Here's the commonly heard version you hear all around...they start with the B part, which is another confusing thing about Angeline...some people start it with the B part and others start it with the A part

youtu.be/viQEJK-Zf7I?si=KwGxPukij7319Ykx

I can't find many examples of how I've played it...so here's one where I played it on guitar, but in C, not D, still, you can see the A part has differences in the chord progression youtu.be/9u_dzFdU-z8?si=SHYU37ZiNz3DgTFE


Here's someone doing the original Stephen Foster song, but you don't hear this one much.

youtu.be/0auFH12WAh4?si=hZZOtwMnJKLwyZOz

Anyway my whole point is probably the first YouTube is what chords Strum Machine has for Angeline.

Here's some more... here's how I learned it from Dwight Diller, a long time ago after visiting him in West Virginia...as far as I could remember, these were the words he sang and something like he played it on banjo...it's the same version as how I've always, or usually played it... youtu.be/FpEA_zli4VA?si=7JuBbjQfmjUpgtg_

Here's the common way you hear it...this was the little amateur band I was in for a few years...I was fiddling and singing it their way, which I think is the usual way and the way Strum Machine probably has it going youtu.be/sGvEFA5jHuU?si=MmpKPMQoNB0eMDj8

Anyway, I hope I didn't cause confusion with the fiddle shuffling YouTube.

Hey Peggy, I was in the Ardennes for a week, I'll get back to this later! Had no WIFI there and limited mobile data. It was a lovely hiking trip for me and the dog <3 Need to go to my parents' place today to make sure I pay for Strum Machine!

Wow...sounds like a wonderful vacation for you and doggie. I love hiking in beautiful places.

It was wonderful and adventurous but on my last hike at one point I really thought I got lost in the woods in the heart of the Ardennes!! I have never in my life been so scared, I was in the middle of the woods for 1.5 hours on the last part of the route I had chosen and the worst part of all I could not check on my smartphone if I was still on the right track because I had no reach and there were no signposts anymore. I somehow missed a signpost of the hiking route I was following and ended up - so it seemed later on- in what they call the Fairies valley - Demons Valley would have been a more appropriate name ! The path was rough and sometimes seemed to end in the middle of nowhere, then I had to climb up the rough steep rocks to find it back. Later on I read online that the advice is to leave your dog at home in the Fairies valley- I think I understand why. One misstep and me or Ziva would have broken a leg. When I finally noticed the wood was getting less deep and dark I found a sign saying : Achouffe - 5 minutes. I came out of the woods cursing and spoiling the walloons for this hike of horrors hahahaha. It took me half an hour before I was able to safely drive back home to our cabin :-p

OK , now going to take out my fiddle and see what is still left from last time I practised.

Hey Peggy, I am listening now to the link where you sing the whole song. Very nice to hear the text together with the tune this way!
To be honest, I think I am too much of a foreigner to feel the same need to refer to the source and origins of certain tunes but I can understand people feel like an explanation is sometimes needed to illustrate how some tunes morph into other versions that have become tunes on their own and how some tunes are spin offs of others...in fact: how everything affects everything that affects everything else :-D
But you explain this in a very clear way, I like your view on this and you use the right words for me to get the general idea of what you are willing to say . I probably would give all of this a lot more attention if I was not born over here but on your side of the ocean. I would probably also try to illustrate the complexity of how certain tunes were brought to life or even began to lead an own life in a similar way and at the same time also I would hope not to cause confusion but nuance, because that is what you try to do I think.
To learn the tune by ear I used this video: youtube.com/watch?v=FGm1zcHle4g , not because I think it is the best version I could find, not al all, but just because she plays a version that is for someone with a rather classical background very easy to follow , clean, without a lot of tralala - if I am allowed to explain it like this that is ;-) But believe me it is in the first place exactly the tralala that I want :-))) Shuffling for example is to me like juggling with the notes of a tune, you bet this is what I really really really want. I don't want this spotless clean consistent version, I want to play like people like you play.
I am having fun again with your instructional videos , I should not at this time (it's the middle of the night / the very early morning) but I can't help myself here. I slept a lot since I returned from the Ardennes so it feels like I have some reserves :-D

quote:

---

Originally posted by groundhogpeggy

Here's the commonly heard version you hear all around...they start with the B part, which is another confusing thing about Angeline...some people start it with the B part and others start it with the A part

youtu.be/viQEJK-Zf7I?si=KwGxPukij7319Ykx

I can't find many examples of how I've played it...so here's one where I played it on guitar, but in C, not D, still, you can see the A part has differences in the chord progression youtu.be/9u_dzFdU-z8?si=SHYU37ZiNz3DgTFE


Here's someone doing the original Stephen Foster song, but you don't hear this one much.

youtu.be/0auFH12WAh4?si=hZZOtwMnJKLwyZOz

Anyway my whole point is probably the first YouTube is what chords Strum Machine has for Angeline.

---

<3

I am not too worried about the preset tracks of Strum Machine because I have this feeling  I can modify them pretty easily,  falling back on what's left of all the theory I once had to go through as a young kid.  I still don't get how I did that as a kid... I could not do this a second time in my life,  so as an adult I am just using the leftovers of that period in my life.

