Booth Shot Lincoln
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Booth Shot Lincoln", also known as "Booth" is an American reel in cut time and A Major.<br> It is played in AEae, GDgd or standard fiddle tunings. The parts are played AAB (Phillips) or<br> AABB (Johnson).<br> The title commemorates the April 14th, 1865, assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by the<br> actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, Washington, D.C., during a<br> performance of the British playwright Tom Taylor's comedy Our American Cousin. The Booth name<br> was instantly recognizable to patrons of the Civil War era stage, chiefly because of John's<br> brother Edwin Booth, one of the foremost thespians of his day.<br> The tune was in the repertoires of western North Carolina fiddlers Osey Helton and Marcus<br> Martin (from the Black Mountain region). It was also in the repertoire of fiddler Tommy<br> Magness (1911-1972), born in north Georgia near the southeastern Tennessee border. Bascom Lamar<br> Lunsford (Bunscombe County, N.C.) learned his version ("Booth Killed Lincoln") from Martin<br> and both sang the song and played the same tune on the fiddle on his 1949<br> Library of Congress recording.<br> Lunsford introduces the seven-verse song:<br> "The title of this ballad is 'Booth,' or 'Booth Killed Lincoln.' It's an old fiddle tune, and<br> there are a few variants of the song. I heard my father hum it and sing a few of the stanzas<br> when I was just a boy about six or ten years old."<br> Scott DeLancey maintains that the "Booth" melody is a breakdown setting of the Irish jig<br> "The Market Town".<br> The banjo tablature is by John Letscher. His comment:<br> Mostly from Jim Taylor (Civil War CDs)<br> The banjo tablature is in G. If the fiddler is going to play in A, capo the banjo 2 frets.<br> It was printed in Johnson's The Kitchen Musician No. 2: Occasional Collection of Old-Timey<br> Fiddle Tunes for Hammer Dulcimer, Fiddle, etc. (1982) (revised 1988 & 2003),<br> Lamancusa's The Gettysburg Collection of Old-Time Fiddle Tunes (2021) and<br> Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1 (1994).<br> It was recorded by<br> Malcolm Daglish & Grey Larsen on Thunderhead (1982),<br> Bascomb Lamar Lunsford (originally recorded 1949),<br> Dan Gellert and Shoofly on Forked Deer (1986),<br> Bascom Lamar Lunsford on Songs and Ballads of American History and of the Assassination of<br> Presidents (originally issued in the early 1950's by the Library of Congress from the Archive<br> of American Folksong),<br> Jim Taylor on The Civil War Collection (1996) and<br> The Rough Deal Stringband on The Rough Deal Stringband.<br>
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