Notes on the Tunes

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I know what you’re thinking; I thought the same thing; it’s not! On Nov 12, 1928 Crockett’s Kentucky Mountaineers recorded “Medley of Old Time Dance Tunes.” None were named, but all were easily recognizable except one. It may have been Pete Sutherland who first noticed that the unnamed tune was “The Honeymoon” as printed in Ryan’s Mammoth Collection 1050 Reels and Jigs and began calling it “Crockett’s Honeymoon” to signify from whom it came. The tune is also known as “The Ha’penny Reel,” “The Maid Who Left the Mountains,” and “The Honey Moon (Reel)” in Ryan. These are all references to Irish tunes from the late 18th/early 19th century. This last reference may be to the month of June, that being the best month to begin collecting honey from the hives. (Jack Horkheimer’s Star Gazer TV show) The idea that this tune came to John Crockett and his Mountaineers through a family fiddle tradition is suspect. It seems that Alan Crockett, one of the boys, fiddled for Doc Hopkins who hosted a radio show on WLS in Chicago in the 1940’s sponsored by the Cole Publishing Co., who had repackaged Ryan’s as Cole’s 1000 Fiddle Tunes. He played many tunes from Cole’s and “plugged” the publisher on the air. (Blech) So if it were played on the frontier, it may have gone something like the Crockett setting.