Rundown Boot: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

The Traditional Tune Archive has an old-time reel in D major called "Run Down Boot," which it traces to Walter "Pete" Priest of Paradise, in east-central Illinois.[1][2] Garry Harrison collected it from Priest in 1971, when the fiddler was 71 and known around the region for playing at dances.[1] Priest had taken up the fiddle at eight, while his family was living in Kentucky, and the archive says he learned this tune there from his father, also a fiddler.[1]

Pair of dark green leather ankle boots with red laces

Boots, leather, 1795–1815. A pair of boots from around 1800, shown for the tune's title; they have no connection to the tune.

The archive's transcription names Priest as its source and sets the tune in cut time, with two strains, each played twice.[2] In the 1970s Harrison and fellow musicians sought out older players across central and southern Illinois, and much of what they taped was later issued as Dear Old Illinois, a book with three CDs.[3] The archive lists a recording by Priest on Dear Old Illinois (Pick Away Press, 2007), and another by the Indian Creek Delta Boys, a string band in which Harrison played fiddle.[1][4]

Dana Gruber's The Pickin' Porch, a collection with standard notation, dulcimer tablature and guitar chords, published by Fingers Of Steel, includes a tune listed as "Rundown Boot," in DAD tuning.[5] The book's listing gives no source for the tune, and the sources consulted here do not show whether it is Priest's "Run Down Boot."[5]

Our book that contains the song "Rundown Boot"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Run Down Boot".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Run Down Boot".
  3. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum: "State of Sound: Red Prairie Ramblers LIVE!".
  4. The Field Recorders' Collective: "Indian Creek Delta Boys – FRC607".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, The Pickin' Porch".
  6. Image: Boots, leather, 1795–1815. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song