The version of Cotton Eyed Joe considered the older fiddle tune is sometimes associated with Appalachian and Southern fiddling due to its appearance in 1926 on a recording by Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers. The celebrated north Georgia string band recorded a series of seven 78 rpm records (fourteen sides) collectively known as “A Corn Licker Still in Georgia.”[1]  The Skillet Lickers recorded from 1925 to 1931 and over a million copies were sold, with the records marketed as “Entertaining Novelty Records.” The recordings were essentially minstrel stage routines, with the band members providing comedic dialog in Southern dialect. The sketches revolve around the lads back in the mountains at their prosperous moonshine whisky operation during the wild days of Prohibition. Various chapters on the records include fiddle tunes and songs between comedy routines, often involving the local constabulary. The band included fiddlers Clayton McMitchen (who did most of the talking on the records), Lowe Stokes and Gid Tanner; Fate Norris (banjo); and Riley Puckett (guitar and vocals). Missouri fiddlers of former times listened to these 78 rpm records, and in the 1950s and 1960s they were a significant inspiration during the Folk Song Revival and rejuvenation of old-time fiddling. On one of the records, fiddler Lowe Stokes leads an abbreviated version of the older melody to “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” but, less than half a minute in length and overridden by the spoken comedy routine, this recording may have had relatively little influence in spreading “Cotton-Eyed Joe” across the land. 

However, more relevant to most modern fiddlers (in Missouri at least) was a recording by the powerful and influential Nashville fiddler Tommy Jackson in the 1950s. The 1920s Skillet Lickers version and the 1950s Tommy Jackson version are different, though related, tunes from the “modern” one popularized by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and associated with the Texas dance hall bands and the Urban Cowboy movie.[2]  

The two basic versions of the “Cotton-Eyed Joe” tune have been recorded in countless styles across the spectrum. Recordings still available include some from the heyday of Southern string band music in the 1920s (Fiddlin’ John Carson, The Skillet Lickers), 1930s and 1940s western swing (most notably the Bob Wills recordings), versions by 1950s and 1960s commercial folk singers (Burl Ives, Oscar Brand, Ed McCurdy, Josh White), Nashville commercial fiddlers (Tommy Magness, Tommy Jackson), Appalachian revival string bands, and western swing and country music from the 1970s forward (Mickey Gilley, Garth Brooks, Billy Ray Cyrus), Celtic music (The Chieftains), and modern jazz (Nina Simone).[3]  

Among my favorite versions are those by Nashville fiddler Tommy Jackson and a version by rock singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked (within a 2004 song called “Prodigal Daughter”).[4]  Jackson’s fast, hard-driving, articulate hoedown version (with electric guitar backup) from the 1950s was the most influential commercial version for Missouri fiddlers of the time. Among Missouri players who recorded the older version of  “Cotton-Eyed Joe” are “Pick” Johnson  from 

New Florence, Lonnie Robertson of Springfield, and Matt Wyatt of Independence.[5] Wyatt’s version is based on his study of classic versions by Texas breakdown fiddlers and contest champions Lewis Franklin and Vernon Solomon, which share much with the Tommy Jackson recording from Nashville. 

            Today, recordings include countless homemade videos. One can flip on a computer with Internet service and watch videos of various kinds of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” being danced by a wide range of people, from bouncy teenagers giggling in their bedrooms and dancing to rock-and-roll style “redneck” music, to western-costumed old folks stepping through the classic steps to a fiddle record. 

* This essay is part of a forthcoming book on the history of fiddling in Missouri. Please contact the author with corrections and ideas for improvement at MarshallH@Missouri.Edu 

{For any lovers of old time fiddling here are two frightening examples: - Editor}

Part Three of this article in the next edition of Fiddle Sessions  

about the author 

Dr. Howard Marshall is professor emeritus of Art History and Archaeology and directed the Missouri Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Earlier in his career we was a museum director and curator and worked at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, and served as a consultant for the Smithsonian. 

 He records and produces fiddle CDs for Voyager Records and is working on a project about the history of fiddling in Missouri. Marshall has played fiddle music in various venues since 1970s and has judged contests from Washington DC to Weiser, Idaho, and San Francisco CA.    Email:  MarshallH@Missouri.Edu. Visit www.voyagerrecords.com. 

            [2] Both versions are notated in Craig Duncan, Mel Bay’s Deluxe Fiddling Method (Pacific, Mel Bay Publications, 1981), 92-93.  

