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gentrixuk - Posted - 06/04/2021: 03:37:25
The Jenny Lind Polka
Hi everyone – this is my first time doing the TOTW. The tune I’ve chosen is “The Jenny Lind Polka”.
I chose this tune a while back, and I have since heard that Allison De Groot is using it for on an online workshop at the Mid-West banjo Camp this weekend, which I'm sure will be great, so apologies for the co-incidence.
Jenny Lind
The tune was named in honor of Jenny Lind, the famous Swedish opera singer nicknamed “The Swedish Nightingale”. By the 1840s, Jenny Lind had was attracting sell-out crowds throughout Europe. PT Barnum organized a hugely popular US tour for her in 1850, for which she was said to be have been paid $1,000 dollars per performance, much of which she used to fund the establishment of free schools in Sweden and other charitable causes.
You may well encounter her name today – her status was so high at the time, that many things were named in her honour: houses where she lived or stayed; hospitals she helped to fund; a style of furniture; and even entire towns.
The Tune
The tune’s first written appearance is credited to Anton Wallerstein in 1846. Here are links to two archive recordings, one from either side of the pond, which give a nice idea of different flavors of the tune.
First a recording from 1939 made in Camino, California by John N, Selleck, and recorded by Sidney Cowell.
Jenny Lind polka | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
The second is a recording made in the 1960s of the English Melodeon player Lewis “Scan” Tester
(I've just heard from Janet that this link might not work everywhere. She's sent over this link to try if not https://youtu.be/Cg6zytnbZZs )
I’ve included a video of my version, which I’ve tried to base loosely on these recordings and a tab (written with MuseScore).
The tune “Jenny Lynn” is also sometimes called “Jenny Lind”, but seems to be a different tune. Bill Monroe’s “Heel and Toe Polka” sounds like it’s the same tune we’re talking about here though.
Hope you enjoy it!
Edited by - gentrixuk on 06/04/2021 14:57:16
carlb - Posted - 06/04/2021: 09:36:23
OK, so here's my banjo setting, as best as I remember it, as I haven't played it, on the banjo, in about 20 years. Also, I remember that I took the melody line from the sheet music and entered it in my music program (Mozart). Here's a pdf of what I entered, transposed into D and G. Also, I used the program to generate a midi file from the notation. I had to convert the midi file to an mp3 in order for you hear it. I don't know how to upload midi files to Banjo Hangout.
JanetB - Posted - 06/04/2021: 16:40:51
Welcome Mark, and thanks for choosing this happy tune with your own pleasing clawhammer take on it. And thanks, Carl, for playing all four parts and explaining about the key change.
I learned by listening to Bill Monroe's Heel and Toe Polka. At the time I arranged it in three-finger style and was excited because it used melodic techniques for the left hand fingering which I had just studied.
It's good to know Jenny Lind was a generous soul for community causes. Interestingly, so was Lotta Crabtree who burlesqued Jenny by dancing, singing, and banjo picking minstrel songs as the main character in a play called Jenny Leatherlungs, when Lotta's own career was just taking off on Broadway in the early 1860's.
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