Results 1 to 13 of 13

Thread: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

  1. #1
    Orrig Onion HonketyHank's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Beaverton, OR, USA
    Posts
    1,778
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    OMG - My radio alarm is tuned to KQAC-FM, our local classical music station, and I awoke this morning to Flop Eared Mule! Really! The announcer came on afterwards and identified it as "Holiday Schottische" by Stephen Foster. Yes, THAT Stephen Foster. Here's a video I found:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzeafxLsnzE


    Happy New Year to ALL!
    New to mando? Click this link -->Newbies to join us at the Newbies Social Group.

    Just send an email to rob.meldrum@gmail.com with "mandolin setup" in the subject line and he will email you a copy of his ebook for free (free to all mandolincafe members).

    My website and blog: honketyhank.com

  2. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to HonketyHank For This Useful Post:


  3. #2
    Registered User Ranald's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2017
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    1,733

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    Thanks, Hank. That's news to me.
    There are quite a few tunes with a similar history, moving from one style of music and another. In the 1990's, I asked my Folklore students in Newfoundland what tune you sing when you carry a child on your back while pretending to be a horse. They all sang the same tune. I asked why they used this. No one knew. I explained that, in my childhood, the tune was the theme music for "The Lone Ranger," a TV western series. Before that, it was the theme for The Lone Ranger" radio dramas. And it originated as a part of "The William Tell Overture," an overture for an opera, by Rossini. (Since then, it's been used for The Lone Ranger movie.) None of my students could trace this farther than their families' oral traditions.

    Here's a great mandolin version of "Flop-Eared Mule"; if the links don't work, search You Tube for "Gid Tanner/ Flop-Eared Mule":

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewcESp1tvSc



    William Tell Overture Finale:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIbYCOiETx0

    Lone Ranger Theme:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCO6smQrjJ8
    Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
    "I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
    Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.

  4. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Ranald For This Useful Post:


  5. #3
    Registered User Joe Dodson's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Houston, TX
    Posts
    679

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    I haven't picked that tune in years and years and never liked it much, but Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers do a nice job with it.

  6. #4
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Upstate New York
    Posts
    24,807
    Blog Entries
    56

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    We do that tune often. As many doubtless do, we have a fiddler who can do a great imitation of mule on the B part.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

    The entire staff
    funny....

  7. #5
    Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Location
    Central Illinois
    Posts
    3,563

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Ranald View Post
    Thanks, Hank. That's news to me.
    There are quite a few tunes with a similar history, moving from one style of music and another. In the 1990's, I asked my Folklore students in Newfoundland what tune you sing when you carry a child on your back while pretending to be a horse. They all sang the same tune. I asked why they used this. No one knew. I explained that, in my childhood, the tune was the theme music for "The Lone Ranger," a TV western series. Before that, it was the theme for The Lone Ranger" radio dramas. And it originated as a part of "The William Tell Overture," an overture for an opera, by Rossini. (Since then, it's been used for The Lone Ranger movie.) None of my students could trace this farther than their families' oral traditions.

    Here's a great mandolin version of "Flop-Eared Mule"; if the links don't work, search You Tube for "Gid Tanner/ Flop-Eared Mule":

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewcESp1tvSc



    William Tell Overture Finale:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIbYCOiETx0

    Lone Ranger Theme:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCO6smQrjJ8
    I always loved that tune !

  8. #6

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    I played this tune 10 years ago. It seems like a mulennium.


  9. The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to OldSausage For This Useful Post:


  10. #7
    Registered User Bob Buckingham's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    Greer, SC
    Posts
    898

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    Add steroids and it sounds something like this.

  11. The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Bob Buckingham For This Useful Post:


  12. #8
    Orrig Onion HonketyHank's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Beaverton, OR, USA
    Posts
    1,778
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    There IS a mule in there! (and by golly I'm gonna find it)

    I do enjoy good fiddling and unexpected quotes from one classic in another.
    New to mando? Click this link -->Newbies to join us at the Newbies Social Group.

