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Mtngoat - Posted - 05/02/2014: 18:20:33
The Last of Callahan TOTW (OT) 5/2/2014
I’ve chosen The Last of Callahan for this installment of TOTW. Callahan is an example of the fiddler’s farewell legend in which a condemned man somehow comes into possession of a fiddle on the gallows, plays a self-composed tune, offers the fiddle to the audience, and getting no takers, destroys the instrument before his execution. The tune forever more carries the hanged man’s name.
Titon says The Last of Callahan was a popular tune among earlier generations of eastern Kentucky fiddlers and was played at the 1919, 1920, and 1924 Berea contests. Callahan was the first tune Kentuckian Lily May Ledford, of Coon Creek Girls fame, learned to play. She was nine years old at the time. Some versions of Callahan have three parts but two-part versions are common in Kentucky and particularly favored by banjo players.
Recordings
McKinley Asher of Leslie County, Kentucky was recorded by Lomax in 1937 playing a straight forward Kentucky style. McKinley Asher
Jewell Middleton of Boone County, Kentucky recorded his version for John Harrod in 1982. Jewell Middleton
Travis Wells plays Callahan on track 32 of the Rounder Kentucky Old Time Banjo. This snippet was recorded in Estill County, Kentucky in 1973. Travis Wells
Lee Sexton of Letcher County, Kentucky plays Callahan in his living room. Mr. Sexton has hosted many visitors from this same chair over the years. Lee Sexton
History
Although the particulars of the Callahan hanging are somewhat nebulous most sources place the event in or near Clay County, Kentucky and scholars note the tune is “curiously confined” to Eastern Kentucky.
Jess Wilson wrote a long running local history column for the Jackson County (KY) Rural Electric Cooperative newsletter. His treatment of the Callahan legend is perhaps the best documented reporting of the event. Read it here: When They Hanged the Fiddler
Other accounts of the tune’s origin can be found in the Traditional Tunes Archive here: Last of Callahan
Wayne Erbsen says frontier fiddlers were always in demand to play for community events where drinking and dancing were common. Old time fire and brimstone preachers frowned on such activities and accused fiddlers of toiling for the devil himself, a view supported by the frequent encounters between fiddlers and hangmen.
Kentucky appears to have been the epi-center of fiddler hangings. Folklorist D.K. Wilgus describes three Kentucky fiddlers who played their final tune on the gallows here: Fiddler's Farewell .
Interesting historical reporting of the Pennington and Coleman hangings can be found at Pennington’s Farewell and Coleman's March
Notation
I was unable to find a tab for Callahan but you should be able to pick it up by listening to the recordings and watching the Lee Sexton video. Titon gives standard notation for Kentucky fiddler Luther Strong’s version.
Final Notes
Have at it TOTW fans. Performances and tabs are encouraged. The world awaits your contribution.
Edited by - Mtngoat on 05/03/2014 06:56:29
aeroweenie - Posted - 05/02/2014: 19:52:10
Cool tune Mtngoat! To add some context, here is a good version on fiddle by Molsky: youtube.com/watch?v=5HO51Y8uKhk
And here is a stringband version by Lonesome Holler String Band: youtube.com/watch?v=BvQc8aG69EM
The string band version has a very different feel to me than the fiddle or banjo versions, not sure I would use the chords they do. Anyone know if this is what it is supposed to sound like?
chas5strings - Posted - 05/03/2014: 01:49:56
In the late 17th century in Banff, Scotland, a man, James MacPherson was sentenced to hang for stealing cattle.
Standing on the scaffold, he asked for a fiddle and when one was brought he played a composition of his ain.
He then asked of the gathered crowd "who would take this fiddle,". When no-one would take it he smashed it and threw it to the ground.
He was then hung.
The piece he played became known as "MacPherson's Rant", the pieces of the violin exist still in a museum in Newtonmore.
His stay of execution arrived within an hour after his hanging.
Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 05/03/2014: 03:20:54
I stumbled into this interesting banjo version:
LyleK - Posted - 05/03/2014: 03:52:26
quote:
Originally posted by aeroweenie
The string band version has a very different feel to me than the fiddle or banjo versions, not sure I would use the chords they do. Anyone know if this is what it is supposed to sound like?
