Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/12/2010:  05:51:34

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The Tune of the Week for November 12th is one of the many fiddle tunes that goes by the title Fire on the Mountain. This "fire" is a rare tune that comes from the late south-central Kentucky fiddler Isham Monday. It is COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the tune most commonly associated with the title, now a bluegrass fiddle standard, and played here ably in old-timey style by the Red Clay ramblers (all commercial recordings are brief preview samples downloaded from Amazon MP3.com):

Fire on the Mountain sample, Red Clay Ramblers

It is also NOT the mixolydian old-timey tune that we first heard from the Fuzzy Mountain String Band, although that is a cool tune, too:

Fire on the Mountain sample, Fuzzy Mountain String Band

And, it is also NOT the tune called Fire on the Mountain that was played by the great John M. Salyer, sampled here from the Digital Library of Appalachia recording:

Fire on the Mountain sample, Salyer

So enough about those tunes, no thread hijacking! Isham Monday's Fire on the Mountain is very different from all of these. It is not a wild, energetic breakdown, it's a smooth, lyrical piece that reflects Monday's style and taste in fiddle tunes. He recorded the tune in 1959 in Monroe County, Kentucky for D.K. Wilgus, when he was 80 years old, and clearly struggling somewhat with the instrument. It's still wonderful to listen to:

Fire on the Mountain, Isham Monday

His fiddle is tuned AEae. I first heard the tune played by Matt Brown, on his wonderful Lone Prairie CD. Here's the sample from Amazon MP3:

Fire on the Mountain sample, Matt Brown



The banjo player on Brown’s recording is the incomparable Paul Brown, who as far as I know is no relation to Matt,even though they sometimes call themselves the Brown Brothers. Paul backs him up with some wonderful up picking, I think old-time three finger.

Jeff Titon, in his landmark book Old Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes, provides a transcription of Monday's Fire on the Mountain, along with a number of other Monday tunes, and includes a brief biography of the old fiddler. Monday was born on the Cumberland River in Monroe County, Kentucky, in 1879, and worked as a farmer all of his life. He played for local dances and parties from his teens up to about World War II, when he for the most part put it away until his "discovery" by folklorists two decades later. By then he had forgotten all but a few of the hundreds of tunes he once knew. He passed away in 1964.



Isham Monday and his wife, Elizabeth

Titon says of Isham Monday:

He learned to play fiddle at age 10, and his style shows considerable Scottish influence. It is characterized by vigorous bowing, a great deal of bow pressure, the fiddle tuned a whole tone or more below concert pitch, and a flattish bridge. Whether in standard or nonstandard tunings, Monday constantly played on at least two strings and sometimes three. When he recorded he was eighty years old and past his prime, but his settings show a spare and tasteful sense of melody laced with occasional, contrasting ornate flourishes. He marks the beat vigorously, emphasizing the downbeat more than most fiddlers from the upper South. (Titon, page 212)

Matt Brown, in an on-line blog from April, 2010, says that he has been heavily influenced by Monday and Clyde Davenport, another South-Central Kentucky fiddler. He writes:

I find myself gravitating toward Clyde Davenport and Isham Monday in particular. These gentlemen give us material that isn't always haunting or incredibly fast, but they are masters of the self-sufficient stately numbers. The material reminds me of the time when the fiddle was the entire band. The rhythms are subtle and flexible, yet the pulse never ceases. The sound is both archaic and timeless.

The link to a video of my setting of Monday's Fire on the Mountain is at the very bottom of this post. I am using my semi-fretless Paramount with the short-scale neck, tuned to open A (aEAC#E), the same as open G capoed to the 2nd fret. I have posted the tablature in both Tabledit and PDF formats on my website. If you are interested, you can access them here:

My tab for Fire on the Mountain

or:

My BHO Homepage

I didn't find any other examples in either the BHO or FHO MP3 archives, but I am boldly and self-consciously hoping this post will fix that! In fact, I could only find one other commercial recording, by fiddlers Amy Hofer and Karen Celia Heil, on their CD entitled Amy and Karen Play 15 "Old Time" Quality Tunes and Songs, released in March, 2006. Here's the Amazon MP3 sample:

Fire on the Mountain sample, Amy & Karen



I did find a couple of great YouTube performances of Monday's Fire on the Mountain. One is by fiddler Charlie Hunter, from Birmingham, Alabama, that is very true to Monday's droning double and triple stop style.

