Category Archives: youtube

Frog in the Well

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This post is a recording of a civil war fife and drum tune called “Frog in the Well.” It’s short and simple.

MP3 version: Lucas Gonze — Frog in the Well (MP3) (1:12)

FLAC version: Lucas Gonze — Frog in the Well (FLAC) (1:12)

As always, this recording is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license, and you are welcome to ask for a version under a different license (like a fully commercial license or a CC non-commercial license.

Update: for tablature and sheet music, see the followup post to this one.

Centennial Grand March

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This is a recording of an 1876 tune called “Centennial Grand March”. It’s a bit tricky, and when I first tried it on stage about a year ago it scared the hell out of me. Now that I’ve got it down it’s a lot of fun to play. I love the chromatic melodies, the way the parts tell a story, and the mood.

This is my third recording of work by W. L. Hayden, the composer. I did a couple pieces from Hayden’s Star Collection of Guitar Music, from which I learned Celebrated Shoo Fly Galop and Must I, Then.

MP3: Lucas Gonze – Centennial Grand March

FLAC: Lucas Gonze – Centennial Grand March

Sheet music: at the Library of Congress web site.

Feel free to share and remix per the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 unported license.

Technical notes

I got rid of the high pitched background whine in my first video by using an external iSight video camera rather than the one built into my laptop. To use an external camera you have to use iMovie 06 rather than the more recent 08 version, so I switched to 06, and it turned to be a lot better and easier to use.

Also, I got a more full and punchy sound by switching from the built-in mic to an external one, a Sure SM81.

Your Southern Can Belongs to Me

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My first YouTube — a version of Blind Willie McTell’s “Your Southern Can Belongs to Me:”

Lots of caveats for this song, because it’s my first try at video and I don’t have my chops together yet. There’s some high-pitched noise that I couldn’t get rid of, it’s just a short clip, I didn’t use the right mic, stuff like that. But I’m really happy about video as a content type for this site. It makes a lot of sense to do my recordings with video, since the performances are always live and edit-free. In the future I’m hoping to do both a video and a standalone MP3 of every recording.

Smokey Mokes

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Smoky Mokes — played by Dennis Pash and
Meredith Axelrod

A very popular cakewalk from 1899, “Smoky Mokes” was composed by Abe Holzmann. Here it is played by Dennis Pash and Meredith Axelrod on Saturday, 17 November 2007 at the 21st annual West Coast Ragtime Festival.

About the song:

Smoky Mokes was the first of Holzmann’s compositions and it was dedicated, possibly as a commercial play, to the then grand old man of Tin Pan Alley, Monroe H. Rosenfeld . It is a splendid cakewalk in AABBACCBB form with a 4-bar introduction and a 4 bar interlude between C- and B-strains whereby the AABBA and CCBB sections are in the major keys of C and F respectively. The original sheet music scores the final bar with a DC but no corresponding Fine is given – repeating the AABBA strains feels about right. It was also published as a song with a “Humorous Darky Text”. The front cover of the original sheet music shows a quartet of Negro lads- the singers of the song perhaps or may be the cake walkers? Who knows?

About the odd mandolin:

Technically, that’s a type of mandolin called a mandolin-banjo. It’s a mandolin in function with a banjo head, much like how an ukulele-banjo is essentially an ukulele with a banjo head. These instruments were created for the louder sound they produced.

Basinstreet.com says:

Abe Holzmann (1874-1939) was born in New York City. He was conservatory trained and was the composer of “Bunch of Blackberries” (1900) that was popularized internationally by J.P. sousa. “Smoky Mokes” became a very popular and successful composition.

Described as a cakewalk and two-step, we find, in the vocal parts, a text that is in Negro dialect and the song is an example of the lyrics in what were to become known as “Coon songs.” Lyrics are by W. Murdoch Lind. The lyrics are typical of many “coon” songs of the era and below we give an example of the lyrics.

There are two versions published with different covers. The vocal copy has a picture of Edna Collins in the foreground with a caricature of a Negro in the background. In the instrumental cover there is a picture of four young Negro lads. The cover reminds us that it can be used as a cakewalk or two-step. Also given on the left of the picture is a statement: “published also as a song with humorous darky text.” The given text given above is what is referred to in this statement. The cakewalk/ragtime song was primarily an instrumental form, when the words are added it became the Coon song.

“Must I, Then” -> “Muss I Denn”

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In a comment on Must I, Then, Jim N posted that:

From a folksong book my grandfather gave me, I know that this is based on a German song, “Muss I Den”.

Here’s the german tune:

That’s definitely the same song. Good shot, Jim.

But what about the title? Google translate tells me that “Muss I denn” means “I have since” in English, not “Must I, then.” “Must I, then” must have become the title because it sounds the same. Maybe it was misheard by an English speaker who thought it was English.

And actually my favorite part of this song is the title. “Must I, Then” is a great name for a song.