"Grandad's Favorite" is an American reel in cut time and A Major. It is played in AEae or GDgd fiddle tuning. The parts are played AABB. The tune is crooked with only six measures in the B part. The source for "Grandad's Favorite" is Braxton County, West Virginia, fiddler Ernie Carpenter (1907-1997). Ernie's grandfather was William "Squirrely Bill" Carpenter (1827-1921), born on the Elk River near the mouth of Laurel Creek on a homestead later lost in the building of Sutton Lake. According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, he built and sold dugout canoes by length at a dollar a foot. Not only did he learn (through his father) his grandfather's repertory, he also learned tunes that had been played by his great-great-grandfather, Jeremiah Carpenter (one of the first settlers in the Elk River area) and his great-grandfather, Solomon "Old Solly" Carpenter. The banjo tablature is by John Letscher who learned it from the playing of Molsky's Mountain Drifters. It was printed in Milliner and Koken's Milliner and Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes (2011). It was recorded by Ernie Carpenter on Old Time Fiddle Tunes from the Elk River Country (2001), Ernie Carpenter: Recordings from the collection of the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music (2005) and Oh, Listen Today...The Roots of American Old-Timey Fiddle Music Part 2 (2019), Dave Marshall, Andrea Cooper and Joel Bernstein on Pleasant Hill: old-time tunes for fiddle, banjo and harmonica (2003) and Molsky's Mountain Drifters on Molsky's Mountain Drifters (2016).