Waves On The Ocean: A Song History

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"Waves on the Ocean" is a reel from southwestern Virginia, generally played in the key of G.^[1] Miles Krassen, writing in his 1983 collection Masters of Old Time Fiddling, passes along Galax fiddler Emmett Lundy's account that the melody grew out of a song once well known in that part of Virginia, in which an old woman is asked whether she wants to marry.^[1] The printed versions both credit Lundy of Grayson County as their source, though sources differ on the tune's shape: Krassen sets it with an AAB form, while Phillips's Traditional American Fiddle Tunes gives it as AABB.^[1]

Lundy (1864–1953) played it for Alan and Elizabeth Lomax when they recorded him at Galax in August 1941 for the Library of Congress's Archive of Folk Song, sessions that also featured Kelly Lundy on guitar and Geedy Lundy on banjo.^[1][2] Recordings from those sessions were issued in 1977 on the LP Fiddle Tunes From Grayson County, Virginia.^[2] Parley Parsons (1902–1984), a Galax-area fiddler whose playing shows Lundy's influence, included it in home sessions taped when he was past eighty, later issued by the Field Recorders' Collective on Old Galax Fiddling.^[3]

Phyllis Gaskins places it among the G tunes in Pig In A Pen (And Other Fiddle Ditties For Galax Dulcimer), a Fingers Of Steel book that pairs nearly sixty tunes with playing instructions, history, construction notes and profiles of the players who shaped the Galax dulcimer style.^[4]

Sources

1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Waves on the Ocean".
2. Mainly Norfolk: "Emmett W. Lundy: Fiddle Tunes From Grayson County, Virginia".
3. Field Recorders' Collective: "Parley Parsons – Old Galax Fiddling – FRC705".
4. Fingers Of Steel: "Phyllis Gaskins, Pig In A Pen (And Other Fiddle Ditties For Galax Dulcimer)".
5. Image: Winslow Homer, Early Morning After a Storm at Sea, oil on canvas, 1900-1903. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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