Introduction and Explanations
  Organization Traditional Tunes Celtic / Irish O'Carolan & Dances Traditional Songs Bawdy Songs  
  Legacies Singer
Songwriters		 Hymns & Spirituals Christmas Carols Graphics and Miscellaneous Thanks and Acknowledgments  
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The initial work on this website began in 2003 with the idea of documenting the repertoire of tunes and songs that I performed.
There are also songs and tunes that I have found along the way that I am still learning. It seems that researching traditional music is a little like exploring a jungle without a guide. You might get lost but it's all interesting and you never know what will turn up. Anyway, as J. R. R. Tolkien said of The Lord of the Rings: "the tale grew in the telling".
One way in which the tale grew was when my musical collaborator of many years, John Letscher, began writing down the banjo tunes that he had been playing. His repertoire of banjo tunes is extensive and has enlarged this collection a great deal.
So this tunebook website as it is now is a compilation of songs and tunes that we know or know of or have found while researching other songs and tunes. I am not a field collector like Cecil Sharp, Samuel Bayard or the Lomaxes. Songs and tunes come to me second hand, i.e.: by recordings, printed collections or Internet sources. Except for John's recommendations, the selections are my own. I did not copy all of Francis O'Neill's 1850 Irish dance tunes or Jeremy Barlow's collection of the 535 tunes from Playford's The Dancing Master. The songs and tunes collected here are my choices of melodically interesting songs and tunes, historically significant songs and tunes or songs and tunes with interesting names that caught my attention.
I have allowed myself to be selective: if I found a tune that I didn't care for, I didn't include it. My purpose here is to present the version of the song or tune as I perform it or as I have found it in research. Unlike other collectors, particularly Cecil Sharp and Samuel Bayard, I do not present multiple versions of any given song or tune but, instead, present a good useable version that can be used in jams or performances and can be a basis for a player/singer's own variation and use.
There are very few African American items included here compared with items from Anglo/Irish/Scottish/American traditions which are my heritage: my forebears having come from England, Wales, Germany and possibly Ireland. That being said, I did not learn any of these pieces from family traditions. By the time I was born, all of my ancestoral streams seemed to have been assimilated into the American melting pot. If I hadn't asked, I couldn't have discerned which family came from where. They all sang the songs and participated in the musical culture of radio and recordings of 20th century America.

What this collection is not: it does not include organized or detailed explanations of the technical details of traditional music. You can find details of the characteristics of the various types of songs and tunes from various traditions in the books listed in the Bibliography of Academic Books. I particularly recommend the introductions to Cecil Sharp's English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians and Samuel Bayard's Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife.

Organization top
To try to give some sense of organization to the collection I have divided the items first into tunes and songs: tunes being strictly instrumental melodies and songs being melodies with attached lyrics. Sometimes a song will be listed in the tunes section because the lyrics are sort of an afterthought and are mainly to keep the band from getting bored while playing the many repetitions of the tune while the dancers complete the steps of the dance. I have included a number of these songs (which are really dance tunes) in the Tunes section because I never sing the words ("Flop Eared Mule" is a good example). I still include the lyrics for completeness but I rarely, if ever, sing them.
I have divided the traditional material into several sections: Traditional Tunes, Traditional Songs, Celtic Tunes & Songs, Irish Tunes & Songs, Contra Dance Tunes, Bawdy Songs and Sea Songs. There is a mixture of traditional items and composed items in Dancing Master Tunes, Hymns and Spirituals and Christmas Carols. The O'Carolan Tunes are his compositions as far as can be determined. The Contemporary Songwriters selections are composed as are the Legacy Tunes and Songs.
I have tried to be consistant but some items could be classified several ways so my choices are sometimes arbitrary. The best way to find a particular tune or song is to use the indexes. If you know the title, the alphabetic indexes are the best way to find a song or tune. That listing will show you the section where the title resides and provide a link to the item. The Table of Contents in each section is an alphabetical list of the items in the section. There are also indexes of banjo tunes and dulcimer tunes to which I have managed to construct tablature files.

