Walking In The Parlor: A Song History

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The old-time breakdown "Walking in the Parlor" comes out of the blackface minstrel era. In 1847 the New York firm Jaques & Brother issued "Walk in the Parlor," a song with lyrics in stage dialect, crediting E. P. Christy as arranger and Thomas Vaughn of Christy's Minstrels as singer. It reappeared in an 1851 banjo instruction book.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive considers that minstrel material the inspiration for the various fiddle breakdowns later played under the title.[1] The best-known version is a D-major reel in which some players hear echoes of the English morris tune "Shepherd's Hey."[2]

Winslow Homer wood engraving of young women in hoop skirts waiting in a well-furnished parlor

Winslow Homer, Waiting for Calls on New Year’s Day, wood engraving, 1869. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

That version spread through the Upland South and Piedmont, the Deep South and the Midwest.[2] Dr. D. Dix Hollis, a physician from Sulligent, Alabama, recorded an irregular, "crooked" G-major form for Paramount in 1924.[3] Al Hopkins's string band, the Hill Billies, recorded the tune for Vocalion on October 22, 1926, with Tony Alderman and Fred Roe on fiddles.[4][2] One account has it played at a 1931 fiddlers' contest in LaFollette, Tennessee, and Vance Randolph put it on his 1954 list of traditional Ozark fiddle tunes.[2] In 1939 Herbert Halpert recorded a version for the Library of Congress from W. E. Claunch of Lee County, Mississippi.[5] In West Virginia the tune is linked with French Carpenter's circle, where some called it "Trude Evans" after a woman fiddler and square dancer sometimes named as its composer. Wilson Douglas said it took him five years to get its swing right, and Gerald Milnes found a version with verses about John D. Rockefeller.[2]

More than one tune goes by this name. Around Round Peak, North Carolina, Charlie Lowe and others used "Walking in the Parlor" for a D-major tune that Ben Jarrell called "Rochester Schottische." That tune appears to be unrelated to the others, and Tommy Jarrell recorded it in 1976.[6] Norman Edmonds of Hillsville, Virginia, recorded another D-major "Walking in the Parlor" on Train on the Island (1973).[7] Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II includes two arrangements under this title, numbered I and II.[8]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Walk in the Parlor (1)".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Walking in the Parlor (1)".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Walking in the Parlor (3)".
  4. Honking Duck: "Hill Billies: A Discography".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Walking in the Parlor (4)".
  6. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Walking in the Parlor (2)".
  7. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Walking in the Parlor (5)".
  8. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".