Happy New Year!

A friend recently shared some recordings of a fiddler from Westmoreland County, PA named Harry "Tink" Queer. The recordings are mostly standard repertoire except for a couple of original tunes, so I thought I'd share one of those.

Here's a short bio:

[Harry "Tink" Queer] was a very well-known fiddle player in the area. His Father Sanson Roadman played the Fiddle and had a Country Band. Before he was 7 he was trying to imitate his Dad. He got 2 corn stalks and would pretend to play the fiddle. His Dad said he was just TINK-ering around. At 7 he was caught with his Dad's Fiddle. He threatened to whip him if he ever caught him messing with his fiddle again. Tink said let me show you what I taught myself. He played a couple of notes and his Dad was amazed at what he could do so he apparently taught him how to play the fiddle. Later on in life Tink formed himself a band and played at clubs in the area. In 1936 his music was recorded and placed in the Library of Congress, Washington DC. Listed as "Tink Queer (Plus Guitars) Ligonier Pennsylvania. Recorded by Sydney Robertson Cowell, November 1936"

He was also one of the fiddlers collected by Samuel Bayard and a number of his tunes/versions of tunes appear in the collection "Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife," including a transcription of this tune that Bayard listed as a variant of Saratoga Hornpipe (though I don't really hear the similarity).

He calls this tune "Tink Queer's Special" and the A part does seem to be original (at least I can't think of any other tune that's directly related). The B part you'll probably recognize from Little Billy WIlson (which happens to be the tune of the month over on Facebook so you can kill two birds with one stone if you learn this tune).

Here's the source recording

He says it's in A, but like many old recordings he's tuned a little low, somewhere around A flat if you want to play along. I'm playing it in standard tuning (aEAC#A).

Here's my take: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6j5Qae4g3Yo

I'll try to tab it out for y'all at some point this week, in case that's helpful for anyone.

Hope you all have a great week!