Annotation:Old Man Adams' Tune

Back to Old Man Adams' Tune

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OLD MAN ADAM'S TUNE. Old-Time, Breakdown. USA; Mo., Okla. (originally an Ozarks Mtns. tune). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB.

Source for notated version: Learned as a boy by John Kennedy (Pawnee, OK., born in 1913) from "old man" Tom Adams. Fiddler Brad Leftwich told interviewer Bob Buckingham (Fiddler Magazine, Fall, 2000) that:

Another Oklahoma fiddler, John Kennedy, had an impact on my music in the early 1980s. He lived in Pawnee, Oklahoma, about 15 miles from Stillwater, where I grew up. He was in his late sixties at the time, and his old-time fiddling was an anachronism amid the contest fiddling, bluegrass, and western swing that was then popular in Oklahoma fiddling circles. He was a self-effacing person who couldn't seem to believe that Linda (my wife) and I were really interested in his music. He played in a very traditional style with nicely crafted bowing, which he learned as a boy from a pair of old fiddlers, Tom and Tony Adams, who relocated there from Arkansas.

Printed sources: Old Time Herald, vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 1988.

Recorded sources: Copper Creek CCCD-0196, Tom, Brad & Alice - "We'll Die in the Pig Pen Fighting."

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