Range of old-time music

[A-junior]

I've really enjoyed the recent threads on old-time music. #I'm a fiddler, mostly, but I've been working a bunch on mando lately. I just got a copy of the Buckhannon Brothers cd, and I was impressed, not just with the fine playing, but with the variety of tunes they include under the old-time heading--from rags to polkas to waltz-tunes to marches, as well as the kind of tunes I'd normally associate with old-time. #It reminds me of the approach of northeast-style fiddlers, who mix Irish and Cape Breton and French-Canadian tunes in their set-lists. #The cuts on the Buckhannon CD have this fine turn-of-the-century (the 19th century) flavor that seems right at home on the mando.

Which set me to wondering what other kinds of tunes might be more or less overlooked when talking about old-time.

Any good sources for ragtime music for mando out there, standard notation or tab?

Also listening to Bertram Levy's playing on the old Hollow Rock String Band album.

[John Flynn]

The B. Brothers also do a great job on all the following in live performance, with that same great old-timey sound you heard on the CD:
> Blues
> Jigs
> Hornpipes
> Religious music
> Christmas music

I would consider all of those under the term old time.

[danb]

Two good books- The Old Time Fiddler's Repertory and The Fiddler's Fakebook.. the latter comes in tab too, but the std notation one has more tunes (and better settings I feel!). Lots of nice Rags in the Fiddler's Fakebook.

[A-junior]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have to get myself a new copy of Fiddler's Fakebook--mine finally just wore out. I'd forgotten how many rags were in there. I've been using The Portland Collection, which seems to have become the basic book for contradance playing around here. There's a wonderful tune in there--"Saratoga Hornpipe"--which would fit right into the sort of nineteenth century feeling I was talking about. I'd like to dig up some marches as well.

Jordan