Chiff and Fipple Forums

Try this site:
www.theportlandcollection.com

I love this book! And now there is a companon CD.

I use this a reference for Contra dance music, and there are several "old-timey" tunes in it!

Good luck!
Peach

Wabash Cannonball
The Wayfaring Stranger
On the Banks of the Ohio
Man of Constant Sorrow
Turkey in the Straw
Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad
Golden Slippers
Little Mohee
We Shall All Be Reunited
Down in the Valley

A wonderful midi (and some notation) site is the following:
http://hetzler.homestead.com/music_2.html

Songs are grouped by the "usual" key they are played in. Also some great Celtic midis.

And old time and blue grass will often coexist. It's been told to me that the way to tell if it's old time vs. blue grass is the banjo player - in old time it will be claw hammer, in blue grass it will be Scruggs five finger style.

More or less anything by Stephen Foster (Hard Times. Camptown Races, etc.)

http://www.pdmusic.org/foster.html

Also try this site:

http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html

The Contemplator is a fantastic site for old time music of the US and GB

Here are some I do--mostly fairly slow:

The notes are the starting notes on a D whistle, just to get me started if I haven't done them in a while.

Redhaired Boy - Low A
Little Sparrow - Low A (Fair and Tender Ladies)
Moonshiner - high E (Jean Ritchie version)
Sweet Sunny South (minor) - low F#
Old Hog in the Wood - low E->A
Pretty Polly - low E->A
Barbara Allen - low D
I Have No Mother Now - low E->->A
The Girl I Left Behind Me - high G
Maggie Walker Blues - low G
Buffalo Skinners - low B (The Hills of Mexico)
Railroad Boy - low E
Greenland Whale Fisheries - low A
Santy Ano - high F#
Blood Red Roses - low F# has Cnat and C#
The Cruel Mother - low B
Henry Martin - low E
Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender - low D
Lord Franklin - low A (Adefedeee)
Lady Nancy - low E (A)
Hard Times - low G
As I Went Down in the Valley to Pray - low A
The Old Crossroads - low B lead-in to high E (B-c#-B d-e)
The Gospel Train - high F#
Blue Diamond Mines - low C#
Your Sweet Love Ain't Around - low B
St. James Infirmary - low B
Bad Girl's Lament - low F#
Roving on a Summer's Night - low D
Alberta - low A

A woman friend of mine who plays whistle, fiddle, and guitar in a number of genres plays "Shady Grove" on a B-flat whistle and it is wonderful, try it!

Walden wrote:Wabash Cannonball
. . . Turkey in the Straw
. . .

There's a tune that I really avoid. It's not that I have anything against it. It's just that I hear it blared over the loudspeaker of an ice cream truck so frequently in my neighborhood that it's become annoying.

EricWingler wrote:

Walden wrote:Wabash Cannonball
. . . Turkey in the Straw
. . .

There's a tune that I really avoid. It's not that I have anything against it. It's just that I hear it blared over the loudspeaker of an ice cream truck so frequently in my neighborhood that it's become annoying.

Heh heh, yeah, ice cream truck here does too.

Get a copy of The Fiddler's Fakebook. It's got hundreds of tunes from lots of genres, and lots of them are whistle friendly.


Steven

-David Bromberg's 1975 "Midnight On The Water" album, still available on Amazon.com-for several old-timey cuts. One, a medley encompassing Drowsy Maggie, Red Haired Boy, Teetotaler's Reel, Leather Britches and The Wind That Shakes The Barley, and the title cut MOTW (also a medley)
plus Dark Hollow. Billy Novick and Paul Fleisher play pennywhistle and Jay Ungar is featured on fiddle.
The old-timey stuff is rousing, and the album has other styles, but the old-timey pieces are the best on it IMO.

IMHO the best old time tune I've found on whistle is Billy in the Lowground. It just really seems to fit.

My other favorite is Down in the Willow Garden.

I play at a jam that plays some old-time bluegrassy stuff. Whisltes fit well with Angeline the Baker, Temperance Reel, June Apple, Lover's Waltz, Westphalia.

The Westphalia Waltz is a wonderful tune on the whistle,and the version to be found in the Fiddlers Fakebook comes with a really clever chord sequence.
It also makes a fine slow air- providing you play around with the phrasing a bit.

Slan,
D.

The only old tyme tune that i know is so easy to learn and play it blew me away.

The Rose Tree.

I love it.

Mike

Albert Gore, Sr. and his band playing The Soldier's Joy at Constitution Hall, May 1938.

Or should this have gone in the politic thread? : )