Buckskin Boogie: A Song History
"Buckskin Boogie" is one of fourteen tunes in DulciFlute 2, the second book of duets for mountain dulcimer and Native American flute by John Keane and Karen Keane, published by Fingers Of Steel.[1] The listing credits the book jointly to both Keanes and describes its contents as original songs for the two instruments played together; it does not say which of them wrote this tune.[1] The Keanes, who come from Shreveport, Louisiana, hold music education degrees from Northeast Louisiana University (now the University of Louisiana at Monroe) and have produced several books and CDs of their own music for mountain dulcimer and Native American flute.[2][3] Buyers of the download also receive MP3 recordings of every tune in the book.[1] The sources consulted here say nothing about when the tune was composed or what inspired its title.[1][2][3]
Coat, leather, 19th century. The museum describes it only as leather; shown for the title, it has no connection to the tune.
Merriam-Webster dates the first known use of buckskin to the 14th century, in the sense of "the skin of a buck"; the dictionary also defines it as a soft, pliable leather that usually has a suede finish.[4] In the plural, buckskins are breeches of that leather, and an archaic sense applied the word to someone clad in buckskin, above all a backwoodsman of early America.[4] The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's CAMEO materials database says that deerskins with the outer grain taken off are generally known as buckskin, and that deerskin leather has also gone into clothing such as jackets, gloves, and shoe uppers.[5]
