Swinging On A Gate: A Song History

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The Traditional Tune Archive classes "Swinging on a Gate" as a reel of both Irish and American tradition, in G major with two repeated strains, and notes that it became a favorite at New England contra dances, above all when played over a swing chord progression.[1] Its beginnings are obscure: the archive judges it a comparatively modern tune and passes along a "creditable rumor" that it came out of New York's Irish traditional music scene in the mid-twentieth century.[1] The fiddler Andy McGann said that a hornpipe he learned from his fiddle teacher, Katherine Brennan, and which the archive lists as "Katherine Brennan's Favorite," was essentially this reel slowed down and slightly changed.[2]

Pencil sketch of a man in a hat leaning on a wooden five-bar farm gate beside a barn

William Sidney Mount, Resting on the Fence, graphite, 1867. A man leaning on a farm gate, sketched by William Sidney Mount in 1867; the drawing has no connection to the tune.

The earliest printed sources in the archive's list date from 1965, McNulty's Dance Music of Ireland and Sweet's Fifer's Delight; later ones include Dudley Laufman's contra dance book Okay, Let's Try a Contra... (1973), Bulmer and Sharpley's Music from Ireland (1974) and David Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook (1983).[1] Irishtune.info, which notes that it is also found in D as well as its usual G, lists Irish recordings beginning with the accordion player Mick Mulcahy around 1976, among them Warming Up (1993) by Martin Mulhaire, Séamus Connolly and Jack Coen.[3] On the New England side, Laufman was a dance caller and musician whose dance group grew into the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra.[4] He recorded the tune for the Front Hall label in 1974, and the band Delaware Water Gap is reported to have learned it from his orchestra.[1] Ken Perlman chose "Swingin' on a Gate" as the closing track of his 1983 Folkways album Clawhammer Banjo and Fingerstyle Guitar Solos.[5]

Dulcimer players can find it in Mark Gilston's Popular American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer, a sheet-music collection of well-known American old-time tunes, each arranged as a mountain dulcimer solo in DAD tuning.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Swinging On A Gate"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Swinging on a Gate".
  2. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Katherine Brennan's Favorite".
  3. Irishtune.info: "Swinging on a Gate".
  4. National Endowment for the Arts: "National Endowment for the Arts Statement on the Death of National Heritage Fellow Dudley Laufman".
  5. Smithsonian Folkways: "Clawhammer Banjo and Fingerstyle Guitar Solos".
  6. Mark Gilston: "Popular American Old Time Tunes For Dulcimer".
  7. Image: William Sidney Mount, Resting on the Fence, graphite, 1867. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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