Fire on the Mountain YouTube video, Charlie Hunter

There's is also a vid of Tobias Enevoldsen (fiddle) & Anders Færgeman (banjo) recorded at the annual Oldtime Music Gathering at Kattinge Værk, Denmark, 2009. The Danes know a good tune when they hear one!

Fire on the Mountain YouTube video, Tobias & Anders

Isham Monday’s field recordings can be found on the Digital Library of Appalachia website, there are 20 in all. Just type his name in the Search for a performer textbox. That's all I got for this tune, and that's probably enough. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, it's also not the song played by the Grateful Dead. Sorry, all you closet deadheads.

Fire on the Mountain YouTube video, the Grateful Dead, 1977

So no Dead covers, either.

- Don Borchelt

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Edited by - Don Borchelt on 11/13/2010 15:18:55

VIDEO: Fire on the Mountain (click to view)

maxmax - Posted - 11/12/2010:  06:16:38

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Beautiful tune! I'm going to learn this one. Love your playing as well, very tasteful!

Best,
Max

bobduncan - Posted - 11/12/2010:  06:48:08

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Don,thanks for sharing the history of this tune. Your research and knowledge are appreciated by this student.

slabounty - Posted - 11/12/2010:  07:48:33

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Nice job and nice choice Don! The book you mentioned looks pretty interesting. Is it worth investing in for a banjo player?

Scott

Ron Ortegel - Posted - 11/12/2010:  08:25:16

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It's a great book for fiddle tunes. All tunes in standard notation, with a brief history of each.
I believe the fiddle tuning is also given for each tune. Includes a CD of the many tunes.

vrteach - Posted - 11/12/2010:  08:29:32

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Very interesting. Listening to Matt Brown's version, the A part (high part) reminds me of "Old Kentucky Whiskey". Listening to Monday's version I found myself humming "Sally Ann", kinda. Your rendition is absolutely lovely.

Wish I had my instruments near me....

Paul R - Posted - 11/12/2010:  08:36:56

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Thanks for this - great tune!

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/12/2010:  09:25:35

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Scott asks: "The book you mentioned looks pretty interesting. Is it worth investing in for a banjo player?"

Ron wrote: "It's a great book for fiddle tunes."

This is a great book. Titon provides transcriptions for 170 tunes, gleaned from 30 old-time Kentucky fiddle players, including both fairly well-known musicians like William H. Stepp, J.P. Fraley, Doc Roberts, John M. Salyer, and Owen "Snake" Chapman, and less exposed folks like Isham Monday. The introduction is very well written, and very informative, as are the brief biographies. However, for the banjo picker, you need to know how to read standard notation to really use the book. For the novice picker, a collection of more generic "festival favorites" would probably be far more useful. For the more accomplished picker, who already has a fairly large repertoire of all the standard tunes, these transcriptions offer a window into the unique. idiosyncratic styles of these old, and now almost forgotten fiddlers. If you want to delve far deeper into the great mystery of the fiddle tune, this is as good a place to start as anywhere. It is critically important to be able to hear the performances, not just read the notation; while the accompanying CD has only some of the tunes transcribed, I have found that the Digital Library of Appalachia has many more.

I think the book illustrates the dichotomy that arises when talking about "regional" styles. These musicians, each and everyone, have a unique approach to a fiddle tune, and are as different from one another as Kentucky fiddling is from, say, fiddling from eastern North Carolina around Round Peak. Even the fiddlers who came from the same county, like Salyer and Stepp, have very different styles. That is no accident- old time players of 70 years ago were just as driven to create their own sound as musicians today, perhaps even moreso. If there is a quality all of these musicians share, it is that they understand subtlety. I hope to achieve even a fraction of that before I am done.

