Annotation:Roadside Polka
X:0 T: No Score C: The Traditional Tune Archive M: K: x
ROADSIDE POLKA. Canadian, Polka. Canada, Cape Breton. Composed by Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, fiddler and composer Dan R. MacDonald. MacDonald was inspired to write the tune while sitting on a log-pile on the side of the road one time while walking to his cousin Alex Francis MacKay's home in Kingsville. Mackay explained [1]:
Dan R. used to be up at our place a lot: he’d stay for four or five days at a time and he’d play tunes for us, including some of the ones he composed himself. I don’t know of anyone that had so many tunes as he did. I remember one day when Dan R. was over at Dan Hughey’s MacEachern’s in Queensville and he started over to my place walking. He had the fiddle, and so he composed a tune on the way over: just sat by the side of the road and composed a tune, Dan Hughey MacEachern which he called The Roadside Polka. When he got to my place, he demanded a manuscript right away to write it down. So that’s the way the tunes were coming to him, I guess.