    Just send an email to rob.meldrum@gmail.com with "mandolin setup" in the subject line and he will email you a copy of his ebook for free (free to all mandolincafe members).

    My website and blog: honketyhank.com

  13. #9
    Professional Dreamer journeybear's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Northeastern South Carolina, west of North Carolina
    Posts
    15,346
    Blog Entries
    2

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    News to me, too. The version I learned it from is by The Holy Modal Rounders, from their classic double album. (Classic? Yep, you bet. Released before The Beatles' first LP. ) I'll bet they credit the composer as being "Trad." (He sure got around. ) I believe the lyric contributions are their own, certainly the second verse. Enjoy! And if this doesn't put a smile on your face check your pulse. You might be dead.

    But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. - Dennis Miller

    Furthering Mandolin Consciousness

    Finders Keepers, my duo with the astoundingly talented and versatile Patti Rothberg. Our EP is finally done, and available! PM me, while they last!

  14. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to journeybear For This Useful Post:


  15. #10
    Registered User Ranald's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2017
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    1,733

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    Roy Clark's version is nothing to sneer at either (about two-thirds of the way through, but who'd want to skip "Alabama Jubilee"):
    If links don't work, search YouTube for "Roy Clark - Alabama Jubilee (&) Flop Eared Mule".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2UPwc7G-TU

    Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
    "I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
    Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.

  16. The following members say thank you to Ranald for this post:


  17. #11
    Orrig Onion HonketyHank's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Beaverton, OR, USA
    Posts
    1,778
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    Sometimes I wonder -- do you think Roy Clark had as much fun playing showoff tunes as he appeared to be having? He really was jam full of talent on just about anything with "strangs".

    And the Holy Modal Rounders. Oh man. Loved them then; still do.
    New to mando? Click this link -->Newbies to join us at the Newbies Social Group.

    Just send an email to rob.meldrum@gmail.com with "mandolin setup" in the subject line and he will email you a copy of his ebook for free (free to all mandolincafe members).

    My website and blog: honketyhank.com

  18. The following members say thank you to HonketyHank for this post:

    Ranald 

  19. #12
    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    Rochester NY 14610
    Posts
    17,378

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    My long-time musical collaborator and mentor, Geneseo NY musicologist/professor/caller/fiddler etc. Jim Kimball, told me that Flop-Eared Mule derived from an Eastern European tune, a theory borne out by these notes from Ukrainian-American Fiddle Music; The First Recordings 1926-1936, released on Folkloric Records in 1977.

    As for influences on American fiddle music, a remarkable similarity has been pointed out between a Ukrainian "Dowbush Kozak" and the North American fiddle tune "Flop-Eared Mule," although we are at a loss to explain this "fiddle connection."

    It would take a lot of sleuthing to uncover how a Ukranian fiddle melody could have crossed the Atlantic pre-Civil War, to be heard and transcribed by Foster as Holiday Schottische. Possibly the influence went the other way, and the Ukrainian fiddler could have heard a dance band playing the American melody in Europe? Foster copyrighted the tune in 1854; I can't find a date for the earliest reported incidence of the tune in Ukraine.

    One of those "universal" tunes that crops up in many parts of the Western music tradition, I guess.
    Allen Hopkins
    Gibsn: '54 F5 3pt F2 A-N Custm K1 m'cello
    Natl Triolian Dobro mando
    Victoria b-back Merrill alumnm b-back
    H-O mandolinetto
    Stradolin Vega banjolin
    Sobell'dola Washburn b-back'dola
    Eastmn: 615'dola 805 m'cello
    Flatiron 3K OM

  20. The following members say thank you to allenhopkins for this post:

    Ranald 

  21. #13
    Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Location
    Central Illinois
    Posts
    3,563

    Default Re: Flop Eared Mule -- by Stephen Foster (?!?!?!)

    I have just started trying to play the song ! Always liked it !

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •