College Hornpipe

Benny Thomasson, 1982

The earliest known version of College Hornpipe can be found in a collection of 120 hornpipes published in the British Isles during the mid-1700s. The tune became a mainstay in the Texas-style old-time fiddle genre, which developed during the mid-20th century and was one of the first genres I delved into once I started playing fiddle.

Texas fiddling fascinated me at a young age because it seemed to be the most advanced, comprehensive, creative, and virtuosic of all the traditional fiddling genres. Much of that can be attributed to Benny Thomasson – widely regarded the “dean” of Texas fiddlers – whose variations on traditional tunes were complex, mesmerizing, and groundbreaking. Benny was aging when I was a young fiddler, but luckily for me, he opted to spend his retirement years on a river not too far from where I lived in Washington state.

Needless to say, I took advantage of the proximity. After hearing me play, Benny took me under his wing and invited me to take lessons from him in his cabin by the river. Over a period of about four years, I’d stay at Benny’s house every other weekend and learn Texas-style breakdowns, ragtime tunes, and hornpipes, including College Hornpipe  During our marathon lessons (some of them lasted over 12 hours!), Benny would show me many of his variations of traditional repertoire. He would challenge me to create my own, so every time I would return to his house for another lesson, I would play him my own variations, and he would help me refine them.

The version of College Hornpipe presented in this book features a combination of Benny’s and my variations. In fact, this transcription is not much different from the one I memorized as a 13 year-old. Generally speaking, the first half of each part is a variation developed by Benny, and the second half of each is a variation I developed. This basic structure (Benny’s first half, my second half) is characteristic of many versions of Texas fiddle tunes played today.

I have recorded College Hornpipe several times, perhaps the most notable being the string trio version with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer on my album Appalachia Waltz. That version features counterpoint for cello and double bass written by Edgar. In the duet version in this book, the 1st violin line is very similar to the tune as I learned and developed it with Benny, while the 2nd violin line is inspired by Edgar’s counterpoint.

Benny Thomasson at the Library of Congress in 1976

I had the great fortune of performing College Hornpipe with Yo-Yo and Edgar for the President of the United States in the mid-1990s. It is amazing to think how that tune traveled from a little shack on the banks of the Kalama River in Washington to a stage in our nation’s capital in front of the leaders of our country. Even today, Yo-Yo continues to play it, in particular as a warm-up etude before performances of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. Texas fiddling and classical music may seem starkly different, but as the Appalachia Waltz project (and especially College Hornpipe  shows, the two genres are more alike than they might seem at first listen.

Mark O'Connor, Benny Thomasson, Jerry Thomasson at the Smithsonian, 1977

La Golondrina

Narciso Serradell Sevilla, Mexico

In 1861, Mexico was invaded by the Second French Empire, and Maximilian I (younger brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I) was instated as the monarch of what became known as the Second Mexican Empire. A young man named Narciso Serradell Sevilla was captured while resisting the invasion, and he was sent to France, where he taught music and Spanish for several years. In 1862, at age 19, Sevilla wrote a song called La Golondrina (“The Swallow”), which resonated with many of his fellow Mexican exiles because it told of a migrating swallow recalling its homeland.

After the reign of Maximilian I ended in 1867, Sevilla and many of his countrymen returned home, and thousands of members of the French army (including its marching band) fled into what is now the American Southwest. Concurrently, many Polish and German immigrants began settling in the same region, bringing along their native polkas and waltzes. Needless to say, the setting was ripe for musical development. The confluence of imported and regional traditions sparked the development of several new styles in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern U.S., including Norteño music and Western Swing. La Golondrina became a mainstay in the Western Swing repertoire by the 1930s and is now considered a classic of the style.

Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, 1930s Texas

The tune has been recorded numerous times in different time signatures and under a variety of titles throughout the last century. The earliest known recording was made in 1906 by Señor Francisco, but perhaps better known are the recordings by Chet Atkins (instrumental, 1955), Nat King Cole (1962), and Placido Domingo (1984). Songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant rewrote the tune with English lyrics and entitled it She Wears My Ring, which was sung by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Ray Price, among others. It was also rewritten and recorded in German as Du sollst nicht weinen (“Thou Shalt Not Cry”, 1968) and in Swedish as Mitt Sommarlov (“My Summer Break”, 1970), both of which became chart-topping singles in Europe.

   

I remember hearing La Golondrina frequently at the fiddle contests I entered as a teenager, especially those in the western U.S. I always admired the beautiful double-stops (often in third intervals) and the apparent difficulty it took to pull them off. After learning the tune myself, I began using it essentially as a double-stop exercise.

The arrangement of La Golondrina presented here is based on a version of the tune popularized by Western Swing players Milton Brown, Cliff Bruner, and Bob Wills. I expand upon this version by incorporating almost every available double-stop interval in thirds between the 1st and 5th positions. You can now practice your thirds to the beautiful tune of La Golondrina!

Cliff Bruner and his Texas Wanderers, 1937

Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, 1935

Canadian Medley (The Laird of Thrums Strathspey)

Jean Carignan, Quebec, Canada

The three pieces of music contained in the Carrignan medley; The Laird o’ Thrums Strathspey, The Laird of Drumblair Strathspey and The Gladstone Reel are all written by one of the greatest fiddle-composers of all time, the Scotsman James Scott Skinner.

Born in1847 in Aberdeen, Scotland and who also coincidentally shares my own birthday of August 5th, Skinner began composing for the violin at age 17, and in the end of his career, some 600 compositions mostly published by himself create a unique accomplishment in the world of fiddling. Reportedly Skinner went bankrupt with his publishing efforts as a business man, but his pieces are some of the most performed repertoire in Scottish folk music circles.

Skinner learned the violin and cello from his older brother and often played bass lines on the cello at dances when he was very young. He was accepted into a 6-year apprenticeship at age 11 to further his violin and cello studies in Manchester and performed throughout Britain as a child. Still in his teens, he took part in a Highland dancing competition in Ireland, winning first prize in the “Sword Dance” accompanying himself on fiddle and beating John McNeill, an acknowledged champion.

In the 1870s, Skinner performed concerts in Scotland and began to include his own compositions of Scottish fiddling repertoire in addition to the virtuoso violin pieces by Niccolo Paganini and others. In 1893 he toured the United States and Canada with wellknown piper and champion Highland Dance Willie MacLennan and by 1899 he was one of the very first Scottish musicians to be recorded. His well documented recording career lasted from 1905 to 1922. In 1911 he performed at the opening of the London Palladium and in 1925 was a top bill on five tours of the U.K. In 1926 Skinner returned to the United States to enter a reel and jig fiddle competition but had differences with the pianist and perhaps the rules of the contest and strode off the stage to default. But the legacy of his original pieces endured, inspiring the greatest fiddlers to come after him like Jean Carignan.

French-Canadian fiddling is one of the most exciting and virtuosic string styles in the Americas. It blends Scottish repertoire, particularly Strathspeys and other dance tunes, with elements of French and Native American styles. It is a beautiful example of musical cross-pollination, and one of its greatest practitioners is the fiddler Jean Carignan.

“Ti-Jean” Carignan was the ultimate folk violinist. He incorporated classical technique seamlessly into his renditions of French-Canadian, Irish, and Scottish tunes. Walking a fine line between “violin” and “fiddle” music, he achieved the best of both worlds. For the most part, Carignan avoided playing in higher positions in the interest of maintaining the “folk” quality of his music, but he fearlessly tackled spicatto bowing, pizzicato, 16th-note runs, and dramatic dynamic variations.

Carignan was born in 1916 in Lévis, Québec. His father, trained on the fiddle by a local Native American musician, performed at parties and dances throughout the Eastern Townships. Carignan picked up the fiddle and imitated his father’s regional style at a young age, but he also became inspired by early 78 rpm recordings of a number of other fiddlers, including Joseph Allard (a fellow Canadian), Michael Coleman and James Morrison (natives of Ireland), J. Scott Skinner (Scotland), and classical great Jascha Heifetz (Lithuania/U.S.). In spite of his father’s strong skepticism, Carignan pursued music vigorously and became a professional performer in his teens.

The way Carignan infused classical technique and sensitivity into his Irish, Scottish, and French-Canadian repertoire was unprecedented; however, his boldness came at a cost. The Québecois political movement of the 1960s and ‘70s coincided with the revival of folk traditions throughout the province, and Carignan was highly criticized for performing repertoire that wasn’t “native.” Apparently, he lost some close musical friends over the issue, but he defended his artistic choices, and indeed, he ultimately developed a style that spread far wider than the borders of Québec. He created his own musical language, and he spoke it with great fluency.

Carignan’s fiddling came to the attention of classical violin great Yehudi Menuhin, and the two recorded together and appeared as a duo on a number of television and radio broadcasts. The admiration Menuhin had for Carignan was apparent to all who witnessed their collaboration. “In his hands,” Meunhin once said, “the violin is a universal folk instrument with a creative vitality, a dynamic expression of its own…shaped by Jean’s own lively, inventive intelligence.”

The Strathspey – one of the Scottish dance forms that Carignan mastered – originated in the “strath,” or valley, of the River Spey in Northeast Scotland. As with most traditional dance forms, the tempos at which Strathspeys are performed have increased over time, especially as they have migrated from the dance hall to the stage. They are in 4/4, like reels, but their reliance on the “Scotch snap” gives them an altogether different groove. This dotted rhythm is short-long: a quick downbow followed by an aggressive upstroke that sustains longer. (You may recall that this is the opposite of ragtime, which utilizes a long-short bowing rhythm.) Strathspeys also utilize spicatto (bowing “off the string”) to accentuate the rhythmic pulse.

Fascinating Rhythm

George Gershwin

“I like to get the most effect out of the fewest notes.” - George Gerswhin

Fascinating Rhythm, one of the classics of jazz repertoire, was written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1924. George came up with the first eight-bar fragment while finishing up the score for the musical Primrose in London, and upon returning to his home city of New York, he showed the tune to his brother and frequent collaborator, Ira, who initially responded, “For God’s sake, George, what kind of lyric do you write to a rhythm like that?” Indeed, the melody, which consists largely of polyrhythmic variations on a six-note phrase, doesn’t seem terribly lyric-friendly. (George had at first nicknamed the tune “Syncopated City”.) However, the melody grew on Ira, and he soon came up with a title that reflected the melody and fit the primary six-note phrase perfectly: Fascinating Rhythm.

According to George, crafting the full set of lyrics generated “many a hot argument” between Ira and him, especially in regard to the placement of accents. Although Ira eventually did his brother’s bidding, many surmise that he retaliated against George in the lyrics themselves, in which he lashes out at the pesky rhythm: Won’t you take a day off, decide to run along / Somewhere far away off, and make it snappy

In the last line, Ira also complains, “Won’t you please stop picking on me?” George and Ira may have been world-class songwriters, but they were still brothers!

The Gershwins included Fascinating Rhythm in Lady, Be Good!, a Broadway collaboration with Guy Bolton, Fred Thompson, and Fred and Adele Astaire that premiered in 1924. It was one of the principal songs in the musical, and as was the case in many Broadway shows during the 1920s, it was reprised near the end with an altered set of lyrics (“Fascinating wedding, that sure appeals to me / Fascinating wedding, I hear you calling”). The song was a hit with the audience; a critic for The New York Herald Tribune wrote, “When at 9:15, they sang and danced ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, the callous Broadwayites cheered them as if their favorite halfback had planted the ball behind the goal posts after an 80-yard run.”

Stephane Grappelli 1979

George and the Astaires recorded the song for Columbia Records in 1926, and it has been a standard in the American songbook ever since. Although there is no visual record of Lady, Be Good! featuring the Astaires, the musical was filmed for MGM in 1941 with different entertainers. Interestingly, the MGM version follows a different plot than the original, and it features two black pianists anchoring the orchestra (instead of two white pianists, as in the original), perhaps in an attempt to stay more authentic to the musical style, given that most of the highly regarded stride pianists in the 1920s were African American.

A number of authors, critics, and composers have expressed high praise for Fascinating Rhythm  including Aaron Copland himself, who described the song as “rhythmically not only the most fascinating but the most original jazz song yet composed.” Howard Pollack refers to the song as “paradigmatic to the Jazz Age,” while Ted Gioia asserts that “no one moved more aggressively in mixing popular song with a jazz sensibility than George Gershwin.” It is the rhythm, of course, that remains the most innovative and compelling attribute of the song; Gioia also writes that, in building the hook from a metric displacement, the song “anticipates the riff-based charts that would usher in the Swing Era.” Deena Rosenberg writes that “such rhythmic complexity was rare in American theater song of the time; so was such a close blending of words and music. The rhythm is so absorbing, so extraordinary.” Gerald Mast sums it up best: “The result of this playful trickery is a rhythmically complex song about rhyth- mic complexity.”