            [3] An important field recording of “Cotton Eyed Joe” by North Carolina old-time fiddler Marcus Martin was recorded for the Library of Congress in 1941 and was reissued on Alan Jabbour (ed.), American Fiddle Tunes (1971, Library of  Congress, reissue, Rounder Records, 2000). 

            [4] Issued on one of Jackson’s influential square dance records, Instrumentals Country Style (Mercury LP SRW 16261); Michelle Shocked, Arkansas Traveler (Camp Fire Girl CD, 2004); she sings one of the Bob Wills verses from the 1940s.   

            [5] Ray “Pick” Johnson, Tunes I Learned from My Uncle Cleve from Big Springs, Missouri (Warrensburg, Graphic Recording LP GR-1004, c. 1980); Lonnie Robertson, Square Dance Fiddlin’ (Caney Mountain CEP213); Matt Wyatt and Justin Branum, The Good-Bye Waltz (Independence, Fiddlesong Music, 2003). An unusual version is played by “Missouri style” Iowa fiddler Dwight Lamb on Hell Agin the Barn Door (as learned from Nebraska fiddler Bob Walters; a different tune from the version in Christeson’s book); a version recorded in California by Earl Collins on “That’s Earl:” Collins Family Fiddling (Pasadena, Briar Recordings LP 4204, 1975).

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Anthony Barnett (photo © Toraiwa)

by Anthony Barnett

 SP

What do you think of the effect of pickups on jazz violin’s acceptance and whether it is a positive, negative or neutral trend?

Any opinions on the

    1. current crop of pickups?

    2. acoustic vs. solid body instruments?

    3. appearance of 5 string models?

AB

I am not a practicing violinist myself so I am unable to answer from a musician’s point of view. But I do have some observations from a listener’s point of view, partly as a result of my own listening but also as a result of exchanges, mostly off-the-cuff, with violinists including Paul Anastasio, Sam Bardfeld, UK-based Graham Clark, Italy-based Stefano Pastor, and Finland-based Ari Poutiainen.

Firstly, for some background, I would like to ask readers to refer back to Fiddle Sessions “Electric Violins and Jazz Violinists 1930s 1930s–1950s”, which appeared in three parts:

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3

There are so many pickups, transducers, on the market today, which connect amplification to the instrument in a number of ways and positions. Different violinists will have their personal reasons for opting for one or another. Some because they seek an acoustic sound as unaltered as possible; others who know there must be some compromise and who settle for the one that suits them best; others who probably do want to take on board an alteration to tonal quality. Hanno Graesser and Andy Holliman included an exhaustive overview of historical and current pickups in Design and Technique of Electric Bowed Stringed Instruments (Frankfurt am Main, 1998, English and German text). Since then many new devices have appeared. It seems as if hardly an issue of Strings or Fiddler Magazine goes by without some recommendation or publicity claiming true acoustic fidelity for, yet again, the first time. It would be very helpful to have comments here about all this from violinists.

As a listener, I do have a preference for amplified acoustic instruments, or purpose-built open-body instruments, over solid-body instruments. For example, Cuban violinist Omar Puente, who has settled in England, plays very fine in a variety of genres. But to my ears there is a problem. He plays a Zeta and I get no sense of varying dynamics, as if it is all at one characterless flat level. I thought to mention this to Sam Bardfeld when I last had the chance to talk with him because he is the author of the highly regarded book Latin Violin (New York, 2001). He told me that many of the Cuban players love the Zeta. Well, perhaps they think it gives them some advantage in handling a certain kind of fast fluidity, although I don’t see why it should. I think they are losing out. Perhaps the manufacturers of solid-body instruments have work to do.

There is nothing wrong with five string models. I dare say more such acoustic instruments would have existed but for the stress on the instrument body. Bacsik, Ponty, Urbaniak, for example, have all played purpose-built open-body amplified instruments to great effect. And I have to admit too that I have heard, and seen on video, Urbaniak play very fine, with Freddy Hubbard, on a solid-body instrument.

SP

Any sense of where the violin is headed in the jazz scene?