That string band version is a medley of A major tunes, and only the solo fiddle at the beginning is playing Last of Callahan. When the band members come in they switch to the A major version of Shady Grove (try youtube.com/watch?v=EbtxxocFaq8 for the Crooked Jades playing this one) and then Little Dutch Girl. So only the first 30 seconds of that 2:50 video are Last of Callahan.
aeroweenie - Posted - 05/03/2014: 07:57:39
quote:
Originally posted by LyleK
quote:
Originally posted by aeroweenie
The string band version has a very different feel to me than the fiddle or banjo versions, not sure I would use the chords they do. Anyone know if this is what it is supposed to sound like?
That string band version is a medley of A major tunes, and only the solo fiddle at the beginning is playing Last of Callahan. When the band members come in they switch to the A major version of Shady Grove (try youtube.com/watch?v=EbtxxocFaq8 for the Crooked Jades playing this one) and then Little Dutch Girl. So only the first 30 seconds of that 2:50 video are Last of Callahan.
That would explain it! I should have listened more carefully before linking that, my apologies for wasting peoples time.
JanetB - Posted - 05/03/2014: 16:11:28
A challenging tune, Mtngoat, but anything in Jeff Titon's book of Old-Time Kentucky Tunes is worth my effort. Finding his notation a challenge to arrange for clawhammer, and figuring Bruce Molsky's superb version equally intricate, I've instead enjoyed learning a version of The Last of Callahan from R.D. Lunceford's banjo tab in Banjo Newsletter, Nov. '99, whose link is above in CarlB's post. R.D. describes the rustler from the Oklahoma territory who was hung from his horse after swatting the horse with the fiddle upon which this tune was played. Hopefully R.D. will share more in this discussion.
chas5strings - Posted - 05/03/2014: 17:14:39
Ach well::::::::::::::::::
JanetB - Posted - 05/03/2014: 17:45:43
After posting the video, I thought about how the tempo played by a fiddler about to die wouldn't have been upbeat, so here's a slower recording using R.D.'s tab. He had written that the tune was pretty and melancholy, but not sad.
Don Borchelt - Posted - 05/03/2014: 18:43:16
Great picking, Janet, well played. This is one the first old time fiddle tunes I worked up in three finger style, over 40 years ago, and I still play it like I did then. It is based on Luther Strong's version. I had a copy of one of those Library of Congress compilation LPs that were translucent red in color, that had Strong's recording on it. I played the thing on my turntable at 16 rpm, in order to get all the notes I could. I put it in a little booklet I published at the time, called Fifteen Fiddle Tunes for Five String Banjo, that you can find on my website. I have attached my version below:
Edited by - Don Borchelt on 05/03/2014 18:53:55
Mtngoat - Posted - 05/03/2014: 19:42:41
Janet, great work as always but I'm not so sure I recognize the Oklahoma tune as a version of the Eastern Kentucky Last of Callahan. Mark Wilson says "the tune radically shifts across Kentucky from east to west with the only commonality being an ascending and descending motion rather than any specific melodic basis". Maybe it's totally shifted by the time it gets to Oklahoma. Then again I don't have the best ear so the perceived difference could be faulty reception on my end.
Don, your treatment of fiddle tunes always floors me.
mbuk06 - Posted - 05/04/2014: 02:04:57
Really nice pickin' Don and Janet. There seems to be a wide variation of versions so I'm not sure whether mine fits but this is the Callahan I play. From Norm Edmonds and the same version played by Mark Campbell and his family in the video via the link posted by hendrid above.
Edited by - mbuk06 on 05/04/2014 02:05:28
BrendanD - Posted - 05/04/2014: 02:50:36
quote:
Originally posted by chas5strings
His stay of execution arrived within an hour after his hanging.
I hate when that happens.
JanetB - Posted - 05/04/2014: 14:52:59
The following comes from the website for Old Time Party tunes and is the last tune discussed: oldtimeparty.wordpress.com/category/tunes/ The musical notation below is identical to that from Marion Thede in The Fiddle Book (1967), and quotes from her notes about the hanging. She titles the tune "Last of Callahan" and credits fiddler Frank West from Murray County. I think that the version I learned from R.D. Lunceford is very similar to this version, though, as Mtngoat noted, it's not the same as the Kentucky versions. I found the source for Marion Thede through Jeff Titon's notes. On a side note, I'm reminded of the many versions of Lost Indian--all good, but different.
