Steppin’ In The Parlor: A Song History
"Stepping in the Parlor," also spelled "Steppin' in the Parlour," is an old-time reel in D major that the Traditional Tune Archive traces to Alfred Bailey (1918–1996), a fiddler from Flemingsburg in Fleming County, northeastern Kentucky.[1] Bailey learned it from Henry York, a fiddler of his own generation from the same part of the state.[1] Collector John Harrod names Bailey as one of his fiddle heroes, among a group of farmer-fiddlers expert in locally inherited tunes; he identifies Tom York, an Ohio River riverboat worker, as Henry's father and the source of much of his music.[2] The Tune Archive is less sure of that relationship, calling Tom York possibly a brother or other relative.[1]
Currier & Ives, Moonlight on the Mississippi, hand-colored lithograph, 1868–76. A river steamboat of the 1870s; the print has no connection to the tune.
Harrod made a field recording of Bailey playing the tune in 1986, and the Tune Archive's first transcription comes from that recording; a second setting there is credited to Bruce Greene.[3] The year before, Bailey had played it during an oral history interview recorded at his Flemingsburg home on July 25, 1985, for Morehead State University's Vintage Fiddlers Oral History Project.[4] Don Pedi's Bound To Have A Little Fun!, a 63-page book of 29 mountain dulcimer arrangements that he publishes himself, carries it in DAA tuning; the listing does not name the source of his setting.[5]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Stepping in the Parlor".
- Field Recorders' Collective: "FRC732 – Kentucky Fiddlers Home Recordings Vol. 1".
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Stepping in the Parlor".
- Morehead State University, Vintage Fiddlers Oral History Project: "Alfred Clark Bailey interview, July 25, 1985".
- Don Pedi: "Bound To Have A Little Fun!".
- Image: Currier & Ives, Moonlight on the Mississippi, hand-colored lithograph, 1868–76. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.