Black Jack Grove
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ABC Notation
Mandolin Tablature
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traditional
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Black Jack Grove" is an old-time breakdown in A Mixolydian ('A' part) & A Dorian<br> ('B' part) {Phillips, Titon} or A Mixolydian ('A' part) & A Major ('B' part)<br> {Silberberg}. It is played in standard or AEae fiddle tuning. The parts are<br> played AB (Silberberg) or AABB (Phillips, Titon). Phillips notes that his source,<br> Walter McNew, tended to blur the 'C' notes in the 'B' part of his unaccompanied<br> version, resulting in a tonality somewhere between minor and major.<br> Jeff Titon (2001) finds the title in tune lists from Berea College in 1915 and<br> in the 1919 Berea fiddle contest list.<br> The title presumably takes its name from a locale with a grove of blackjack oak<br> trees. <br> McNew learned "Black Jack Grove" from his father John McNew (b. 1888), a<br> telegraph operator and depot agent for the L & N Railroad, who would play his<br> fiddle between dispatches during the graveyard shift at his train depot.<br> Walter thought that his father in turn<br> had it from a man known to the family as 'Uncle' Garrett Bow, who used to<br> visit with the elder McNew at the train depot where the two would swap tunes<br> through the night. McNew was also highly influenced by neighboring Madison<br> County, Ky., fiddler Doc Roberts, whom he knew and respected.<br> It was printed in Milliner & Koken's Milliner-Koken Collection of American<br> Fiddle Tunes (2011),<br> Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 2 (1995),<br> Lamancusa's The Gettysburg Collection of Old-Time Fiddle Tunes (2021),<br> Silberberg's Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern (2002) and<br> The Complete Fiddle Tunes I Either Did or Did Not Learn at the Tractor Tavern (2007) and<br> Titon's Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (2001).<br> It was recorded by Walter McNew on Black Jack Grove (1993),<br> Brittany Haas on Brittany Haas (2004) and<br> Dirk Powell and John Hermann on Dirk Powell and John Hermann (1992).<br> <br>
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