Stuck In The Shuck: A Song History
"Stuck In The Shuck" is twelfth among the fourteen titles listed for DulciWhistle, a Fingers Of Steel book that pairs the mountain dulcimer with the pennywhistle, also known as the tin whistle.[1] The listing presents every tune in the collection as an original by John Keane and Karen Keane, yet it names no composer for any single piece, so the sources consulted here cannot say which of the two wrote this one.[1] Buyers receive the whole book as a 33-page PDF, a separate PDF for each tune, and a folder of MP3 recordings.[1] Based in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Keanes play music ranging from Louisiana traditional styles and bluegrass to Mississippi Delta blues, and both earned music-education degrees at Northeast Louisiana University, now the University of Louisiana-Monroe.[2][3] The sources consulted here give no date for the tune and nothing about how it got its name.[1][2][3]
Charles Ethan Porter, Still Life with Corn, watercolor on paper, ca. 1880. Corn in its shucks, shown for the title; it has no connection to the tune.
Apart from the tune, a shuck is a husk or shell, such as the covering of an ear of corn or a nut, or the shell of an oyster or clam; Merriam-Webster dates the first known use of that sense to circa 1674 and calls the noun's origin unknown.[4] Whether the Keanes had corn, shellfish or something else in mind, the sources consulted here do not say.[1][2][3]
Sources
- Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane And Karen Keane, DulciWhistle".
- DulcimerDownloads: "John Keane".
- DulcimerDownloads: "Karen Keane".
- Merriam-Webster: "Shuck".
- Image: Charles Ethan Porter, Still Life with Corn, watercolor on paper, ca. 1880. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.