Roses In The Morning: A Song History
"Roses in the Morning" is an American reel in G major that the Traditional Tune Archive traces to the fiddling of Clyde Davenport of Wayne County, Kentucky.[1] The archive gives Phillips's Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, volume 1 (1994), as its printed source and Davenport's 1986 County Records album Clydeoscope as its recording.[1] Slippery Hill, which hosts that County LP 788 track, lists it in standard GDAE fiddle tuning.[2] No older source or earlier recording turns up in the sources consulted here.[1]
Henri Fantin-Latour, Roses in a Bowl, oil on canvas, 1883. Roses in a bowl, shown for the title; the painting has no connection to the tune.
Born in 1921, Davenport grew up on his parents' farm near Mount Pisgah, absorbed tunes from his father and other local musicians, and built his own instruments as a boy; after fifteen years without playing, he came back to music in the mid-1970s, backing fiddler W. L. Gregory on banjo for two albums produced by folklorist Charles Wolfe.[3] Bob Fulcher began recording him extensively later in the 1970s, and Clydeoscope draws on Fulcher's recordings.[3] The National Endowment for the Arts named him a National Heritage Fellow in 1992 and credits him with a repertoire of more than 200 tunes, many handed down from his father, grandfather and neighbors.[4]
Don Pedi arranges the tune in DGD tuning for Simply Old Time Dulcimer, a downloadable collection that pairs traditional tablature with demonstration recordings and is aimed at dulcimer players of every level.[5]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Roses in the Morning".
- Slippery Hill: "Roses In The Morning".
- Field Recorders' Collective: "Clyde Davenport".
- National Endowment for the Arts: "Clyde Davenport".
- Don Pedi: "Simply Old Time Dulcimer".
- Image: Henri Fantin-Latour, Roses in a Bowl, oil on canvas, 1883. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.