HUM 223: 'Soldier's Joy' and 'Arkansas Traveler'

Two fiddle tunes --

One's mentioned in the book, at page 13. As I play it, listen for the "high strain" and the "low strain," each played twice. You can see why they're called that by watching the sheet music as I project it on the screen.

"Soldier's Joy" is an old, old fiddle tune that continues to reinvent itself in different eras and different genres of music, as this webpage from the Library of Congress makes clear. Andrew Kuntz, whose Fiddler's Companion is an indispensible online source on fiddle tunes, traces it back to the 1700s ... with versions in Scotland, England, Ireland, as far afield as Denmark and, of course, the United States. (Link to http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/SO_SOR.htm and scroll down.) Kuntz quotes the English novelist Thomas Hardy (1895):

'Then,' said the fiddler, 'I'll venture to name that the right
and proper thing is 'The Soldier's Joy' ‑ ... ‑ hey, my sonnies,
and gentlemen all?' So the dance begins. As to the merits
of 'The Soldier's Joy', there cannot be, and never were,
two options. It has been observed in the musical circles
of Weatherbury and its vacinity that this melody, at the
end of three‑quarters of an hour of thunderous footing,
still possesses more stimulative properties for the heel
and toe than the majority of other dances at their first opening.

Earlier this year it provided contradance music at a Victorian fancy-dress ball (in Carrboro, N.C.?). And Civil War reenactors calling themselves the the 7th South Carolina play the song here in a camp tent on instruments like those used in the mid-1800s.

"Soldier's Joy" is a staple of American folk music. In 1933 newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt heard Bun Wright's Fiddle Band in Warm Springs, Ga., playing "Soldier's Joy."

And the song just never goes away. Here's an up-tempo version by the band Old Crow Medicine Show. Originally from New York state and now based in Nashville, they have played what they call "their own brand of American roots music with a rock and roll attitude" at festivals including Bonnaroo and Telluride Bluegrass Festival. This week they're touring Great Britian, with concerts tonight (Thursday) in Edinburgh and this weekend in London.

Another old fiddle tune is "Arkansas Traveler," which dates to the 1840s. Listen for the low part, played twice, followed by the high part, also played twice. You can see them in the sheet music for an 1880s piano version. The story behind the song is explained by the Little Rock visitors' center. Here two Civil War reenactors play it on banjo and "bones," an African American percussion instrument we'll meet again when we study the ministrel shows.

Like most fiddle tunes, "Arkansas Traveler" is a dance tune. Here a group of English dancers perform an American clog dance to the tune. Notice the similarity to Irish step dancing, but also notice their arms are held more loosely. Here, at a festival in Kentucky, is a southern Appalachian clog dance in something more like its native habitat, at this year's Hillbilly Days festival in Pikeville, Ky.

One of the great southern Appalachian fiddle players was Tommy Jarrell, who plays "Arkansas Traveler" and other tunes, and talks about moonshining, in a segment from a 1980s television show narrated by Scottish fiddle player Aly McBeal, also a virtuoso performer in his own right. Jarrell has been named to the Old-Time Fiddlers Hall of Fame. Notice how English, Scottish and old-time American string band traditions are interconnected in all of these clips.