Posted by JanetB, written by Owen "Snake" Chapman
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- Play count: 379
Size: 1,438kb, uploaded 4/14/2018 10:51:25 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
For the old-time Tune of the Week, 4/13/18, Snake wrote this tune during a recording session and it was was recorded and kept for posterity with this title that was reminiscent of his experience as a child of being knocked down by an angry hornet.
5 commentsPosted by JanetB, written by Giacomo Puccini
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- Play count: 296
Size: 850kb, uploaded 8/23/2011 6:13:35 PM
Genre: Classical / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
This operatic song was learned before a trip to Italy when I didn't yet know I'd be staying in Lucca, the very town of Giacomo Puccini's birth. As it turned out, he also wrote Girl of the Golden West which was performed in San Francisco in 1907 and included the well-known mistrel Jake Wallace, who taught Lotta Crabtree how to play banjo. Small world.
Add CommentPosted by JanetB, written by Erynn Marshall
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- Play count: 158
Size: 1,520kb, uploaded 2/25/2017 11:23:48 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
For the old-time Tune of the Week, 2/24/17, Erynn wrote this song after earning an Appalachian Fellowship Award and spending time in Kentucky to research the music. The tune was her thank you to the local folk with a little "wistfulness thrown in" for her departure. I'm playing on a Gold Tone cello banjo using 2-finger picking style. I'm playing AB rather than AAB. The tuning is comparable to double C, but tuned down and the key comes out in G, just like Erynn's recording on her CD "Meet Me in the Music."
1 commentPosted by JanetB
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- Play count: 787
Size: 1,093kb, uploaded 11/11/2012 6:16:44 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
For Don Borchelt's TOTW. It's a happy, meandering tune for having such a title, but I figure the sheep ranchers are dipping their sheep in sheep dip, thus the picture of working together and accomplishing the job.
2 commentsPosted by JanetB
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- Play count: 1063
Size: 2,744kb, uploaded 1/27/2015 5:59:25 PM
Genre: Fiddle/Celtic/Irish / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
Ever since hearing Dave Hum play this tune I've wanted to learn it. I happened upon it in a Ken Perlman clawhammer book and found I could play it.
6 commentsPosted by JanetB
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- Play count: 615
Size: 1,556kb, uploaded 12/16/2016 6:30:22 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
Epic Kentucky bluegrass fiddler Kenny Baker played Make a Little Boat with his buddies after learning it from Howdy Forrester. I think of Mr. Baker as a swing-type of fiddler with Bill Monroe, but his family background was as an old-time fiddler. I can just see a little guy growing up in the country sailing his hand-made boat in a little creek....
1 commentPosted by JanetB
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- Play count: 132
Size: 1,291kb, uploaded 8/29/2022 10:31:47 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
An odd title for a 1920's Kentucky fiddle contest tune. No lions or tigers there, I'd think. The A part seems to have a big cat playing with his prey. The B part he's eating! Change tiger to kitty cat and man to mouse and I can handle the thought, barely.
2 commentsPosted by JanetB
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- Play count: 1099
Size: 1,079kb, uploaded 9/30/2013 5:51:00 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
Ed Haley's version. It inspired John Hartford, too, and he played it for the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. I heard it on an Ed Haley CD I was able to download and it became one of those "gotta learn" tunes.
6 commentsPosted by JanetB, written by Jim Reed
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- Play count: 1098
Size: 1,136kb, uploaded 12/26/2012 2:46:46 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
BHO's own Jim Reed from Sydney, Kentucky wrote this pretty piece.
2 commentsPosted by JanetB
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- Play count: 114
Size: 761kb, uploaded 10/29/2022 10:56:43 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
Former Blue Grass Boy Tony Ellis asked that this old tune be shared and hopefully played once again. He learned it from an old friend who learned it as a 9-year-old boy from the "town drunk" who used to busk in Rodgersville, Tennessee. Tony calls the melody simple and old-fashioned. I learned it clawhammer style, though he plays it 2-finger style. I also reversed his first and second parts and he didn't mind at all!
Add CommentWritten/Posted by JanetB
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- Play count: 1152
Size: 804kb, uploaded 7/11/2014 11:51:15 AM
Genre: Other / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
Dedicated to my mother, now 93 years old. In my mind she's reached the summit, which was the original title of this piece. I'm playing on a Goldtone cello banjo.