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Edited by - Don Borchelt on 11/12/2010 09:28:34

stevel - Posted - 11/12/2010:  09:47:57

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Nice playing Don, and thanks for the tip about the fiddlers book.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/12/2010:  14:52:30

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Some of the links on my post are not working because my ISP host's server is down. They say they are working on it.

WORKING AGAIN, as of 11/16/10, 6:20 EST

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Edited by - Don Borchelt on 11/13/2010 15:20:04

ScottK - Posted - 11/12/2010:  17:19:14

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Great post and great picking (as usual) Don! Thanks!

That Isham Monday version of Fire on the Mountain gets played in jams around here occassionally. I haven't committed it to memory, but have followed it a few times. I'd never heard the John Salyer version until Lisa Ornstein moved to town, but have since learned it from her. That one's a lot of fun to play as well.

That Amy and Karen CD is a really good CD. Lately I've been working on "Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On" which is also on that CD after hearing Greg Canote play it up at American Banjo Camp this year. That's from another Kentucky fiddler covered in Titon's book, Estill Bingham.

Scott

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/12/2010:  18:14:09

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quote:

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Originally posted by Don Borchelt
If there is a quality all of these musicians share, it is that they understand subtlety. I hope to achieve even a fraction of that before I am done.

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I'd say your playing is wonderfully subtle already...and just plain wonderful, too.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/12/2010:  18:31:29

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Scott wrote: "Lately I've been working on "Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On" which is also on that CD..."

You know, that's on my short list, too. I've heard it several times at some jams around here. A very cool tune, no. 111 in Titon's book. I better get to work, huh.

Marc, thanks for the generous comment.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/13/2010:  05:42:54

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I have posted my three finger style tab of Fire on the Mountain in the BHO Tab Archive. You can access it through my BHO Homepage:

My BHO Tab List

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Edited by - Don Borchelt on 11/13/2010 15:20:34

RG - Posted - 11/13/2010:  09:13:56

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Don-great pick, one of my favorite fiddle tunes! Love Monday's playing, and fiddle a couple of his songs including this one...we played "Fire..." at a jam last night, if I get up the gumption I'll post a CH version of the tune...

A quick note on Titon's boook, it would have been a GREAT book if only Jeff would have discussed bowing techniques, when you listen to Monday's playing (or Davenport's or Salyer's or any other of the fiddlers featured in it) the tunes have a whole different feel to them than the notation implies...as the old timers would gladly tell anyone who would listen, it's all in the bowing...

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Edited by - RG on 11/15/2010 14:33:32

LyleK - Posted - 11/13/2010:  10:20:44

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Many thanks Don for all the background and for the great recording/video. I have the Titon book and thought I had pretty well mined it, but I had missed this one (and others, I now see). So attached are my CH attempt and a *.pdf of a tab (tabledit version available in the BHO tabs).

P.S. - Feb 4, 2011 TOTW will be Titon #113 (unless I change my mind, which happens a lot).

FOTM tab

Fire on the Mountain

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/13/2010:  10:43:45

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Lyle, that a really superb arrangement, wonderfully played. I love those little triple flourishes and grace notes you use to punctuate the melody, very tastefully done.

wormpicker - Posted - 11/13/2010:  11:20:49

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quote:

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Originally posted by Don Borchelt

I didn't find any other examples in either the BHO or FHO MP3 archives, but I am boldly and self-consciously hoping this post will fix that!

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I'm not certain, but I think Bruce Greene (fiddle) and Don Pedi (dulcimer) play a version in the vein of Isham Monday's on their Rare Old Chestnuts CD. Theirs is played in A (cross A tuning on fiddle). In the liner notes they say they got it from Sammie Dyer, Lafayette, TN, born 1907. Unfortunately, I can't find any sound clips on the web to point you to, but the CD is available from Elderly or directly from Bruce Greene or Don Pedi.

Paul

vrteach - Posted - 11/13/2010:  13:55:00

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I got hooked on this one, and played all this morning between laundry loads. Here's my version.

