Old Dad: A Song History
"Old Dad" is an American reel, usually played in G, and the Traditional Tune Archive ties it to the blackface minstrel stage of the 1840s.[1] Around 1844 Dan Emmett printed the melody as "My Old Dad" in a Boston collection of banjo tunes, without claiming to have written it, and the Archive describes the melody as an adaptation of the Scottish and Irish reel it calls "Miss McCloud's Reel."[1] It soon appeared elsewhere: the Ole Bull Violin Instruction Book of 1845 listed it among its "Ethiopian Melodies," Keith's Flute Instruction Book (Boston, 1847) gave it in C, and a version titled "Ould Dad" turns up in the mid-nineteenth-century manuscript of Isaac Homan, a fiddler and shipbuilder of Bellport, Long Island.[1]
W. Duke, Sons & Co., History of Ole Bull, from the Histories of Poor Boys and Famous People series, commercial color lithograph, 1888. Shown because an 1845 violin instruction book bearing Ole Bull's name printed the tune; it has no other connection to him.
In the twentieth century the tune was documented in and around Galax, Virginia; Miles Krassen, in Masters of Old-Time Fiddling (1983), took his notation from Charlie Higgins, born in Grayson County in 1880, and thought the title might be a local one there, though the Archive notes it was known by that name elsewhere too.[1] In October 1937 John A. Lomax recorded John Rector playing "Old Dad" on fiddle at the Old Fiddlers' Convention in Galax.[2] Rector's fiddling of the tune is also heard on American Fiddle Tunes, the Library of Congress LP of 1971 that Alan Jabbour compiled from field recordings made between 1934 and 1942.[3][1] Rector, a frequent winner at the Galax convention, was recorded again by Tom Carter and Blanton Owen in 1974, and the Field Recorders' Collective album of his fiddle and banjo playing includes the tune twice.[4] In Phyllis Gaskins's Pig In A Pen (And Other Fiddle Ditties For Galax Dulcimer), a collection of Galax dulcimer tunes with playing instructions in Gaskins's own adapted notation, plus directions for DAD tuning, "Old Dad" sits in the section of G tunes; the book is published by Fingers Of Steel.[5]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Old Dad".
- Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Old Dad" (John Rector, Galax, Virginia, 1937).
- Library of Congress: "American Fiddle Tunes" (AFS L62).
- Field Recorders' Collective: "John Rector – Galax Fiddle & Banjo (FRC737)".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Phyllis Gaskins, Pig In A Pen (And Other Fiddle Ditties For Galax Dulcimer)".
- Image: W. Duke, Sons & Co., History of Ole Bull, from the Histories of Poor Boys and Famous People series, commercial color lithograph, 1888. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.