HORNS IN AN OLD TIME COUNTRY DANCE BAND? – OH YEAH!!!

MYRON COLBY’S ORCHESTRA PLAYS THE BARN DANCE AT FORTUNE’S BARN, BRADFORD, NH ~1950

Back in the first half of the 20^th century, here in northern New England, just about every town had a “Barn Dance” nearby, almost every weekend! (I’m sure other regions had their equivalent dances!) You can see in the picture above there were horns (well “horn” (tenor sax) here but often more). In fact, just about any instrument could be found in the local “dance orchestras”: horns, drum sets, harmonicas, “musical saws”, etc. Read a little about one of these old-time dances HERE (This is a great read!! Remember this was 1950 so some of this seems pretty “strange” today (i.e. not so P.C.!)) This 4-hour long dance (Fortune’s Barn Dance in Bradford, NH) was a mixture of couples dances (waltz, foxtrot, maybe polka, schottische); and squares – mostly “singing squares” which were all the rage back then. Contra dances were a small part of this too, mostly dances like Haymaker’s Jig (Lady of the Lake), Lady Walpole’s Reel, etc. This weekly dance normally drew 350-450 dancers! Give a listen to hear what that sounded like!

This recording was made by Jack O’Connor (of Yankee Ingenuity) on a reel to reel tape recorder back in the mid-fifties. You can hear the tenor sax doing a bass line and note the whistling at the start (I guess that’s sort of a “horn”). Very cool!

Here in Maine, the old time dances continued on until quite recently (certainly well into the 21^st century). One such dance was held at the Greenwood Town Hall in Locke Mills, Maine, usually played for by the Richard Felt Orchestra. At one point the orchestra consisted of 3 harmonicas (one was band leader Richard Felt), a whistling (yep “whistling” again as an instrument!) piano player (Dot Canwell), a trombone, trap drum set, and banjo! Note no fiddle but there could often BE a fiddle, it’s just that it wasn’t required, and the bands were made up of who was available and the instrumentation was (let’s say) “variable”.

THE RICHARD FELT ORCHESTRA PLAYING AT THE OLD TOWN HALL IN LOCKE MILLS, MAINE 1997 (RICHARD FELT AND DOT CANWELL ON THE RIGHT SIDE) NOTE THE “OUTFITS”

When I moved to Maine in the early ’80’s there were several of these old time dances still going. The Blue Goose in Northport, The Greene Grange, Locke Mills, the Finnish farmers hall in Monson (still going as far as I know!), several others. These dances did not feed directly into what I call the modern urban contradances, the two were co-existing for a while. There were a lot of similarities, though, live music for sure and squares, contras and couples dances (just different amounts of each).

MAINE FIDDLE CAMP “GREAT HORNED UKESTRA” PLAYS FOR THE EVENING OLD TIME COUNTRY DANCE

OK, so here we are up to the present. As most of you know, Maine Fiddle Camp’s mission is to preserve the old-time music and country dance traditions from Maine and New England (I am quite sure we have succeeded). Part of achieving this goal has been the formation of the “Great Horned Owls”. ← read about the Great Horned Owls. This “unofficial group” got melded with a Camp ukulele group that was named the “Ukestra” by a young Fiddle Camper named Erik. This resulted in what is now called the “Great Horned Ukestra” and this orchestra has played at Fiddle Camp at the end of every evening Country Dance for a foxtrot and a waltz every camp since its inception. Yeah, this IS going over the top a little. The old-time dance orchestras never had 10+ horns in them, but we are trying to make up for lost time, I guess. Over the years, the GHU has included sax (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, C-melody), clarinet, bass clarinet, trumpet, coronet, trombone, baritone horn, tuba (including Sousaphone), French horn, flutes, a couple double reed woodwinds, probably more! Wow! The songs played (and sung) are many of the “old favorites” (Sentimental Journey; Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue; Home on the Range; My Wild Irish Rose; etc.) A partial repertoire of Great Horned Ukestra Tunes is listed on the MFC website HERE.

Of course there are notable horn players in some modern-day contra dance bands. Flute is pretty common, but for other woodwinds, off the top of my head I think of Bill Tomszak, Anna Patton, Dean Herington, David Cantieni, and who can forget Nils Fredland with his trombone! It’s pretty much a rarity though. So here’s the plug. Want to join in the fun?  Maine Fiddle Camp is back LIVE for a week and weekend in June and 2 weeks in August at our new venue in West Gardiner, Maine. Dust off the old horn and join the Great Horned Ukestra! Read about MFC HERE.

A REMINDER – Tuesday night online Jam session and mini-concert.

Pam Weeks and I have been hosting an ONLINE jam session and mini concert every Tuesday night. This is a free, guided “fiddle tune” jam session for all instruments geared toward the intermediate player, Tuesdays from 7-8PM EST. Tempos will be moderate and chords will be called out the first time through. The jam will be proceeded by a short mini concert at 6:45. This jam is fairly unusual in that we ask for and almost always honor tune suggestions on the FB chat. We always have lively chat going on and sometimes a “stump the band” situation (we are rarely stumped!) Check it out. The jam will be streamed on Facebook Live, accessed through Pam’s FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pamweeks.73. For more info email Pam at fiddlerpam@gmail.com

FIDDLE HELL

Fiddle Hell in Westford, Massachusetts, is back again live this year! Dates are Nov 3-6. I’ll be there Thursday thru Saturday. More info HERE.

Thanks for stopping by everyone. See you next month! – bill