4 commentsPosted by JanetB
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- Play count: 676
Size: 2,070kb, uploaded 3/16/2016 6:05:43 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
After hearing Matt Malloy of the Chieftains, Dave Hum, and finally Don Huber, I got inspired to learn this tune and some of its variations, just in time for Saint Patrick's Day.
1 commentPosted by JanetB, written by Turlough O'Carolan
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- Play count: 918
Size: 2,011kb, uploaded 5/21/2015 5:47:35 PM
Genre: Fiddle/Celtic/Irish / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
A planxty written to honor the head of an important Irish clan. The O'Connors were generous hosts of O'Carolan many a-time. A boyhood friend of O'Carolan's was also an O'Connor named Dennis. They would have known each other as neighbors before O'Carolan's blindness at age 18.
3 commentsPosted by JanetB, written by Richard Fraley
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- Play count: 879
Size: 762kb, uploaded 2/23/2012 5:44:43 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
This crooked song from Kentucky is a good intro for me to J.P. Fraley's fiddling. John Hartford String Band does a great version, too, and it's in Jeff Titon's Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes book.
5 commentsPosted by JanetB, written by Richard Fraley
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- Play count: 688
Size: 2,825kb, uploaded 6/23/2017 6:43:00 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
For the old-time Tune of the Week, 6/23/17, Maysville is a town in northeastern Kentucky and the past scene of tobacco trade. J.P. Fraley rode in his father's wagon as a child in the 1930's and learned to fiddle this tune from his father. Oddly, the tuning I used for this recording is sawmill. I added a bit of cello banjo for accompaniment.
4 commentsPosted by JanetB, written by Richard Fraley
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- Play count: 277
Size: 1,271kb, uploaded 4/12/2012 10:17:07 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
This version of J.P. Fraley's fiddle tune includes banjo, mandolin, and cello banjo. I'm interested to see how the cello banjo can be used for accompaniment.
Add CommentPosted by JanetB, written by John Phillips
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- Play count: 94
Size: 940kb, uploaded 7/2/2022 12:11:07 PM
Genre: Other / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
Listening to Joni Mitchell and Carl Baron's vocals, I came up with this banjo solo in sawmill tuning, like Carl plays it for this week's Tune of the Week called Me and My Uncle -- a kind of modern-day cowboy ballad.
Add CommentPosted by JanetB, written by Alice Gerrard
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- Play count: 847
Size: 1,710kb, uploaded 9/2/2016 3:46:41 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
This is my first effort using Garage Band which comes with the Mac computer. I played an openback banjo in modal tuning and a cello banjo in open C tuning. Meadows of Dan is a beautiful little town in the mountains of Virginia where Alice Gerrard did lots and lots of field work collecting music. I don't really know what I'm doing with Garage Band, but it seems to have turned out okay today. Send any feedback my way so I can continue learning.
2 commentsPosted by JanetB, written by George Lee Hawkins
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- Play count: 1137
Size: 1,591kb, uploaded 2/10/2015 9:15:31 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
I first heard of this Kentucky fiddler on the old-time Tune of the Week. I've found two sources so far to hear George Lee Hawkins -- the Slippery Hill website and a Traditional Fiddle Tunes of Kentucky cd. When I became aware of this particular tune via BHO member brooklynbanjoboy I looked for more info and read that Mr. Hawkins, born in 1904, heard it as a boy from an elderly fiddler and attempted to reconstruct it much later. He called it Meg Gray, or Maggie Gray, included in Jeffrey Titon's Fiddle Tunes of Kentucky book. It interestingly modulates from minor to major.
6 commentsPosted by JanetB, written by Jake Phelps
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- Play count: 263
Size: 963kb, uploaded 8/9/2014 10:16:14 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time
This is the third tune I've learned from this historic Kentucky fiddler, Jake Phelps (1885 - 1977). Bruce Greene recorded him and this is one of the tunes Jeff Titon included in his book of Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes. He describes it in his book as being "well-crafted" and I agree! I used some advanced clawhammer techniques to get the fiddler's notes--the thumb on the first string and an pull-off from a fretted ninth fret to a seventh fret. It was fun and challenging to arrange this one.
3 commentsCopyright Notice:
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