Coronation Special Reel

 CORONATION SPECIAL REEL. Canadian, Reel. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Composed by Sarnia, southwestern Ontario, fiddler John(ny) Durocher (1934-1989) in honor of the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II and her subsequent visit to Canada and Ontario. John was born the youngest of sixteen children, to a modest family of few resources. He quit school in his young teens to help make family ends meet and remained a factory worker for most of his life, not even possessing a drivers license. John came to fiddling when he found a broken fiddle in the trash one day and asked the owner for permission to retrieve it; with some repair work he had his first instrument. A few lessons from a local teacher (which served to teach him how to read and write music), were all the formal music education John received. He was a prolific composer of fiddle tunes, however, and named them for sports and current events, family and friends and topics of his day, explains Ritchie. Durocher's music was picked up by radio fiddler Don Messer, who included many of his tunes in his broadcasts and printed collections, helping Durocher to become quite influential in the Ontario scene for his compositions. Printed source: Messer (Anthology of Favorite Fiddle Tunes), 1980; No. 76, p. 51.

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