Coleman's March: A Song History
"Coleman's March," sometimes called "Joe Coleman's March," is a D-major fiddle march from south-central Kentucky with a grim story behind it.[1] Citing the Burkesville Herald Almanac of 1899, the Traditional Tune Archive reports that Joe Coleman, a shoemaker, was accused of stabbing his wife to death near Slate Fork in Adair County.[1] The same entry says he was tried in nearby Cumberland County on circumstantial evidence and the word of his sister-in-law, and sentenced to death.[1] Tradition says he rode to the gallows in an ox cart, seated on his own coffin and fiddling the tune that still bears his name.[1] Other tellings add legendary twists: in one he gives his fiddle to a local player at the scaffold, and in another his family revives him after the hanging and sends him downriver to Nashville and out West.[1] Folklorist D. K. Wilgus examined the tune and its story in an article on the hanged-fiddler legend, a family of tales that also includes the one attached to "MacPherson's Farewell."[1]
Doris Ulmann, “James Duff, fiddler, Hazard, Kentucky,” photograph, ca. 1930. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
Bruce Greene brought the tune to old-time revival fiddlers in the 1970s, having learned it from Kentucky fiddler Gene Conner, who was recorded in Bowling Green in January 1962.[1] Greene spent much of the 1970s and 1980s seeking out Kentucky's remaining old-time fiddlers.[2] Vermont fiddler Pete Sutherland's cross-tuned version proved especially influential; he recorded it on Eight Miles from Town (Marimac, 1982).[1] Dulcimer player Don Pedi, who has performed with Greene, recorded it on Mountain Magic (1990).[1][2] The march is included in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[3]
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