AB

Following on from the last question, Stefano Pastor has a unique take on amplification, coaxing husky soprano and alto sax and shakuhachi-like tones from his violin. Of course, he is not alone in introducing new tonal, and phrasing, qualities: Micro-tonal Matt Maneri, for example. Phil Durrant in England and Mike Khoury are among those who can be cited too. But where the violin is headed in jazz has to be related to the much broader question of where jazz as a whole is headed, or, rather, where jazz currently is. There seems to be a general retrenchment. Even Pastor has published a book Violinjazz: analisi degli aspetti esecutivi e tecnico-interpretativi (Monza, 2008, Italian text only but with accompanying CD of the examples) which is really about bebop. Ari Poutiainen’s Stringprovisation (Helsinki, 2009, in English) is also very much concerned with the historical legacy of swing and bebop. And there is certainly everything to be gained by understanding the past. Pastor and Poutiainen have, by the way, recorded a most adventurous album of duets, unreleased as yet. I have written the liner notes so I should own up to a sort of vested interest. Swing and neo-bop facilities are also, I would say, greatly favored at, for example, Berklee, though not, of course, only there. Zach Brock, out of Chicago, I believe, is a fluent bop player. The example of Berklee is worrying. There are brilliant technicians among the tutors and among a number of ex-pupils but also I often detect among the latter a tendency towards a kind of equalized professional competence rather than adventure and invention or simply an individual voice. And that can be a disappointment. Perhaps it is explained partly by career pressures. As if lessons of post-Coltrane and post-Ornette Coleman so-called free improvisation, whether developed through jazz or European sensibilities, to say nothing of Asian inputs, are played out. (It is not for nothing that I write so-called. Violinist Graham Clark, for example, has written a most pertinent article about the structures of free improvisation: “Improvisation” accessible at http://www.grahamviolin.com/articles.html

I have something more to say about the thorny question of brilliant technique: in 1944, the year in which the Stuff Smith Trio recorded their Asch album, and were heard frequently over the radio and at the Onyx Club in New York, violinist Rima Rudina wrote a master’s thesis at Eastman School of Music entitled “Hot Jazz and the Violin”, focusing on Paul Nero’s 1940 Decca album Solo Flight, the sheet music of which was published in 1943. It is indeed a fascinating suite—Nero held a pilot’s license—but all the evidence from the totality of his recording career points to him not being an able improvisor but a composer of intricate, frequently novelty, fixed routines, and a sought-after commercial violinist. Indeed, his 1945 book Fiddler’s Handbook is subtitled “Hot Tips” for the Commercial Fiddler. Eddie South, to whom, incidentally, Nero dedicated his “Hot Canary” arrangement of Poliakin, for all his prodigious classical technique, never played the same piece twice the same way, even in adjacent studio takes. What would be the point? It must have been ground-breaking for Rudina, who went on to record a couple of high-class supper club and world music LPs, to write an academic thesis on jazz violin in 1944 but, whether solely out of her own inclinations or pressure from the academy, Rudina has virtually nothing constructive to say about anyone else—notably, she is quietly dismissive of, for example, Stuff Smith, seeing in him only rough antics in contrast to what for her is Nero’s high “hot jazz” achievement. Only one recording, a 1950s jam session, is known of Nero obviously attempting spontaneous improvisation. Unable to think on his feet, he falls back into the safety of his well-rehearsed compositional phrases. Clearly, this 1944 estimation of what counts as “Hot Jazz and the Violin” is a travesty. Rudina’s own effort at a blues is a classical—and I do not mean classic blues—construct. Nothing wrong, of course, in writing a thesis about Nero and I have to say that what Nero did accomplish is preferable to a certain level of recently schooled violinists who are under the impression, doubtless as a result of having been given the impression, that they can take half a dozen lessons in improvisation and then go out and record in whatever jazz or folk or world style, or all of them at the same time, to which they may have taken a superficial shine.

Back to Ornette Coleman for a moment. It was quite natural for Stuff Smith to reply, when asked by a Swedish journalist—they were touring Europe in the same concert package—what he thought of Coleman’s violin playing: “I think he should stick to his alto sax.” Hard to know what else Smith could have been expected to say when put on the spot like that. In fact, there exists a delightful airport photo of Smith and Coleman together, smiling, looking slightly askance at each other, as if Coleman is saying: “I play the violin a little too, you know.” And Smith: “Oh, er, yeah!” (The photo is reproduced in the book Up Jumped the Devil and in the booklet to the 2CD set I Like Be I Like Bop.) I recounted this to Dan Morgenstern whose response is given here with his permission: “Ornette’s fiddling is oddly appealing, I prefer it to his trumpeting. With some trepidation, I took my father [Vienna-circle writer Soma Morgenstern] to a concert in which Ornette also played his left-handed, amplified violin, which he handled in the most unorthodox manner. My father, who had been at one time a music critic, played the cello as a young man (first chair in student orchestra), and, as you know, was great friends with Alban Berg, a.o., was never hostile to jazz but became really interested as my involvement developed and I was able to take him to concerts, festivals etc. which he much enjoyed [. . .]. About Ornette’s fiddling he said: ‘He gets what he wants.’ I was delighted.”

