Frolic Of The Frogs: A Song History

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Frolic of the Frogs began as a piano waltz by J. Jay Watson.[1][2] The Tune Archive dates its composition to 1896, the year IMSLP assigns to an undated edition from the De Luxe Music Co. of New York, and a copy held at Western Connecticut State University carries a different imprint, National.[1][2][3] Sources differ on the date, though: a Watson piano piece issued in New York by Hamilton S. Gordon in 1893, The Frog's Moonlight Serenade, already advertised the "Celebrated Frolic of the Frogs Waltz" in its title.[4]

Clear glass vase with dark green frogs and lily pads molded around its shoulder.

René Lalique, Frogs and Lily Pads (Grenouilles et Nénuphars) Vase, glass, 1909–12. Frogs among lily pads, shown in fun; it has no connection to the waltz.

The waltz later passed to traditional fiddlers.[2] Arizona fiddler Kenner C. Kartchner is said to have learned it in 1902 from an Edison record both fiddle-tune indexes describe as Frank Wattron's.[2][5] Kartchner's life is the subject of Frontier Fiddler: The Life of a Northern Arizona Pioneer, reviewed in BYU Studies in 1990.[6] The Tune Archive cites a notated setting from George Custer printed in The Devil's Box in 1979.[2] Bruce Greene and Hilary Dirlam recorded the waltz on their 1994 album Fiddler's Dozen, having learned it from Gusty Wallace of Sulphur Well, Kentucky.[2][5] In the Tune Archive's version the waltz has three parts, with the second strain in a different key from the first and third.[2]

A tune titled Frolic Of The Frogs appears, in DAA tuning, in Don Pedi's Simply Old Time Dulcimer, a book of traditional old-time repertoire in dulcimer tablature with demonstration audio files; the book's listing does not say whether it is Watson's waltz.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Frolic Of The Frogs"

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Sources

  1. IMSLP: "The Frolic of the Frogs (Watson, J. J.)".
  2. Traditional Tune Archive: "Frolic of the Frogs".
  3. Western Connecticut State University Archives: "The Frolic of the Frogs (Waltz)".
  4. Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins: "The Frog's Moonlight Serenade. Introducing the Celebrated Frolic of the Frogs Waltz.".
  5. The Fiddler's Companion: "Frog - Fy".
  6. BYU Studies: "Frontier Fiddler: The Life of a Northern Arizona Pioneer".
  7. Don Pedi: "Simply Old Time Dulcimer".
  8. Image: René Lalique, Frogs and Lily Pads (Grenouilles et Nénuphars) Vase, glass, 1909–12. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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