by Howard Marshall 
            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 …

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
 

Bob Wills played this this version of Cotton Eyed Joe on the 1947 recording with his band, The Texas Playboys. Louis Tierney played harmony, which is not transcribed. See Howard Marshall’s essay on this tune, elsewhere in this issue.
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 …

by Cookie Segelstein
 
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 …

by Cookie Segelstein
In our last article we spoke about the one of the most recognizably Jewish modes,  Freygish. Now I would like to talk about the mode Mishebeyrakh, which (like Ahava Rabboh, the alternate name for Freygish)  is named after a prayer with the musical elements of the mode in the Jewish synagogue liturgy.
Before we start with some musical examples, here is the mishebeyrakh mode. In this example we are using D as the tonic. The motives listed underneath the mode are typical examples of when a note’s position (in …

by Miamon Miller   
Romanian Transylvania has many sub-regions each with its unique folkloric flavor and traditions and the northern county of Maramureş is no exception. Indeed, each valley can be said to have distinct characteristics.   
While most Transylvanian folk bands rely on bowed strings for both melody and accompaniment, Maramureş musicians have gone down a different path. For over a century, they’ve used a version of the guitar (called ‘zongora’) to play rhythm and harmony. When Béla Bartók recorded musicians during a 14-day research trip in 1913, he wrote that a 2-string …