Callahan: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Callahan" is an old-time reel in A major that fiddlers play either in standard tuning or cross-tuned to AEae, and it also turns up as "Callahan's Reel" and "Last of Callahan."[1] Players know it from southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee west to Kentucky, Arkansas and Missouri, though Mark Wilson and his co-authors treat Kentucky as its main home ground.[1] Bobby Fulcher placed it in "a group of archaic tunes," and fiddlers in Patrick County, Virginia, regard it as one of the older pieces they play.[1]

Watercolor of a man in a hat and old-fashioned clothes playing a fiddle in a tavern, with three men seated behind him

Johannes Hendrik van West, A Fiddler in a Tavern, with Three Men in the Background, watercolor over graphite, mid-19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

Fiddlin' Powers & Family recorded it for Victor as "Callahan's Reel" on August 19, 1924.[2] The Traditional Tune Archive names the fiddler as Cowan Powers of Russell County, in southwestern Virginia.[1] On October 26, 1937, W. H. Stepp played it in Salyersville, Kentucky, for a Library of Congress recording made by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax.[1][3] A legend holds that a condemned man named Callahan composed the tune, and a 1912 report has him playing on his coffin shortly before his execution; folklorist D. K. Wilgus examined this story at length in a study of the hanged-fiddler legend.[1][3] The tale echoes a centuries-old story told chiefly of the Scottish outlaw Macpherson, and Wilgus found Callahans caught up in Breathitt County, Kentucky, feuds but none on record as having been hanged.[1]

Printed settings of the tune draw partly on Norman Edmonds of Hillsville, Virginia, a fiddler whose 1958 radio programs for Galax were later issued by the Field Recorders' Collective.[1][4] It should not be confused with the Irish "Callaghan's Hornpipe," a G-major hornpipe from the Sliabh Luachra district on the Cork–Kerry border.[5]

Find books with Callahan for sale →

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Callahan (1)".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Victor 19450".
  3. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "Callahan" (W. H. Stepp, AFS 1568B2).
  4. Field Recorders' Collective: "Norman Edmonds and the Old Timers, Volume 1 – FRC301".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Callaghan's Hornpipe".