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Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
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Item Title
Ducks in the Pond
Author/Creator
Collector: Jabbour, Alan
Collector: Jabbour, Karen Singer
Performer: Reed, Henry; fiddle
Created/Published
June 18, 1966
Reed family home, Glen Lyn, Virginia (Giles County)
Notes
This tune seems to be a variant of "Lady of the Lake," which is also a name used for a dance. Note the possible connection of "lake/pond" in the two titles. "Lady of the Lake" appears in Knauff's "Virginia Reels" (1839), vol. 3, #7, which seems to situate it firmly in early nineteenth-century Virginia tradition, and Winston Wilkinson recorded a version before 1936 from J. H. Chisholm of Greenwood, Virginia (see Wilkinson, "Virginia Dance Tunes," p. 10). Both these versions begin with the low strain, but Henry Reed's set recasts the tune with the high strain first, reflecting the widespread taste in the Appalachian South for instrumental tunes that begin with the high strain. Henry Reed's spoken comments refer to Oscar and Eugene Wright, whom Alan and Karen Jabbour had visited earlier. Oscar Wright had learned "Ducks in the Pond" from Henry Reed, and he played it at a slower pace with a slightly different second strain opening.
Key: A
Meter: 4/4
Strains: 2 (high-low, 4-4)
Rendition: tag-1r-2r-1r-2r-1r-2r-tag
Phrase Structure: ABA'C QRQ'C (abcd ab'ef qbrr qb'ef)
Compass: 15 (11 plus low A)
Stylistic features: Lively pace, slurs predominate in bowing. On a couple of occasions, he begins the second strain with the low first-finger E, not the even lower drone A. Note the failure to use the open G and D strings; he probably either learned this tune with the fiddle tuned EAEA, or learned it melodically from fiddlers tuned that way.
Spoken: HENRY REED: Is that the way they played it?/ALAN JABBOUR: More or less, not quite, though.
Recording chronology: 002
Related Tune(s): Lady of the Lake
Duration: 1 minute, 44 seconds
Subject
Breakdowns
Reels
Fiddle tunes
Instrumentals--fiddle
Ethnography
Music
United States--Virginia--Giles County--Glen Lyn
Object Type
Medium
sound recording
Language
English
Call Number
AFC LWO 5031 reel 4B, AFS 13034B:30
Digital ID
afcreed 13034b30
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afcreed.13034b30
Related Audio
Ducks in the Pond [AFS 13037a20]
Ducks in the Pond [transcription]