The Blue River Waltz: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"The Blue River Waltz" is a modern composition, not a traditional tune, credited to the fiddler Jay Ungar, whose "Ashokan Farewell," performed with his wife and musical partner Molly Mason, became the main theme of Ken Burns's PBS documentary The Civil War.[1][2][3] The duo recorded it on Relax Your Mind, a 2003 Angel Records album of swing and country-blues dance music made with their band Swingology.[1][3][4] The album's waltzes are duo performances, with Ungar playing fiddle and mandolin and Mason guitar and bass, and one reviewer singled out Ungar's "Blue River Waltz" as "also very sweet."[3]

Painting of a river valley in early autumn with tall trees in the foreground and blue mountains beyond

Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill—Early Autumn, oil on canvas, 1836–37. A Catskills river scene, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

The tune was later printed in Catskill Mountain Waltzes and Airs, a 2013 collection of 62 original waltzes and airs by Ungar and Mason, published as lead sheets with a short note on each piece.[5] Melanie Johnston includes it, in DAD tuning, in her 22 Selections From Jay Ungar & Molly Mason's Book "Catskill Mountain Waltzes And Airs", a licensed collection of mountain dulcimer tablature drawn from that book.[2]

Our book that contains the song "The Blue River Waltz"

Sources

  1. Jay Ungar & Molly Mason: "About Jay & Molly".
  2. Melanie Johnston: "22 Selections From Jay Ungar & Molly Mason's Book 'Catskill Mountain Waltzes And Airs'".
  3. Green Man Review: "Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's Relax Your Mind" (Gary Whitehouse).
  4. FolkWorld: CD reviews, Issue 27 (2004), Jay Ungar & Molly Mason "Relax Your Mind".
  5. Strings By Mail: "Ungar & Mason, Catskill Mountain Waltzes and Airs Book".
  6. Image: Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill—Early Autumn, oil on canvas, 1836–37. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song