Of course, the lessons of free improvisation are not played out, as a reading of the variety of releases reviewed in, for example, Cadence Magazine, shows. But I would definitely say there are signs of instability, about what to do or where to go. And therefore about what to think too. There is also an extraordinary phenomenon of improvisatory hip-hop violinists, more interesting than the tendency to predictability of the use, whether ferocious or sentimental, of the fiddle in latter-day rock. Hip-hop violin is fascinating. Who would have thought to find it there. It might be that hip-hop violinists are the true heirs to Stuff Smith’s 1930s antics. But, never forget, those antics were only ever a part of Smith.

In the next part AB talks about unheralded past and present players who have particularly captured his imagination.                       

about the author

Anthony Barnett has published bio-discographies of Stuff Smith, Desert

Sands/Up Jumped the Devil; and Eddie South, Black Gypsy. He edits Fable

Bulletin: Violin Improvisation Studies, an online update facility to printed volumes of the bulletin and books. He is a contributor to the latest editions of New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and Music and Musicians.

Since 2002 he has issued previously unreleased and other rare recordings by a wealth of historic jazz violinists on his AB Fable label.

His AB Fable website is   http://www.abar.net

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Then the Boswell of jazz violin, Anthony Barnett, begins by discussing the trend towards electric violin and then has some trenchant opinions about other recent currents in jazz fiddling.

Professor Emeritus Howard Marshall continues to explore the nexus of fiddle tunes called Cotton Eyed Joe.

Tim Woodbridge is back with the musical biography of Canadian great, Don Messer.  In conjunction with that I contribute the music for one of the tunes that Don famously recorded, Big John McNeil.

Hope you enjoy this session.  I look forward to your comments on the articles.

            Stacy Phillips

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by Carl Rahkonen

The first time someone hears Scandinavian fiddling they may be struck by its unique sound, which can be as beautiful and austere as the Scandinavian landscape.  Together with incredible rhythmic complexity, this music can sound as exotic as any music on the earth.  It is a sound that can be particularly addicting!

The sound of Scandinavian fiddling can be traced to the influence of older instruments in the culture, representing a “parallel” tradition:  In Norway it’s the hardingfele and in Sweden the nyckelharpa.   Many North American Scandinavian fiddlers also play these instruments.

            The hardingfele (also call the Hardanger fiddle) is shaped like a regular violin, but is more arched, so much so that looking from the side of the instrument you can see the soundpost through the f-hole.  Norwegians call regular violins “flat fiddles.”   The hardingfele is often highly ornamented with etched designs and inlaid mother of pearl.  The fingerboard is shorter and flatter and the bridge is flatter than a regular violin, making it easier to play the multiple lines and double stops that the music calls for continually.  The overall shape is more closely related to a Baroque violin.  The contemporary hardingfele has eight strings, four that are played and four that that run under the fingerboard and through the middle of the bridge for sympathetic resonance.  Every note played on a hardingfele produces a proliferation of resonant sounds.  The strings are also unique, being wound differently than standard violin strings.  It is typically tuned at least a half step higher than standard violin tuning, making the sound even brighter.

Two hardingfele belonging to Karen Solgård, Minneapolis, author of “The Strange Fiddle in the Attic.”  Photograph © 2006 Karen Solgård.

            The nyckelharpa, or “keyed fiddle” is long and narrow, with a structure closely related to the hurdy-gurdy.  There are rows of keys with vertical tangents that the player pushes to stop the stings, so there is no vibrato in the usual sense.  It is played with a much shorter bow than a regular violin bow.  The modern chromatic version has sixteen strings: three melody strings and one drone, plus 12 strings for sympathetic vibration. The sound of a nyckelharpa, like the hardingfele, is very resonant with multiple harmonies.  When you play one pitch on either of these instruments, you hear multiple pitches from the sympathetic strings.

Nyckelharpa belonging to Cheryl Pastiche, Minneapolis. Photograph © Glenn Kujansuu, taken March 28, 2010 in Detroit, Michigan.

