Cold Frosty Morning: A Song History

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The A-minor reel that dulcimer players know as "Cold Frosty Morning" appears to be the old-time tune in A dorian that Virginia fiddler Henry Reed called simply "Frosty Morning"; the Traditional Tune Archive notes that the longer title is sometimes mistakenly used for Reed's tune.[1][2] Reed's playing is the tune's best-documented source: folklorist Alan Jabbour recorded him performing it at the Reed family home in Glen Lyn, Virginia, in August 1966, and the field recording is now held by the Library of Congress.[3] Jabbour's notes observe that, for all its old frontier sound, the tune has no clearly documented relatives in other sources, and that Reed opened both performances with the high part, a preference typical of Upper South fiddlers.[3] The Tune Archive adds that a "Frosty Morning" is mentioned in an account of a 1931 fiddle contest at LaFollette, Tennessee, and that the melody bears a strong resemblance to "Johnny Cope."[1]

Currier & Ives lithograph Winter Morning in the Country, 1873: a horse-drawn sleigh carrying milk cans past snowy farmhouses

Currier & Ives, Winter Morning in the Country, hand-colored lithograph, 1873. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The Fuzzy Mountain String Band recorded it in 1972, and it was printed in Krassen's Appalachian Fiddle (1973) and Brody's The Fiddler's Fakebook (1983).[1][4] The name itself is shared, which causes confusion. The Library of Congress notes remark that the title, sometimes in the form "Cold Frosty Morning," is attached elsewhere to other tunes.[3] One is a different piece altogether, a Scottish air in 3/4 time printed in volume 4 of James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion (1760).[5] Another was played by West Virginia fiddler Melvin Wine, who learned a "Cold Frosty Morning" from his father, Bob Wine, among tunes handed down from Bob's father and grandfather.[6] Wine (1909-2003) later released a 1976 LP titled Cold Frosty Morning.[7] The sources consulted here do not settle whether the Wine family tune is the same melody as the one played at jams.

Today the A-dorian "Cold Frosty Morning" appears on the North Atlantic Tune List, and it has found a home among dulcimer players: a fiddle and hammered dulcimer lesson presents it as an old minor-mode tune, and a Dulcimer-More Festival workshop used it on hammered dulcimer to practice learning a tune on the fly in a jam.[4][8][9]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Frosty Morning (1)".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Cold Frosty Morning (1)".
  3. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Frosty Morning" (Henry Reed, 1966).
  4. North Atlantic Tune List: "Cold Frosty Morning".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Cold Frosty Morning (2)".
  6. National Endowment for the Arts: "Melvin Wine".
  7. e-WV, The West Virginia Encyclopedia: "Melvin Wine".
  8. Owl Mountain Music: "New Lesson-Cold Frosty Morning".
  9. Dulcimer-More Festival: "Workshop Descriptions".