Turkey in the Straw

This melody's American career started on the minstrel stage. It was published in 1834 as Old Zip Coon, a blackface song, and that is the ugly ground the tune grew out of. The words do not bear reprinting, and the fact should not be hidden. The melody itself is older than that publication. Most accounts trace it back to Irish and British ballad airs, with The Rose Tree named most often, though the line from those airs to this one has been argued more than it has been proven.

The Turkey in the Straw title arrived later in the century with a different set of words, and the two eventually merged into the tune everyone means today. Under that name it became one of the most widely known fiddle tunes in America. It was danced to, whistled, put on wax, cartooned, and eventually worn thin by every medium the twentieth century invented. Most people can hum it without being able to say where they learned it.

Jams call it in G. You will hear it in D from time to time, and that is a real minority reading, not a mistake. Ask which one the fiddler means before you count it off.

The first two bars are the tune. On a mandolin they are the turn around G at the fifth fret of the D string, dipping below the tonic to the B and C on the G course at the fourth and fifth frets, then rolling D-E-D-B off the open D string and back up. Get those two bars and the rest of the A part follows. The B part is the gobble: a B to D rock on the A string, restated a step higher as C to E over the C chord, then lifting once to the octave G at the third fret of the E string. Both strains sign off with the same B-G-A-F sharp tag, so you only have one ending to learn.