Thus the overall sound of Scandinavian fiddling favors resonant harmony.  For the regular fiddle player this means using little or no vibrato, playing with flawless intonation, and obtaining harmony by playing in ensembles with multiple parts (stemma), or with double stops in solo playing.  In addition, Scandinavian music can be highly ornamented, adding an additional layer of complexity to the sound.

There are two North American Societies devoted to players of the hardingfele and the nyckelharpa:  the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America, and the American Nyckelharpa Association.  These associations provide a primary means for all players of these uniquely Scandinavian instruments to come in contact.  They have extensive web-sites, journals, and meetings and clinics where players can meet and trade information.  Not all Scandinavian fiddlers play hardingfele or nyckelharpa, but many do, so these associations bring together many Scandinavian fiddlers as well.   There is currently no national association in North America just for Scandinavian players of the standard fiddle.

Printable Version

About the author

Carl Rahkonen is a Music Librarian and Professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  In 2001-02 he held a sabbatical to study American fiddling styles, including Scandinavian, Scottish, Irish, and old-time styles, primarily in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

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arranged by Stacy Phillips

As an accompaniment to Tim Woodbridge’s latest installment of his series about Canada’s Don Messer, here is a generalized version of the tune using its current title, Big John McNeil.

This version is taken from my 750 tune compendium, The Phillips Collection of Traditional American Fiddle Tunes – Hoedowns, Breakdowns and Reel” published by Mel Bay.

The book and its companion volumes of rags, blues, jigs, polkas, hornpipes, waltzes etc. are available from my web site: http://ww.stacyphillips.com/fiddlebooks.html

Printable Version

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1939 found Don Messer in something of a quandary.  Despite the successes chronicled in Part 2 and continuing, it must have seemed that he was constantly required to justify himself to distant CBC executives. In 1936 the network had reduced the proportion of musical programming from 70% to 50%.  In 1938, following a change in administration, the network required all performers to re-audition.  What was probably the final straw came when Messer’s request to be included in the lineup of programs from a proposed CBC studio in Halifax received no response until the spring of 1939 when he was essentially left hanging.  With no immediate prospects, Messer and his family returned to Tweedside for the summer.

At this juncture, Messer received a telephone call from L. A. “Art” McDonald, the program director at CFCY in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) . Messer had met McDonald years earlier in Boston and the two had become friends.  McDonald offered Messer a job as music director and orchestra leader.

Messer’s acceptance in September of 1939 marked a turning point in his career.  CFCY, “The Friendly Voice Of The Maritimes”, had a broadcast area covering Atlantic Canada, the Gaspe Peninsula and the Eastern seaboard of the United States.  As a CBC affiliate, CFCY would offer Messer renewed access to the rest of Canada and Northern portions of much of the United States once his program went prime time.

Messer first need was to organize a band.  Guitarist/vocalist Charlie Chamberlain had come to P.E.I. with him, later followed by bassist Duke Nielsen.  At the time of Messer’s arrival, George Chappelle and His Merry Islanders were regulars on CFCY. Chappelle and McDonald did not get along well, and with the likelihood of Canada’s entry into World War II, a number of Chapelle’s musicians enlisted.  From those left, Messer was able to hire Rae Simmons (clarinet/saxophone); Bill LeBlanc, (drums, replaced by Warren MacRae in 1942) and Jackie Doyle, piano.  On November 11, 1939 the new band, as Don Messer and His Islanders, made the first of a series of radio broadcasts, which would extend over nearly twenty years.  In 1942, Messer and the Islanders began a string of recordings that would eventually run to more than 200 (mostly instrumental) sides, the great majority of which would remain in print for the rest of his career.

We have a dual selection for this installment:  Big John McNeil/The Dusty Miller’s Reel and Don Messer’s Breakdown/ Wagoner’s Breakdown (a/k/a Johnny Wagoner), recorded 4/8/42 and originally issued as the two sides of Apex 26222.  I believe this disc is what Messer biographer, Johanna Bertin had in mind when she credited Messer with being the first Canadian to have a million selling record (Don Messer:  The Man Behind The Music; Goose Lane Editions, 2009)

Peter Milne, an itinerant Scotsman who served as something of a mentor to the then young J. Scott Skinner, wrote the first tune, as John McNeil’s Reel.  The second is the Canadian title for Miller’s Reel, attributed to Zeke Backus in Ryan’s Mammoth Collection and M.M. Coles 1000 Fiddle Tunes.  Both tunes have long since entered tradition.  

