time/Early Country Play list

  1. #1

    Default Old Time/Early Country Play list

    I'm working out an arrangement for "After The Ball" by Charles K. Harris - Bill Monroe recorded "What is Home Without Love" by him. I imagine Stephen Foster tunes are played a lot. Can anyone suggest other songs or composers for the list?

  2. #2

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Carter family? Jimmy Rodgers?

  3. #3

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Quote Originally Posted by catmandu2 View Post
    Carter family? Jimmy Rodgers?
    Hadn't thought of them. What I had in mind was music suitable for a dance at "the big house," … alŕ ..


  4. #4

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Hmm, wouldn't have thought of this as 'country' or 'OT' (in the sense it's usually used here). I play a lot for older folks using a plectrum banjo ('orchestral' banjo) and the repertoire is primarily standards from the early to mid-20th C, and earlier pre-'jazz' era stuff Joplin, Foster, et al. Most of the standards from TOC or earlier are pretty simple tunes, dance tempos, perhaps with florid arrangements and of course, song lyrics. Maybe check out the table of contents on those many early era songbooks..

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    I agree with catmandu. 19th century parlor music would be closer. And you are looking for songs vs. tunes?
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  7. #6

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Ya tunes like Buffalo Gals, Yellow Rose of Texas, Dixie - Civil War era, then becoming popular, orchestrated, 'formalized.'

  8. #7

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Garber View Post
    I agree with catmandu. 19th century parlor music would be closer. And you are looking for songs vs. tunes?
    Dance tunes - you don't want to hear me sing. No. Looking for late 19th cent., American dance music that was popular as "music" before the advent of categories.

    "Buffalo Gals, Yellow Rose of Texas," etc. made it onto the dance floor for sure.

    Thanks - I'll certainly check out early song books.

    … (later) Just wondering how someone like "Uncle Pen" found the music he played and how many tunes would a country fiddler around the turn of the century be expected to know?
    Last edited by billkilpatrick; May-03-2017 at 12:12pm.

  9. #8

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    I think you'll find that, if you play these tunes, people will sing em and as many of the pop dance tunes were songs with lyrics - remember popularization came largely through 'formalization." Additionally, if you sing, your total musicality will only be enhanced, despite your feelings about your vocal quality. Much of this repertoire is not complicated - in song structure as well as melodic structure; I do most of these on (diatonic) melodeon, fiddle, etc. With such simple song forms - often repeated stanzas and phrases - it feels like the tune without the lyrics is pretty abbreviated. You probably have the chorus and half of the first verse already in your head. Holcomb, Boggs, Dylan, Big Joe Williams, et al. were all effective vocally despite less than mellifluous cords...not to say you're going for high lonesome, but only to point out that effective vocals often aren't dependent on vocal 'quality.' (Sing out!)

    However, for vocal-less tunes, i find rags generally the most entertaining (and fun to play)

    *Re: 'how many tunes..?" I'm not much of a historian of the period. I expect it varied per individual. I've heard it often that someone might play 1, 2, or fewer tunes all night long (there are only 2 fiddle tunes after all, eh?). Others could play both classical and 'folk' - which would indicate a rather copious tune bag..

    One of my favorites is the Armstrong vid 'Louie Bluie' to get a feeling of how varied/many, or not, it takes to suit your repertoire needs. (I'm not as personally entertaining as Howard, Banjo Ikey, Martin and Yank, so I need *lots* of tunes).
    Last edited by catmandu2; May-03-2017 at 1:59pm.

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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    I may be misunderstanding, but there are lots of archives of old time tunes, like
    http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.html
    or
    https://www.slippery-hill.com/collec...lers-repertory

    But maybe you were looking for more formal dance music (like the video) rather than music that country people danced to (like played by Uncle Pen).

    I remember hearing a musicologist talk about the rural style fiddlers, and saying they typically would know 20 - 40 tunes; not nearly the number we think of today as "a lot" of fiddle tunes.

    In Brad Leftwich's book on oldtime fiddle based on the playing of Tommy Jarrell, he includes 83 fiddle tune transcriptions, which he says is something like "most" of the tunes that Tommy Jarrell knew. Tommy Jarrell was a very well known and respected fiddler, so maybe that is the high-end of how many tunes players would know?

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  12. #10

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    Great sites for fiddle tunes! Thanks

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Try the Library of Congress American Memory archives.

    They have lots of sheet music and old recordings.
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    I love the cafe … I want to live here forever.

  15. #13
    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    What kind of dancing -- couples, called line-circle-square, specialized (polka, schottische)? Think about waltzes and polkas, both quite popular in the era you're considering. Common minstrel tunes, sometimes modified, were used for dancing -- as, surprisingly enough, were march tunes (Sousa's band played for dances).

    In the waltz repertoire, Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms gets played by my group frequently, as does the German waltz The Lorelei. There are specific dances designed for common tunes like Old Dan Tucker and Pop Goes the Weasel, if you have a dance leader/caller who knows them. There are a slew of Irish "polka" tunes, and we play Jenny Lind Polka (just the commonly played first two parts, not all six). For schottische, we use the locally-authored Rochester Schottische, and there are definitely others.

    Basically, you can take a number of late-19th-century "pop" songs, and use them instrumentally as dance tunes. I've played songs like Darling Nelly Gray, Wait For the Wagon, Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet, When You and I Were Young Maggie, Little Brown Jug, Listen to the Mockingbird, Man On the Flying Trapeze, and even She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain for dancing. They're not hard to play, and have the virtue of familiarity to musicians and dancers as well.
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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Not sure if I'm on the right track or not but I love a back-story or a bit of history to an old tune..

    You may want to check out the swedish singer Jenny Lind and her touring of the East coast states under PT Barnum. She caused an absolute sensation around the 1850s
    From Wikipedia
    "In the U.S., Lind is commemorated by street names in Fort Smith, Arkansas; New Bedford, Massachusetts; Taunton, Massachusetts; McKeesport, Pennsylvania; North Easton, Massachusetts; North Highlands, California and Stanhope, New Jersey; and in the name of the gold-rush town of Jenny Lind, California. An elementary school in Minneapolis, Minnesota is named after her.[41] She has been honoured since 1948 by the Barnum Festival, which takes place each June and July in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Through a national competition, the festival selects a soprano as the Jenny Lind winner. Her Swedish counterpart, chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and the People's Parks and Community Centre in Stockholm, visits during the festival, and the two perform several concerts together. In July, the American Jenny Lind winner traditionally travels to Sweden for a similar joint concert tour."

    ..... and of course the Jenny Lind polka



    Hello Central Give me Heaven by Charles Harris can come up well & was covered by Nadine Landry and Stephen "Sammy" Lind (see what I did there? )
    I couldn't find it on YT but here's an old disc...

    Sara & Maybelle Carter


    Link to PDF

    Anyway check out "Grandad's Favourites" by Nadine Landry & Stephen "Sammy" Lind for a listen.
    http://www.nadineandsammy.com
    Eoin



    "Forget that anyone is listening to you and always listen to yourself" - Fryderyk Chopin

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  18. #15

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Quote Originally Posted by allenhopkins View Post
    ... Think about waltzes and polkas, both quite popular in the era you're considering. Common minstrel tunes, sometimes modified, were used for dancing -- ....

    Basically, you can take a number of late-19th-century "pop" songs, and use them instrumentally as dance tunes... They're not hard to play, and have the virtue of familiarity to musicians and dancers as well.
    This has been my experience - and why melodeon/button accordian (and banjo) is so successful for me. Along with plectrum banjo, these instruments are superb for imparting syncopation and energetic feel, impelling people to move. It's pretty infectious. The instruments are lilting, the music is lilting and familiar in so many ways. For instrumental interludes I play polkas and the other dances, bunch of rags.. (I actually got into it for volume, so I wouldn't have to carry amps - very happy with my set-up now...going more for minstrelsy I guess, aside from all the Am. songbook stuff - 'jazz' banjo has a great repertoire)

    Spot on about the nature of the tunes,

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    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Beanzy, thanx for the Jenny Lind Polka imbed; I mis-stated when I said it had six parts, there are actually four, played in a particular order of repetition, but we do only the first two.

    I learned about the other two parts from this Vivian Williams vid:



    And catmandu, I find playing some of the old "hits" as dance music puts me right in my comfort zone. About two-thirds of my performances now are for seniors, in residences, social clubs, churches and recreation centers, so I find myself more and more sensitive to the thread of tradition and the persistence of old songs. I even take joy in their unabashed sentimentality.
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  22. #17

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Archie Shepp said something that I relate with. He said, "I'm worse than a Romantic; I'm a Sentimentalist."

  23. #18

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    "Sentimentalist" … "Romantic" … "Seniors" … bah! humbug! - I'd say they're just good, melodic tunes which, fortunately, in my case, were the first ones in, lo' those many years ago, and are easy to recall and relatively easy to play:


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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Following up on my earlier entry...around here, old time means mountain music, not necessarily music that was popular with a wider American audience. But I was thinking about the tune Redwing. People still play often (as a tune, even though there are words), and for some reason I knew that it was a written tune that was very popular, which included a lot of sheet music sales. So I looked it up in Wikipedia, which indicates that it was published in 1907, maybe a little later than you were looking.

    But! I also found in Wikipedia another rabbit hole you can follow: there are lists of songs by decade.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Songs_by_decade

    So dig through there, and see what you can find. I only looked at a few, because I was curious about the origins of some tunes I saw, "In the Pines" and "Golden Slippers." I was surprised that they were listed under a fixed year, but when you read the articles it makes clear that "Golden Slippers" is a written tune with a known author (James Bland, 1879), but "In the Pines" is not, and they kind of guessed at the date.

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  26. #20

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Quote Originally Posted by billkilpatrick View Post
    "Sentimentalist" … "Romantic" … "Seniors" … bah! humbug! - I'd say they're just good, melodic tunes...
    They are good tunes, but they're more than this too. If you're in the business of performing this oeuvre - typically to a cohort that identifies with the lyrical content, often highly sentimental, and their associations of time, place and manner of acquisition (most often through cinema) - emotional response is usually palpable. I don't think I can recall a time I've performed this fare for an audience when there wasn't someone in the room highly affected - at least in nostalgic reverie. I've learned a good portion of my repertoire by having folks sing them to me. It's a vast oeuvre, with significant cultural meaning.

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  28. #21

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    >"nostalgic reverie"<

    Oops, I meant "nostalgic reverence" - for how would I know what someone were dreaming. Although, I have put plenty of people to sleep with my playing!

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  30. #22
    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Some of the disagreements above seem to stem from the different perspectives, either considering the compositions as songs, or as tunes. For myself, I can't play Darling Nelly Gray or After the Ball without thinking of the words -- and their emotional content -- even if I'm playing them as dance instrumentals.

    An example occurred to me today, on Kentucky Derby Day. Foster's Old Kentucky Home will get played over and over; I'd say "ad nauseam" if I didn't like the song so much. How many people who'll hear it today will have sung the entire song, and realize it's about slaves being sold from a Kentucky plantation to a sugar-cane grower in the Deep South, where they're separated from their families and worked to death under inhuman conditions?

    A few more days to tote the weary load,
    No matter, 'twill never be light;
    A few more steps to totter on the road,
    Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.


    That's where the "sentiment" enters, when I play the tune, even if the lyrics are left unsung. Songwriters of that era wrote of life's troubles, and the realities of death, unabashedly. They didn't tiptoe around these losses, and weren't afraid to jerk a tear -- or a bucketful. I continue to recognize that approach, whether it influences my instrumental work, or not.
    Allen Hopkins
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  31. #23

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Thank you for bringing forth that we're confronted with tbis aspect as purveyors in the idiom...what was germane above when the 'standard' Goden Slippers came up, and thus so much of the repertoire imbued with the language and sentiment of the times during which they prevailed, terrible as it was (and is). Always awkward when singing zippity doo dah, blue tail fly, et al. - I always muddle the lyric or something, but of course we know it's there.

    Re the 'convergence' of song/dance/tune, etc., one of my favorites is to stretch Camptown Races (speaking of Derby Day), repetitive as it is, into a long, droning cajunized bit on my cajun box - bit of a dance feel pumping on bellows, repetitive stanzas, rhythms of the south. Doo dah.

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  33. #24

    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    Didn't know about the reference to slavery in "Old Kentucky Home." I expect most of these songs - as opposed to tunes - were learnt while sitting around a campfire someplace - censored versions of them, I'll bet. Lyrics in the songs I remember from the sixties were what captured my attention but as memories and associations fade (what was her name?) it's the tune that stays.

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  35. #25
    two t's and one hyphen fatt-dad's Avatar
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    Default Re: Old Time/Early Country Play list

    first you have to decide if you want to play the old-time tune in D, G, or A. Then I'll give you a tune list!

    f-d
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