Santa Anna's Retreat: A Song History

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One of the best-documented sources of "Santa Anna's Retreat" is the fiddler Henry Reed (1884–1968) of Glen Lyn, Virginia. Alan Jabbour recorded Reed playing it at the family home on August 27, 1966, and the recording is now part of the Library of Congress's Henry Reed collection.[1] Reed played it in A as a two-part march at an unhurried pace, with slurred bowing; the session fieldnotes spelled the title "Santy Anna's Retreat."[1] He learned it, with other marches such as "British Field March," from Quince Dillon (spelled "Dillion" by the Library of Congress), a fifer in the Mexican War who was already old when Reed was a boy and who lived nearby.[2][3]

Hand-colored lithograph of Mexican soldiers marching out of Vera Cruz past American officers on horseback

N. Currier, Capitulation of Vera Cruz: The Mexican soldiers marching out, and surrendering their arms to Genl. Scott, March 29, 1847, hand-colored lithograph, 1847 (detail). Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

Reed told Jabbour that Santa Anna's army had used the tune while retreating from the Americans. Jabbour doubted the story: because the melody is an old British air, he thought the American side more likely played it, though he granted that some Irish or Irish-American men did take part on the Mexican side.[1][3] Related versions appear as "Shay's March" in a late-18th-century manuscript at Chicago's Newberry Library, as "Quick March" in Edward Riley's Flute Melodies (about 1814), as the hymn tune "Spring" in The Missouri Harmony (1825), and in Irish collections as a "Johnny Cope."[1][3] Santa Anna is best remembered for the Alamo in 1836 and his defeat at San Jacinto, but the sources consulted here link the tune only to the later Mexican War, and only through Reed's account.[1][3]

The tune spread through the old-time revival. The Fuzzy Mountain String Band learned it from Reed and recorded it in 1973, and the Red Clay Ramblers recorded it in 1979 after learning it from West Virginia fiddler Frank George.[3] Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II includes "Santa Anna's Retreat."[4]

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Sources

  1. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Santa Anna's Retreat" (Henry Reed, 1966).
  2. Library of Congress: "The Historical and Cultural Significance of Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Santa Anna's Retreat".
  4. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".