"The Raw Recruit", also known as "Chapel Hill Serenade", "Coleman Killed His Wife",
"Green Willis (the Raw Recruit)",
"The New Rigged Ship"
or "Old Hickory" is an American
march in 6/8 time and D Major. It was known in southwestern Pa., Michigan and Missouri.
The parts are played AB (Bayard, Christeson) or AABB (Sweet).
Versions known as
"Green Willis"
are usually in 4/4 time.
Samuel Bayard in Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife (1981) calls it an "extraordinarily well-known" tune, both as a fife and fiddle piece, though primarily known to fifers in southwestern Pa. Paul Gifford finds a version of the melody in northern Michigan used for the ditty "Old Lady in the Haymow" with ribald lyrics and he thinks that it is probably the "Two-Step Quadrille" recorded for Gennett Records (and Silvertone) by Tommy Dandurand in 1927. Missouri fiddler Art Galbraith recorded the song under the title “Charley Over the Water". It was printed in Bayard's Dance to the Fiddle (1981), Christeson's Old Time Fiddlers Repertory, vol. 1 (1973) (appears as an untitled quadrille), Hopkins' American Veteran Fifer (1905), Sweet's Fifers’ Delight (1965/1981). It was recorded by Michael, McCreesh & Campbell on The Host of the Air (1980). |