June Apple: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"June Apple" is an old-time reel that the Traditional Tune Archive assigns to Virginia, and old-time musician Mac Traynham notes that players around Galax, Virginia, and nearby Surry County, North Carolina, have handled its chords in different ways.[1][2] Most versions are modal, in A mixolydian, though Benton Flippen of Surry County played it in A major; fiddlers use either standard tuning or the AEae cross-tuning for it.[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive connects the title to the June apple, an early-ripening Southern apple that is smaller and sharper-tasting than later varieties, and notes that some players sing loose "floating verses" to the tune.[1] Its composer and date of origin are not recorded in the sources consulted.

Paul Cezanne still life painting of red and yellow apples

Paul Cézanne, Apples, oil on canvas, 1878–79. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

In 1959 Peter Hoover recorded fiddler Uncle Charlie Higgins with banjo player Wade Ward and guitarist Dale Poe in Higgins's and Ward's living rooms in Grayson County, Virginia, and "June Apple" is among the tunes on that collection.[3][4] Ward and Higgins also appear on an Alan Lomax recording, where, Traynham writes, they call it "just an old hillbilly tune."[2] Across the state line, Tommy Jarrell (1901–1985) of the Mount Airy area learned it from his father, Ben Jarrell, and it appears on Down to the Cider Mill (County, 1968), credited to Cockerham, Jarrell and Jenkins.[1][4][5] Jarrell later made it the title track of a 1972 LP with Kyle Creed on banjo, Bobby Patterson on guitar and Audine Lineberry on bass.[2][6]

Traynham, who came to know the tune in the early 1970s as a festival jam tune in the key of A, believes that Jarrell album has probably done more than any other recording to shape the way the tune sounds now.[2] Jarrell, who received a National Heritage Fellowship in 1982, took on apprentices from many parts of the country.[5] The tune has since turned up in banjo, guitar and bluegrass bass books and magazines, including a 1976 issue of Dulcimer Players News, and it is one of the tunes in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam collection for mountain dulcimer.[4][7]

Find books with June Apple for sale →

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: June Apple".
  2. The Floyd Country Store: "Music of Our Mountains: June Apple".
  3. Field Recorders' Collective: "FRC 501 – Uncle Charlie Higgins, Wade Ward & Dale Poe: Recordings from the collection of Peter Hoover".
  4. The Folk Music Index (ibiblio): "Ju to Jz".
  5. National Endowment for the Arts: "Tommy Jarrell".
  6. Discogs: "Tommy Jarrell, Kyle Creed, Audine Lineberry and Bobby Patterson – June Apple".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Harmony Edition".