Washington's March: A Song History
Plenty of music carried George Washington's name. Pieces written in his honor, among them a "General Washington's March" by an unknown composer and Phile's "The President's March," were among the music owned by his step-granddaughter Nelly Custis at Mount Vernon.[1] The "Washington's March" that old-time fiddlers play is a different piece. It is a D-major fiddle tune from West Virginia, played with the fiddle cross-tuned DDad, and whatever its name suggests, it goes at the pace of a reel rather than a march.[2] The Traditional Tune Archive raises the possibility of a remote kinship with "Washington's Grand March," while noting that a great many American tunes were named for Washington, so the connection is uncertain.[2]
Currier & Ives, Washington Crossing the Delaware, hand-colored lithograph, 1857–71 (detail). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
The source is Edden Hammons (1875–1955), a fiddler from Pocahontas County.[2] In August 1947 the folklorist Louis Watson Chappell recorded him on a homemade disc recorder, and these are the only known recordings of his playing.[3] Chappell noted that Hammons had won the 1939 Greenbrier Valley fiddle championship with this tune, and that he had learned it nearly sixty years earlier, starting out on a gourd with a deer-skin covering.[2] According to Alan Jabbour, the Hammons family held the tune in special regard and believed earlier family members had composed it, or at least that it had survived only among them. Betty Vornbrock has pointed out that its high part resembles the second strain of a Shetland fiddle tune.[2]
Chappell's discs later came out on The Edden Hammons Collection from West Virginia University Press, with "Washington's March" on the first volume.[3] Today it is taught on other instruments too. Mandolinist John Reischman, for example, teaches Hammons's version in both standard and cross tunings.[4]
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