Annotation:Robin's Jig
X:0 T: No Score C: The Traditional Tune Archive M: K: x
ROBIN’S JIG. Canadian, Jig. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Composed by Sarnia, southwestern Ontario, fiddler John(ny) Durocher (1934-1989), named for his daughter Robin. Durocher was a self-made man, according to Ron Ritchie (Fiddler Magazine, Summer 2005), born the youngest of sixteen children. He quit school in his young teens to help make family ends meet and was a factory worker for most of his life. He found a broken fiddle in the trash one day, asked the owner for permission to retrieve it, and with some repair work 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. Durocher’s music was picked up by radio fiddler Don Messer, who included many of his tunes in his broadcasts and printed collections, and Durocher became quite influential in the Ontario scene for his compositions.