Jonah In The Windstorm: A Song History
“Jonah in the Windstorm” is an American old-time reel in D major, played on a fiddle in standard tuning, whose form the Traditional Tune Archive gives as an A part followed by a B part and a varied B.[1] The archive takes its notated version from Glen Fannin (1901–1978), a fiddler formerly of Magoffin County, Kentucky, who later lived in North Fairfield, Ohio.[1] Fannin’s setting was printed in the Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes of 2011, on pages 348 and 349.[1]
Lucas Gassel, Landscape with a Ship and Jonah and the Whale, etching and engraving, ca. 1560–70. Jonah's storm at sea, shown for the title.
Recordings of it include field tapes made in 1977 by the collector Bruce Greene (spelled “Green” in the Tune Archive, “Greene” on Slippery Hill), who taped Fannin and also recorded Casey Helton of Floyd County, Kentucky, playing it on both fiddle and banjo; the Tune Archive lists these tapes in Berea’s digital collections.[1][2] The Slippery Hill archive, which draws its copy of Fannin’s performance from the Digital Library of Appalachia, notes that he played it in GDAE and files it among its “crooked” tunes.[2] Mark Gilston includes it in More American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer, a sheet-music collection of old-time American tunes that he publishes himself.[3]
Browse more tunes like this: Old-Time & Fiddle Tunes Dulcimer Tab
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Jonah in the Windstorm".
- Slippery-Hill: "Jonah In The Windstorm".
- Mark Gilston: "More American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer".
- Image: Lucas Gassel, Landscape with a Ship and Jonah and the Whale, etching and engraving, ca. 1560–70. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.