"Money Musk" - more versions, including a strathspey, and a N.C. string band that does historical msuic

Four settings of "Money Musk" played back to back by the Pratie Heads ... from a Scottish strathspey through a couple of southern versions to a New England version. Bob Vasile, guitar; Jane Peppler, fiddle; Jim Baird of Mappamundi, acoustic bass.



Most online references, like The Session, have it as a reel in A major. It's in what looks like a valuable online collection of 1,850 abc files of O'Neill's Music Of Ireland at FreeSheetMusic.com ... but it's also played sometimes in G (see my Hogfiddle post a couple of days ago for more), and the abc.com website has it from an 18th-century manuscript source in Co. Kent, England, as a strathspey in G. Here's more on the Scots dance called the strathspey ... the Pratie Heads play theirs with a lot of lilt, very hard on the downbeat, lots of syncopation, good example of "Scotch snap"

The Pratie Heads are a North Carolina string band. Here, according to their website, is what they specialize in:

We specialize in British Isles, Celtic, and Colonial American songs and tunes, but also play original material, a few pieces from Sweden, Finland, Holland, Bulgaria, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, and from Jewish traditions (Yiddish / klezmer, Ladino / Sephardic, Hebrew / Israeli.