Below are brief descriptions of each section. There are more complete pages of description in each section. The title of each section here is a link to the appropriate notes page.

Traditional Tunes
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Tunes, i.e.: instrumental melodies, are used in both Europe and America as either "listening pieces" with no purpose other than enjoying the melody or as rhythmic accompaniment for dancing.
Items in this section are mostly traditional melodies from England and America. Melodies with roots in the Celtic areas of Great Britain are listed in the Irish or Celtic sections.

Irish and Celtic Tunes & Songs top
I have tried to place tunes and songs with roots in Scotland, Wales, the Hebrides and the Shetland Islands in the Celtic section and those from Ireland in the Irish section but some that are also well known in American tradition may be left in the Traditional Tunes or Traditional Songs categories. ("Old Mother Flanagan" is a good example).

O'Carolan top
Harper Turlough O'Carolan (Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin)(1670-1738) composed a large body of tunes, some of which were dances and some were songs and listening pieces in honor of wealthy patrons. The instrumental tunes are the best known of his repertoire. Ossian Publications' The Complete Works of O'Carolan is an excellent source for these tunes.
The selections included here are my favorites and the ones that I play either from memory or from print.

Contra Dances top
Contra dances are folk dances with mixed origins from English country dance, Scottish country dance and French dance styles in the 17th century. They include sword dances, morris dances, horn dances and other country dances from England and Scotland and are found in the collections of Cecil Sharp and Maude Karpeles who were responsible for the collection and preservation of a large body of traditional song and dance material in the early 20th century.

The Dancing Master top
The most comprehensive collection of English country dances from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are compiled by John Playford (followed by his son Henry and lastly by John Young). The collection is reprinted in Jeremy Barlow's The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master. These dances came into favor during the Puritan Commonwealth when the continental courtly dances of the time were considered too immodest for Puritan approval. While some of the tunes were possibly of traditional origin, a number of them were probably composed by urban dancing masters in the style of traditional country dances.
The selections included here are my favorites and the ones that I play either from memory or from print.

American and English/Other Traditional Songs
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The American Songs and English/Other Songs categories contain traditional songs (with lyrics) including both narrative ballads and lyrical (or love) songs. Confusingly, traditional singers in the Southern mountains call all the old songs "love songs" whether they are lyric or narrative. Some of the songs are the ancient ballads found in F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads as well as in William Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, John Jacob Niles' The Ballad Book and in Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.

Bawdy Songs
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The songs include here are those that are usually not considered acceptable in polite company because the subject matter is either sexual or scatological. A large number of these songs were collected and recorded (although in a carefully bowdlerized state) from the 1940's through the 1960's by entertainer Oscar Brand in his Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads recording series.
Some others I have picked up along the way, usually from Sunhearth music weekends or other alchohol-fueled events, but (not surprisingly) I can't remember exactly where or from whom. A number of these songs are documented in The Bawdy Bedside Reader, edited by Harold Hart and Why Was He born So Beautiful and other Rugby Songs published by Sphere Books LTD (no editor credit is given).

Legacies
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Tunes and songs that are legacies, that is, where the creator is still known and are relatively modern but which were crafted on traditional styles are placed in the Legacy Tunes & Songs category. These are usually 20th century although some more well known 19th century composers such as Stephen Foster and Henry Clay Work are included. Exceptions are made for some tunes that are old enough to be usually learned by ear even though the creator can be discerned by research (e.g.: Gus Bernard's "Colored Aristocracy"). Such items are included in the Tunes or Songs sections. Some tunes or songs that are associated very closely with the originally recorded performers (like the Carter Family) are included in Legacies even though the root of the piece may have been traditional. I have also included some items that I know to be composed by people who have remained very close to traditional styles and patterns. For example, Bob McQuillen's contra dance tunes are included because players often don't know or remember that he composed them and assume that they are traditional.