November 22, 2011
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from “Fiddler’s Farewell: The Legend of the Hanged Fiddler,” by D. K. Wilgus
One of the fullest “Callahan” legends accompanying the tune was given to Alan Lomax by Oscar Parks Deuchars, Indiana, 1938. Parks, who was orginally from Livingston, Kentucky, reported that he learned the tune from an old man by the name of Bob Lehr, in Jackson Co., Kentucky. A John Callahan, as Parks told Lomax, was being hanged for the killing of a man during a feud. While on the gallows, Callahan offered the fiddle to anyone who would mount the scaffold and play the tune. No one would comply, for fear of being shot, and in his last moments Callahan “busted that fiddle all to pieces over that coffin”. Parks also recounted Callahan’s marriage, while in prison, to a girl named Betsy Larkin [Betty Likens?] who then lived with him in the jail, from four to six months, in Manchester, Clay Co., Kentucky. Parks dated the event between 1898 and 1908.
… the fiddlers in Arkansas and Oklahoma couple ["The Last of Callahan"] with the demise of a cattle rustler. Sometimes he becomes a horse thief. The story goes that he had been caught by the posse and was unwillingly standing up in a wagon under a tree. A rope had already been passed around his neck and thrown over a limb. When he was asked if he had any “last words” he said he wanted to play the fiddle one last time. In his standing position he played an unnamed tune and then handed the fiddle to one of the bystanders … and the likeness of his tune became “The Last of Callahan.”
from ceolas.org, by Andrew Kuntz
Another version of the tale was supplied by a Mrs. Herman R. Staten of Paris, Kentucky, who wrote to the Archive of American Folksong soon after World War II to say that she was a Callahan descendent and that her fiddler-father and an elderly relative told her that the Callahan of the tale was an Isaac Callahan who died in the middle of the 19th century, and “knowing he was to hang, he built his coffin, and taking his fiddle he played while his sister danced upon his coffin.”
Mtngoat - Posted - 05/04/2014: 15:45:18
Mbuk06, that's a great tune played with rock steady timing. There seems to be a family resemblance to the Kentucky versions. The good thing about TOTW is that everything fits as long as it adds to the discussion. As Janet notes it's all different but good.
And with that in mind here's a rough cut that I just recorded.
R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 05/04/2014: 18:59:27
quote:
Originally posted by JanetB
After posting the video, I thought about how the tempo played by a fiddler about to die wouldn't have been upbeat, so here's a slower recording using R.D.'s tab. He had written that the tune was pretty and melancholy, but not sad.
Bless you, Janet.
Truly beautiful playing. The pathos of your rendition, and the tone you draw from your banjo is wonderful.
I had always thought of "The Last of Callahan" as a west of the Mississippi tune... Missouri, Arkansas, or Oklahoma.
The version of the story where Callahan breaks his fiddle by swatting the horse's rump with it came from the late, great
Southern Illinois fiddler, Mel Durham. Can't add any more info, and I certainly can't play it any better (and probably not as well)
as you do.
The tune has dropped out of my rotation in recent years. You've certainly inspired me to get it back.
banjoike - Posted - 05/04/2014: 20:21:39
I have followed the Old Blind Dogs for years. What a fantastic group. Very fine music. I have even had the opportunity for a couple of them to stay at my home.
R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 05/05/2014: 12:33:37
That's great. They're a fabulous group.
Back when I was into Irish/Scottish in a big way,
I was privileged to rub elbows with some of the greats as well.
I think it is just the nature of the thing. The scene is/was small enough,
and the musicians were sociable enough to hangout with the local fans.
I ended up at parties with folks like Andy Ivine, the members of Altan, Silly Wizard,
The Battlefield Band, etc.
Once I was at a music festival in L.A. and Phil and Johnny Cunningham were there.
Their instruments were locked in the trunk, and for whatever reason unaccessible.
My brother and I lent them our instruments (piano accordion and fiddle). A pretty big
thrill listening to them play them.
Great times... If I'd been into Rock, I doubt if I'd have gotten to hangout with the Stones or Zeppelin
OldRogueDoc - Posted - 05/05/2014: 13:22:34
quote:
Originally posted by Brooklynbanjoboy
I stumbled into this interesting banjo version:
It sure would be nice to have someone tab that out. That is a great version
Mtngoat - Posted - 05/05/2014: 17:02:56
Sounds like you've got it Lew. Thanks for contributing.
