Annotation:Frank Harris' Breakdown

Back to Frank Harris' Breakdown

---

FRANK HARRIS' BREAKDOWN. American, Reel. USA, New Hampshire. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody is included in the typewritten manuscript of New Hampshire fiddler John Taggart (1854-1943), called "Recollection of a Busy Life" (1938, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, N.H.), an un-named tune with the note "As played by Frank Harris." Taggart wrote in his ms. that the tunes "were all taught me during my boyhood days in Sharon (N.H.), by the various fiddlers in that vicinity" [Miller]. Miller points out that Sharon is in "the heart of the Monadnock Region of southwestern New Hampshire, where fiddlers and contra dances abound to this day" (pref. iv). Randy Miller (2004) notes that Harris was a fiddler in Sharon, New Hampshire, Taggart's boyhood home.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Miller (Fiddler's Throne), 2004; No. 159, p. 102.

Recorded sources: Miller & Peery, N.H. Fiddler's Union - "The Music of John Taggart" (1989).

---

Back to Frank Harris' Breakdown