Steve Donnelly - Posted - 06/07/2015:  18:11:30

Anyone know the name of this piece?

     youtube.com/watch?v=XDiMvbkD86A

Thanks,

Edited by - Lynne on 06/08/2015 05:19:18

Clawed - Posted - 06/07/2015:  19:39:44

If you don't get an answer here you might ask in the comments section of the video. I see it was just published today.

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 06/07/2015:  20:09:53

Here's the video embedded:

BrendanD - Posted - 06/07/2015:  22:08:06

I believe that's "Home With the Girls in the Morning" from Snake Chapman. Looks like Clelia Stefanini on the fiddle, but I don't know who the other two are.

Edit: Ah, I see from YouTube that it's Eric Frey on banjo and Kristin Andreassen on guitar. I'd have recognized them if there was a good view of their faces in the video.

Edited by - BrendanD on 06/07/2015 22:12:36

Tom Hanway - Posted - 06/07/2015:  22:40:22

I'm so ready for good music!

 

sugarinthegourd - Posted - 06/08/2015:  03:49:42

Well done Brendan! I knew the tune but couldn't place it beyond "Kentucky." I think this is actually "Snake Chapman's Tune" which was supposedly what he came up with after hearing Bob Wills play "Home with the Girls in the Morning" over the radio. 

chip arnold - Posted - 06/08/2015:  06:30:59

Yup, Snake Chapman's tune. Will Keys learned it from Dirk Powell and I have just got around to learning Will's take on it. As always, when I learn another of Will's tunes, I wish he was still with us. If anyone has his Will Keys A Banjo Original cd, give his version a listen.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 06/09/2015:  17:37:48

My two cents...  I may be splitting hairs, but I think there is quite a bit of difference between Snake Chapman's Tune and Home with the Girls in the Morning, the folk process at work.  Here is the incomparable Jane Rothfield playing a fine version of the latter, complete with lots of rich, juicy drone notes.  This is the melody I most often hear played under this title.  Note that it is essentially in A Dorian, except for the idiosyncratic shift to the major third the second time through the B part, which I once read described as "being kind of like a Picardy third, that puts the little paper umbrella into the glass."  I have heard some versions that leave that out, which is too bad.  According to Andrew Kuntz's Fiddler's Companion, this tune goes back at least to fiddler J.D. Harris (1859-1933), who lived in both East Tennessee and western North Carolina.  But while Harris did commercially record about eight tunes in 1924 and 1925,  Home with the Girls in the Morning was not among them.   So I'm not sure what the "source recording" for this tune is, and I suspect there isn't one.  I guess there are some tunes that have still just come to us moderns through oral tradition.







Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys recorded their version, the inspiration for Snake Chapman, as a fiddle tune/vocal for MGM Records on Halloween, 1947.  It was released one year later.  I have linked to that recording below.   I believe Wills starts it off, with Eldon Shamblin playing lead guitar, Herb Remington playing steel, Joe Holley playing jazzy fiddle, and, of course, Tommy Duncan providing the vocal.  



Bob Wills playing Go Home with the Girls in the Morning



Note that while it is obviously still the same tune that Jane is fiddling, Wills plays it much closer to mixolydian mode, with a major third throughout.  Here are the lyrics that Tommy Duncan sings.  Some of these are standard play-party song lyrics, interchangable with other fiddle tunes.

Mama, can I go out and play?

Yes, my darling daughter,

Hang your clothes on the huckleberry bush,

And don’t go near the water.

CHORUS:    I ain’t gonna eat no supper here tonight,

                    I ain’t goin’ home 'til morning,

                    Dance all night ’til broad daylight,    

                    Go home with the girls in the morning.

Ain’t saw my gal in about three weeks,

I know that may sound funny,    

 If I ain’t there by the middle of the week,    

Then I’ll be there next Sunday.                                                                     

    

Over the river to feed the ducks,    

Over the river to Charley’s,    

Over the river to feed the ducks,    

And gather in the Barley.

 

Jaybird died with the whoopin’ cough,

Parrot died with the colic,

’Long came a redbird sittin’ on a pig,

Flyin’ on down to the frolic.

Back around 1974, The Deseret String Band (Hal Cannon, Mark Jardine, Skip Gorman, Leonard Coulson, and Rich McClure), based in Salt Lake City, recorded Home with the Girls in the morning on their second album, Land of Milk and Honey, on Okehdokee Records.  They are playing it in D Dorian, probably to accomodate banjo picker Leonard Coulson's vocal.

 

The Deseret String Band playing Home with the Girls in the Morning (sample)



Coulson came up with his own lyrics:



When I was a younger man,

Come and hear my story,

Sang and danced the whole night long,

Came home with the girls in the morning.



Chorus:    Come on Grandpa, sing your song,

                 Come and tell your story,

                 Tell us how you danced all night,

                 Came home with the girls in the morning.



Had a dream the other night,

Thought I was in glory,

Sang and danced the whole night long,

Came home with the girls in the morning.



A personal note, I still have a 1902 Fairbanks #2 Whyte Laydie with a reproduction neck made back in 1970 by Leonard Coulsen and Michael Allison, who had a shop called Providence Guitar & Banjo, just before Coulsen moved west to start Inter-Mountain Guitar & Banjo. I still play that banjo quite often.



I first learned this tune from my Boston area fiddler friend Jerry Borne.  I found a video that I made several years ago but never got around to uploading.  I've attached it below.  Maybe I thought then that I could improve my performance; now I know better, my fingers are getting older, not younger. I am playing my semi-fretless Paramount, banjo tuned in A Variant tuning (aEABE), capoed on the 2nd fret.

I would love to hear Chip play Will's version, and I'll bet I'm not the only one!

- Don Borchelt

Edited by - Don Borchelt on 06/09/2015 17:42:13

VIDEO: Home with the Girls in the Morning (click to view)

Tom Hanway - Posted - 06/09/2015:  18:10:09

Wow, there's a lot of great music and variations to consider here. And Don, your rendition of 'Home with Girls in the Morning' works for me.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 06/10/2015:  08:13:12

Thanks, Tom.  You and I have both worked a long time to come up with a playing style that "works," each in the particular style of music that we love.  We want that crisp tone that comes from playing three-finger style five-string banjo (with those dastardly picks), what one banjo pundit once described as sounding like "a million dollars in dimes."  But we still want to blend in and complement the other musicians we jam with, so that we will get invited back, in a category of music where our technique is more or less foreign, .  We seek a result that is  more subtle than sensational; we want to be one of the cherished spices, not the whole meal.  Respectful, even worshipful of tradition, but still adding some little bit to it.

One difference between us, though, I didn't move to West Virginia!