Isham Monday's Fire on the Mountain

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/13/2010:  15:18:06

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Eric, that was great. You guys play with such a light, elegant touch. I like clawhammer with some brush in it, too, very nicely done. Now you have to go iron.

J-Walk - Posted - 11/13/2010:  16:02:51

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Don, thanks for picking this tune (as in choosing it AND playing it). I have lots of recordings of "Fire on the Mountain," and I haven't paid much attention to them -- probably because of the Charlie Daniels connection. I never would have realized that the versions of I have by Matt Brown and Amy & Karen aren't the same tune.

Like Eric, I'm hooked and I've been playing it all day. Quite infectious!

In your video, who/what's doing the backing? Any chance of making that available? I'm terrible recording solo, but I'm almost tolerable when I'm playing along with others.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/13/2010:  18:19:09

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John, it's the MIDI playback from the TEF (Tabledit) file coming through the speakers, and getting picked up by the USB microphone. When I make up a TEF (Tabledit) banjo tab, I always include fiddle, guitar, and bass tracks for practicing purposes. I'm with you, I can't play without something to keep the rhythm. When I went to record, I shut off the banjo and fiddle tracks, leaving just the guitar and bass tracks. On the audio, the guitar track hardly comes through at all, just the bass. I thought it worked pretty well in the resulting "mix", if you can call it that, pretty much by accident. I used to put the MIDI playback through earphones, so it wouldn't get picked up by the mic, but that distorts too much what I hear from the live banjo, especially as I get older, and my hearing has become more uneven.

I did upload the TEF file for Monday's Fire on the Mountain to the BHO tab archive. On my website, I have posted TEF files for about 170 tunes; the MIDI playbacks can be used for practice even if you don't want to learn the particular banjo arrangement. The link is below. My ISP host has been struggling for the last couple of days with a denial of service attack, so the link may or may not work right now.

banjr.com/tablatures.htm

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Edited by - Don Borchelt on 11/13/2010 18:22:22

J-Walk - Posted - 11/14/2010:  09:29:38

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Thanks for the info, Down. I downloaded the TEF player to try it out. I muted everything but the bass, but I just couldn't play along with it. Not sure why.

In any case, I recorded the tune while listening to Matt Brown on headphones. If I can find a fiddler to play this with (hint, hint, wormpicker), I can probably smooth it out a bit over time.

Fire On The Mountain (Isham Monday)

wormpicker - Posted - 11/14/2010:  09:37:39

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Excellent, J-Walk. Ok, ok, I'm on it.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/14/2010:  17:20:31

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Great job, J-W. That lazy hesitation in that slide in the A part is how I hear it, but I like your slide better than mine. I'm going to have to lazy mine up a little more.

wormpicker - Posted - 11/14/2010:  17:36:21

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This one's a keeper! The B part still has a way to go, but I've got the A part down pretty well. You'll be pleased to hear, Don, that I can be lazy with the best of 'em on my fiddle slides in the A part. As a matter of fact, lazy is J-Walk's and my specialty.

Paul

J-Walk - Posted - 11/14/2010:  17:42:20

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That's why they call me King of the Lazy Slide. :)

I've been playing this all day today, too -- mostly with no accompaniment. When that little red "record" light isn't on, it actually sounds almost musical and not so mechanical.

In any case, it's a fine tune and I'm glad you turned me on to it.

RG - Posted - 11/15/2010:  14:35:46

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Here's my version of the tune on fiddle played in cross "G", on the DLA recording I think Monday is tuned somewhere around "F"...have been playing for little over a year and a half now please be kind (or not)...

fiddlehangout.com/myhangout/mu...?id=6010#

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Edited by - RG on 11/15/2010 14:39:13

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/15/2010:  15:05:48

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That's a fine job, R.G. Sounds like real old-time fiddling to me. There are a lot of tunes that you hear in either A, G, or even sometimes F, depending on whether the fiddler prefers AEAE, GDGD, or FCFC. I understand that it is partly about tone, and partly about the fear, legitimate or not, that tuning up tight to A could damage the fiddle.

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Edited by - Don Borchelt on 11/15/2010 15:09:15