George and Ira Gerswin

George and Ira GerswinIn 1956, my mentor, jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, recorded his own arrangement of Fascinating Rhythm  which features repeated half-step modulations near the end. When I recorded the song with my Hot Swing ensemble and singer Jane Monheit in 2002, I used Stephane’s arrangement as a springboard for my own version, which modulates by half-steps throughout. Stephane and I opted to turn a rhythmic journey into a harmonic one as well.

Jerusalem Ridge

Kenny Baker in 1974

Jerusalem Ridge is a bluegrass fiddle tune made popular by legendary fiddler and Kentucky native Kenny Baker. Kenny co-wrote the tune with Bill Monroe in 1970 as a member of Bill’s legendary Blue Grass Boys. As the story goes, the band was staying at the Henry Clay Hotel in Ashland, Kentucky one night in August of that year, when, around 1 or 2 a.m., Bill invited Kenny to his hotel room. He asked Kenny to come up with a bunch of musical ideas on the spot until he heard a few that he liked. Kenny obliged, and the three ideas Bill enjoyed the most were made into the first, second, and fourth parts of a new tune he called Jerusalem Ridge  (Bill had already written the third part). This tune is widely regarded as one of the greatest bluegrass tunes ever written.

Kenny’s journey from the Kentucky hills to bluegrass stardom was an unlikely one. Born on June 26, 1926, Kenny played the guitar as a young man, even though his father, grandmother, and grandfather were all fiddlers. As a teenager, he joined the Navy, and during his 33-month tour of the South Pacific, he joined a “hillbilly act” that played songs by Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Roy Acuff. While stationed in Okinawa during World War II, he started fiddling at square dances organized by Red Cross nurses, although he was not very adept at the instrument yet. It wasn’t until he heard Western Swing fiddle legend Bob Wills’ version of Silver Bells on the radio that he developed a more serious interest in it. At the time, he was working on a destroyer repair unit base in Hollandia, New Guinea, so he didn't have much of an opportunity to learn a new instrument; however, to keep his dreams afloat, he did request that the radio station play Silver Bells every day, and they did. (Occasionally, the radio announcer would ask on air if Kenny was listening.)

Kenny returned to Kentucky at age 21 and became devoted to learning the fiddle. He familiarized himself with Bob Wills’ catalog as well as with the fiddling of Nashville star Howdy Forrester, Georgia Wildcats jazz and old-time fiddling pioneer Clayton McMichen, and fiddle virtuoso Arthur Smith (composer of Florida Blues, which appears in Book II). While honing his fiddling, Kenny worked at a coal mine. He didn’t get his first official fiddling gig until 1952.

Five years later, in 1957, Kenny joined the Blue Grass Boys, apparently without ever having heard any bluegrass music before. Clearly, his lack of familiarity with the style didn’t hinder him; he remained in the band for 27 years, and for much of his tenure, Bill introduced him as the “greatest fiddler in bluegrass music”- a title almost no one disputes today.

Kenny Baker and Bill Monroe

I had the great fortune of recording a duet version of Jerusalem Ridge with Kenny himself for my album Heroes (1993). The arrangement of the tune in this book is similar to the one on the album, except I expand the role of the 2nd violin by giving it plenty of chops. I also introduce a section that features a 20- to 30-second canon on two parts of the melody. The result is an exciting, adventurous duet that exhibits some of the energy and rhythm of a full-band rendition of the tune.

I was just a kid when I first saw Bill, Kenny, and the rest of the Blue Grass Boys perform Jerusalem Ridge at a festival in the mid-1970s. Although it is only one of many great bluegrass tunes composed by Kenny and Bill, it certainly stood out in the repertoire, and I was mesmerized by it. Its minor-key setting may have been inspired by earlier modal old-time tunes like Glory in the Meeting House, a tune captured on recording by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress around the time Bill formed the Blue Grass Boys. (Lomax recorded performances of this tune by two other Kentucky fiddlers, Luther Strong and William H. Stepp, the latter of whom is the composer of Stepp Down Hoedown in Book II).