TOTW 04/03/26 Brilliancy Medley – Eck Robertson
I have chosen Eck Robertson’s Brilliancy Medley from 1929 as this week’s TOTW. You can listen to it here (YouTube), here (Youtube), and here (Slippery Hill).
About Eck Roberstson
Alexander Campbell "Eck" Robertson (born November 20, 1887, in Delaney, Arkansas, died February 15, 1975, in Borger, Texas) was an American fiddle player, mostly known for commercially recording the first country music songs in 1922 with Henry Gilliland (1845 - 1924). More about his life can be read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eck_Robertson
Eck Robertson has been presented in earlier TOTW’s for example by me in Bill Cheatham https://www.banjohangout.org/archive/380696 and Sallie Gooden (https://www.banjohangout.org/archive/405550 ), and by Janet two weeks ago with Grigsby’s Hornpipe https://www.banjohangout.org/topic/407822 .
I like Eck Robertson because he was very progressive, already 100 years ago. Especially, I like his variations in some tunes, especially the fourteen variations of Sallie Gooden where he comes back to the basic version several times and the fly out with new variations. In Brilliancy Medley he has four tunes that are put together in an unexpected order and mixed with each other. Most medleys today seems to be played in a straight order (AA BB AA BB CC DD CC DD ....) but in Brilliancy Medley the themes are first introduced, contrating materials is introduced, earlier material returns before the end (if someone wonders - I used AI for this explanation :))
Brilliancy Medley
In October 1929 he made a series of recordings in Victor’s field recording studio in Dallas. He included his family in the recordings with his wife Nettie on guitar, his daughter Daphne on tenor guitar and his son Dueron on tenor banjo. Brilliancy Medley was recorded on October 11, 1929.
Eck Robertson also made an earlier version, called Brilliancy and Cheatum in 1922, but it was never released. We don’t know how it sounded, but probably some musicologists have been able to listen to it.
It has been a lot of discussion about the tunes that appear in and the structure of Brilliancy Medley. The medley is built four different tunes: Drunken Billy Goat, Old Billy Wilson, Wake Up Susan, and Bill Cheatum (Bill Cheatham), and perhaps stuff from some more tunes. However, these tunes are not presented in a straight-through sequence but are mixed with each other. The only tune that can be heard as a whole seems to be Bill Cheatum.
Brilliancy Medley has been discussed in Fiddle Hangout https://www.fiddlehangout.com/archive/33692 . There is also some information at Traditional Tune Archive: https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Brilliancy. The following information is mainly from these sources.
Structure
In the attached tab I have divided the tune into 8 different parts (A to G). The tune can be better understood if divided into three different sections:
Or with the eight parts:
A A B B C C D D E D D E F F G G F F A A B B C
There have been discussions about the tunes in the medley. Some people have tried to put a name of each part. For example, in the Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes my Part D and E are presented as Billy Wilson, while other sources have named it Wake Up Susan. Milliner-Koken also calls the first parts (A and B) Drunken Billy Goat.
Other recordings
Brilliancy Medley, and the first part Brilliancy have been recorded but a lot of bands and players. Here are some examples:
Alan Kaufman: https://youtu.be/MoeUEHxZuIM
Old-time Fiddle Jam Session at Jeff and Eileen's: https://youtu.be/VoJXBlOPr6I?list=PL5bplOZIhwGQDiDkHBnLBiWDIcSxgSBHD
Fairport Convention: https://youtu.be/HWvaw6sRw9s
Fairport's Cropredy Convention Official: https://youtu.be/6CjAN8vMTgo
John Specker: https://youtu.be/e1F1H7nlnxM and https://youtu.be/1rNbNDp_qZw
The Western Fliers: https://youtu.be/d3lbK4wwJAc
Highwoods String Band: https://youtu.be/KH3wDTer57M
Tab/notation
I have put together a clawhammer version, together with fiddle notation. The fiddle notation is "borrowed" from other, for example the FidddleHangout thread linked above, and the Milliner-Koken book mentioned above. The fiddle notation is only a simplification. There are a lot of repeats, and Eck Robertson never played it the same way – I have just put in the first version of each tune:
https://www.banjohangout.org/tab/browse.asp?m=detail&v=29028
You're a brave man for working this out on banjo! I briefly considered trying to learn it on fiddle...as easy as it would be for me to, say, make an exact copy of Mona Lisa.
I love these tunes and maybe I can get it down on banjo, too.
An interesting, unexpected piece, isn't it. I recognize pieces of it, but don't know two of the four main tunes you've mentioned, so I've begun by learning Wake Up Susan. However, there doesn't seem to be a single recording Eck Robertson made of Wake Up Susan. Therefore I turned to the fiddler Ed Haley and then to Bruce Molsky. The melody doesn't seem to match your tab for Part 2. Perhaps the one I'm attempting is a different Wake Up Susan. Jan, what is your source for knowing Wake Up Susan?
The other unfamiliar tune is on Slippery Hill: Drunken Billy Goat and I'll work on it this week. And for comparison sake, here is Brilliancy by Pop Warner, a Texan fiddler.
In the TOTW for Gridley's Hornpipe, a book about Eck Robertson by Chris Goertzen was quoted stating: "Robertson criticized other fiddlers because their playing was 'just the same thing over and over.' Robertson insisted that his fiddling -- his balance of cleaving to tradition while adding new content -- was the way of the future." This Brilliancy Medley may have accomplished his goal.
The first part of Brilliancy Medley is Drunken Billy Goat. I hear some Whiskey Before Breakfast in the middle section, so perhaps that inspired the title....It would be helpful to have all the tune titles inserted where they fall in the tab, Jan, though it may be nearly impossible to discern them all. The whole tune is like a test of which tunes we can pick out from this conglomeration of tunes.
It's true that the Pop Warner link for Brilliancy in my above comment (recorded by John Lomax in the Texas State Penetentiary in 1939) is the same as Robertson's "Drunken Billy Goat", part of the Brilliancy Medley which is shared in the other Slippery Hill link in that comment.
The Brilliancy Medley doesn't make me feel brilliant at all. :) But I'm glad that your tab is easier to play now that I've listened more to the original recordings, and the tab below is close enough to yours to be the same tune.
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Privacy Consent (EU/GDPR Only)
Copyright 2026 Banjo Hangout. All Rights Reserved.