The second selection features a rare Messer original and the Canadian version of Texas (or fill in a state) Wagoner.  The latter is notable for the IV chord in the third and fourth measures of the B part, the suggestion of a third part and the characteristic Down East bowing figure used throughout.

Both these dubs are taken from later reissues.

Tim Woodbridge

Big-John-McNeil_Dusty-Millers-Reel.mp3 | Don-Messers_Johnny-Wagoners-Breakdowns.mp3

about the author

When I was about six, my family moved from New York City to Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  In short order I found live hillbilly music on station WNOX in Knoxville and the recorded variety on one of the area’s early FM stations in Lenoir City.  I was hooked.  Starting with a $10.00 guitar, I tried my hand at a variety of stringed instruments over the years, including the fiddle.  Back in the 60’s I was introduced to the fiddle traditions of Quebec and the Canadian Maritimes, and to their many talented practitioners.

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Cookie Segelstein completes her current series on klezmer violin with a look at an introspective, usually rubato style of music from East Europe, the doina.

Anthony Barnett continues his musing on the history and current state of jazz violin with  a trenchant view of the opposite (perhaps an overstatement on my part) pole to Stuff Smith, Stephane Grappelli and the phenomenon of “gypsy jazz”.

Carolyn Osborne completes her essay about preparing to learn upper hand positions on your fiddle.

Finally, the first of what I hope will be a series of essays, by Professor Emeritus Howard Marshall.  This one concerns the history of Cotton Eyed Joe, a title that has served several different fiddle tunes. 

I have contributed a transcription of the version of Cotton Eyed Joe that Howard addresses in his article, as fiddled by Bob Wills.

Hope you enjoy this session.  I look forward to your comments on the articles.

                        Stacy Phillips

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This is related to the commercially successful Cotton Eyed Joe of the Urban Cowboy fad, but the latter is in the key of A and has two strains of four measures apiece. Here’s an example of what that tune spawned – the hit recording and line dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9VMZBgKO_s&feature=related

This transcription is taken from the 750 tune compendium, The Phillips Collection of Traditional American

Fiddle Tunes. – the editor

Printable Version

Cotton Eyed Joe

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One of the forms in klezmer music that uses the character of MISHEBEYRAKH (the mode covered in the previous article) is the doina . Here is an explanation of Doina from the introduction by Joshua Horowitz of Kale Bazetsns and Doinas, by Cookie Segelstein and Joshua Horowitz*:

Doina is the Romanian term used to denote families of both vocal and instrumental pieces with a recitative character. There exist countless thousands of doinas throughout all the states of Romania, some of which show specific regional characteristics, while others are shared irrespective of boundaries. Doinas are declamatory in nature, so their motivic and rhythmic patterns are more closely related to poetic meter and forms than to dance forms, although there are many doinas that have definite binary and tertiary musical forms as well as discernible meters.

To Jews, the doina came to represent the simplicity of peasant life as represented by the shepherd and his tune, and the instrumental style of one particular type of doina fit easily into the general lamenting quality of klezmer music, particularly as an evocation of prayer. Yet its Romanian character was never forsaken and the acceptance of the genre as “Romanian” is obvious in light of the fact that sheet music and record cover iconography depict rural shepherds and reliably call the music “Romanian.”

What follows is a transcription and a recording of a doina played by Josef Solinski This is one of the handful of examples we have on record of Jewish/klezmer violin playing from the early 19th Century.

Reprinted with permission from, Kale Bazetzns and Doinas, by Cookie Segelstein and Joshua Horowitz, ©2004 (available at www.veretskipass.com)

Orig: Joseph Solinsky, Orientalische Motive I, Favorite I-24056 mx. 5101-o. Also credited to Oskar Zehngut as Orientalische Motive I Victor 63828-A mx. 536ab, 1908?

/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/SolinskiDoina.mp3
Solinski Doina.pdf | Solinski Doina.mp3

About the Author

Cookie Segelstein, acknowledged as one of the very top tier of klezmer violinists, received her Masters degree in viola from The Yale School of Music. She has taught klezmer fiddling at KlezKamp and The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.   Her band, Veretski Pass, has two CD’s on Golden Horn, the newest titled Trafik  (www.goldenhorn.com)

For more information visit     www.veretskipass.com

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