Singer-Songwriters
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These items are from singer-songwriters of the 1960's and 70's and were learned from concerts or recordings or from print from various song books and folk-themed magazines of the time. They are farther from traditional styles than the legacy songs and tunes but were considered "folk music" at the time. These span a wide range from lyrical love songs to the protest songs of the Vietnam War era.

Hymns & Spirituals
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The Hymns & Spirituals section is simply a selection of my favorites from The Sacred Harp, The Southern Harmony, Repository of Sacred Music, Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, the books of John and Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger's books and a few others with traditional roots. Most selections are, therefore, shape-note hymns, white spirituals and black spirituals. They may be composed songs or they may be traditional songs but the melodies are interesting.

Christmas Carols
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The Christmas Carols section contains carols that are not part of the standard set that everyone knows by heart. They have been gleaned from various sources (both composed and traditional) or have been collected from oral tradition by various collectors. Printed sources include The Oxford Book of Carols, The New Oxford Book of Carols and Folk Songs of North America.

Graphics and Miscellaneous Content
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The art and photo galleries were collected from Internet sources, most of which I have forgotten. Some have been scanned from books. The only photo to which I have a direct connection is a photo of my grandmother Lottie Filer Jones and her brother Dewey Filer which is the default image when you enter the Legacies section. She is holding a banjo and he is holding a mandolin. Dewey could play both instruments. My grandmother was simply posing for the picture. The fate of the instruments is unknown.

There are all-inclusive indexes of entries by name, of banjo tablatures and of dulcimer tablatures. There are also indexes of audio files, of songbook PDF files and of Table of Contents pages.

Thanks
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I am thankful to a number of people who have helped or inspired me over the years:
  • John Letscher, my banjo informant who knows more tunes than any ten people should. Beginning with the 2020-2021 Covid-19 pandemic lockdown he has documented some of his vast collection of tunes. I am indebted to him for writing up and sharing the tablatures for so many banjo tunes (more than I know or play). We have played music together for over half a century and he is the best collaborator I could ask for.
  • my wife Elaine who has endured my obsession with music and musical instruments for many years and who is an excellent proof reader.
  • my parents Charlotte and Gerald Bush who allowed and encouraged me to take violin lessons which started me on the path to music over 60 years ago. They also enabled my first explorations of guitar and banjo.
  • Charles E. Redenberger who taught me to play the violin and introduced me to the technical aspects of music.
  • John Letscher, Perry Campbell and Mel Dick who, along with me, constituted The New Dimension String Band, our college obsession. Together we investigated and performed mainly American roots music. For pictures of the band when we were young and still learning, click here.
  • Dan Estersohn, the first real clawhammer banjo player that I ever knew personally.
  • Samuel P. Bayard who taught me about folk traditions and how to study them seriously.
  • Walter Martin, the builder of Sunhearth Dulcimers, and his wife Helen who encouraged a group of wet-behind-the-ears recent college graduates to explore and grow in our ability to handle traditional music.
  • Don and Jean Wisniewski who have hosted a jam-from-a-list session in Waterford for a number of years. Don has an extensive collection of tunes and I have taken advantage of his printed versions of tunes to document the ones that I knew slightly or recognised but had no printed source of my own.
  • Maia Chisholm who provided valuable editing expertise.
  • Sheryl Williams who, as Music Director and Choir Director, taught choir members, including me, to sing better than we ever thought we could.
The arrangements and settings of the melodies are, for the most part, my own with the exception of the banjo tablatures which are mostly documented by John. I'm sure most of the Songwriter material is under copywright but I learned the songs by ear so while they are not in the public domain like the real traditional items, they are part of the "folk process" and are not copied from printed sources. They represent the way I sing them, correct or not.
If you find something that you like, please enjoy it, carry on the folk process and pass it on to anyone else who might be interested.

For a bibliography of source material, click here.
For a description of the files documenting each tune/song, click here.