"Tippin' Back the Corn" is an American reel in A Major, composed by Jordan Wankoff
who is a fiddle teacher at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago.
Regarding the tune, Jordan says:
"I made up Tippin' Back the Corn around 1997 in the kitchen of my apartment on Haussen Ct. in Chicago. I remember it was a joyful experience - almost like a discovery rather than a 'composition'. The tune itself has been on quite a journey. As I remember, I played it for Chirps Smith one day out at the Valparaiso dance in Northwest Indiana. Sometime later, I was at his house in Grey's Lake, Illinois, and he asked me to record it for him in his basement music library. A few years later it appeared on his Down in Little Egypt album. After that it just kind of spread. I don't know how many times it has been recorded or posted on YouTube but all the fiddlers interpreted it a little differently, and I was glad I hadn't written it out or recorded a 'definitive' version."Many fiddlers begin the tune on the low part, but Jordan says he conceived the high part to be the beginning of the tune. The title refers to drinking corn whiskey. The banjo tablature is by John Letscher who picked it up from John Lamancusa and the playing of Chirps Smith. He says it should be played as fast as possible. It was printed in Lamancusa's The Gettysburg Collection of Old-Time Fiddle Tunes (2021). |