"Dead man's tuning" on Songs from the Mountain
Minehart
it very much. The liner notes say the first song set (Mountain Air,
Washington's March, and Bonaparte's Retreat" is played in the "dead man's"
fiddle tuning. Is that D-D-A-D? Thanks.
David Lynch
<mine...@aol.com> wrote:
The liner notes say the first song set (Mountain Air,
> Washington's March, and Bonaparte's Retreat" is played in the "dead man's"
> fiddle tuning. Is that D-D-A-D? Thanks.
Yep - but I always called it "drop D", not "drop dead"!
Steve Senderoff & Trish Vierling
isn't there a wv banjo tune (maybe hammons family, Dwight Diller plays it
on Oh Death) that's called dead man's tune, that's in fCFCD
tuning....sounds like the A part of last chance, sort of....
steve
I can't get to Mt Airy again, and I'm sad....
--
Steve Senderoff and Trish Vierling
Oh, ya run your E string down, I don't know, about three frets,
anyway, it corresponds to the third note on the A string...
here's ya tuning...
Tommy Jarrell
Carl Baron
>
> dead man's tuning...
>
> isn't there a wv banjo tune (maybe hammons family, Dwight Diller plays it
> on Oh Death) that's called dead man's tune, that's in fCFCD
> tuning....sounds like the A part of last chance, sort of....
According to Anita Kermode's Banjo Tunings on Banjo-L,
http://idt.net/~zepp29/
we have the following:
f#ADAD
D variant: "John Henry", "Dead Man's" tuning
See also g#BEBE, below.
Roscoe Holcomb, Old Smokey ("The Music of Roscoe Holcomb &
Wade Ward").. Greg Jowaisas, Valley Forge ("Old Time Banjo
Pieces"). Bob Carlin, Payday ("Where Did You Get That Hat?"). John
Les, Elkhorn Ridge (not recorded). Dwight Diller, John Henry Blues
;Washington's March ("Piney Woods"). Paul Brown, The Old Man's
& Old Woman's Quarrel (Grumbling Old Man...), from Fields Ward
(Tab, BNL, Aug 1994). Stu Jamieson, Georgie Buck (fretless banjo)
(" Banjos, Lamas & Bagpipes"). Dwight Diller, John Henry Blues
("Harvest: West. Va. Mountain Music"). Ernie Fasse (communications
to Banjo-L) has also, on his fretless banjo, been delving into this
tuning, e.g. for Dance Boatman Dance; Say Darling Say; If I Lose
Let Me Lose; Billy Wilson...
g#BEBE
Oscar Wright's "Dead Man's" E-tuning
Equivalent of f#ADAD (see above).
Oscar Wright, Shaving a Dead Nigger ("Clawhammer Banjo Vol 3").
Fuzzy Mt. String Band, Protect the Innocent, from Oscar Wright
("Fuzzy Mt. String Band". The "Shaving" tune was renamed by Fuzzy
Mountain, via Claude Keaton, a guitarist & flat-foot dancer. "Mr
Keaton was listening to the tune on a cassette recorder one day at
work when a co-worker, who was black, asked him its name.
Thinking of the TV program Dragnet, he said...") Ron Mullenex and
Gerry Milnes have also recorded this tune as Shaving a Dead Man.
Ron Mullennex, Turkey in the Straw; Houston ("Sugar in My
Coffee"). (N.B. I think 'Turkey', played in the key of E, sounds
great
in this tuning. Mullennex says he got 'Houston' from Burl Hammons;
the fiddle is tuned EEBE in this performance.)
eBEBE
Alternative "Dead Man" tuning
See also dADAD
I don't know if Oscar Wright also used this tuning, though the
liner
notes on "Clawhammer Banjo Vol 3" cite it as his tuning for
"Shaving...".
f#BEBE
"Dead Man's" variant
Eli Shapiro, Protect the Innocent (Tab, BNL, Sept 1978).
bBEBE
"Dead Man's" variant
Or aADAD . Jane Keefer, Sweet Sunny South (Tab in BNL, Sept.
1989).
Carl