Erskine Morris (1913 – 1997)

Erskine Morris (1913 – 1997)

Saturday, April 17, 2010

A Title Mystery Solved! Reel du Pecheur (Fisherman's Reel)

The Untitled AEAE Tune that I had dubbed Ox and Buggy-O a few weeks has found its proper title!

This had appeared as untitled on our recording of Erskine, but when I pulled this tune out to play with Brian today, he recognized it as a tune that Jean Carignan played and then remembered the title was the Reel du Pecheur. I've updated the title in our earlier post and provided some further details and background info there as well for all the hard-core fiddle nerds.

Brian had played this tune for me on the guitar a few weeks back but I hadn't realized it was the same tune, an error that I can assure you was on my part and not on Brian's excellent guitar rendition of the tune. Actually, my main source of confusion was that Carignan played this tune in standard tuning in the key of Bb while Erskine played this in AEAE tuning in the key of A. So even though the melodies are the same, the atmosphere created between the two versions was so different for me that I hadn't realized they were in fact the same tune.

Anyhow, I'm happy to have one less untitled tune of Erskine's in my repertoire. It was becoming a drag to have to always tell people that I didn't know the name of a tune I was about to play.

In other title-related business, Brian came up with a great title for the AEAE tune featured in the 24 second tune posted on April, 16. He came up with "Pearl of the Coast". I think that is a really beautiful title for an equally beautiful tune. Out in the Gaspe, Douglastown (Erskine's hometown) is affectionately referred to as the Pearl of the Coast.

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