Anyway,  I think I just need to assure I don't make these modifications too complicated or it might be perceived as if I am constantly trying to overrrule the background track instruments, at least that's my guess :-p

Hey Anja...be careful in that wilderness ...lol...glad you seem to be quite capable of getting out of tough situations...still...be careful.

Now about being from another side of the world and playing OT American style...there are some guys on YouTube from someplace in Europe...sad to say I've forgotten now where they are...I might try to find some of their videos if I can get the chance later. But anyway, their playing is absolutely awesome...there is definitely a European flair on their take on American Old Time tunes...and it's uniquely their own...I love the sound. Saying this to just remind you that our specific cultures can and do influence our arts and musical styles. Just let it happen...lol. I've talked to a lot of Americans who think they can't play Southern American songs or tunes because they are from someplace else in America...I'm like...just play it...your way will sound like your way! Get your groove and don't feel like a stranger...this music belongs to everybody...that's what I believe and anybody who says different is just trying to take ownership of sound waves that they have no right to keep for themselves. Just my take. If you enjoy it...pursue it...play it the way it comes out of you. We all need to do that. That's one reason why, in my opinion, it's not always good to just stick to the strict notes and playing of some famous Old Time musician...I mean, I think it's good for musical historians to continue it on, but mainly so that current day musicians, living in their current day cultures, can take the music and make it their own. I mean, where did the famous Old Time musicians get it from? They probably played it for the music collectors a lot differently than how they learned it from their elders. Just my humble opinion. I wanna play music and love what and how I play it. I think we all have a right to do that. I love to see others doing that too.

By the way, I was in a choir in college when they went to a Mozart contest in Austria...I didn't go...lol...I'm not a traveler and didn't want to go. But the ones who went came back and told of how the European college choirs did the same music so differently...they could hear the culture of the different choirs singing the same pieces. The choir from my college in southeastern Kentucky said they were kind of self-conscious about how unEuropean, how Americanized, their Mozart selections sounded, once they heard the Europeans. Yet, the European students were going crazy about how the Americans did it. Especially Kentucky Americans...lol...where everything we do turns out to be "Kentucky Fried" versions of whatever it is...music, cooking, whatever. So...just a lot of thoughts on cultures blending into other cultures. And it's fun to see what people do with music.

As Peg sezz. Sure, staying as historically accurate as possible is a noble cause, but if that were truly true most of us would strive to communicate in Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of practically all the languages now spoken in Europe and Northern India. Sorry...it's just my once-upon-a-time obsession with Linguistics bubbling to the surface...

I play in a sesh with two Linguistics professors...:-)

Peggy, the video you posted of the Stephen Foster song is by Gadaya (a member here) who is French. He has a couple of interesting blogs, mostly centered on the Anthology of American Folk Music. Its interesting to hear a European trying to understand American culture through a collection of 100 year old recordings, which were somewhat exotic when they were recorded, and then included in a collection curated by a distinctly idiosyncratic artist and experimental filmmaker in NY.
Here's a recording we made of the song about 40 years ago in West Virginia. Its quite faithful to Foster's original, except without the minstrel show dialect: youtu.be/PgWvqM7po6E?feature=shared
Please note that the title of this song is "Angelina Baker," and it has nothing to do with baking. Its sung by an enslaved man who misses his sweetheart Angelina who's been sold away from the plantation.
I don't think this was one of Foster's more popular songs, and as far as I can tell it was not played by "old time" musicians until the "revival" of the 1970's. AFAIK its not in any collections and was never recorded, with one unusual exception. As far as I can tell, Frank George of West Virginia somehow came up with a version that became popular. That's probably where Dwight (and thousands of others) learned it. To call it an "old traditional reel" is simply incorrect.
If anyone actually knows of an "old timey KY/WV thing" from before about 1970 I'd like to know about it, because I've looked.
More later.

PS - We played this tune sometimes back in the 1970's, but it didn't have words that we knew of. So I went looking for older recordings and came across this one: youtu.be/gPPzke2P9sM?feature=shared
This was recorded here in Bristol in 1928 by Uncle Eck Dunford and members of the Stoneman family (Ernest Stoneman was a sort of talent scout for Ralph Peer on these expeditions). Uncle Eck was a fiddler, but I think he's playing guitar here. He was apparently sort of an odd fellow, and I have no idea where he got this song. As you can see, its called "Angeline, the Baker" and tells a completely different story than the Stephen Foster song. Its almost a different tune too, and hardly anybody plays this today.
The history of this tune is muddled by the fact that some sources mention other versions played by older SW Virgina musicians. These are usually called "Coon Dog" though, and are versions of the song "Somebody Stole My Old Coon Dog" (which I used to play with Clint Howard) and to me are part of the "Liza Poor Gal" family, not "Angelina."

NC Notes -- I was patiently waiting to get accepted as a doctoral candidate in Linguistics when my movie biz sideline blossomed into a full-blown career. Needless to say, I never looked back.

Linguistics always sounded like an interesting thing to study. I never got to where I could get the time or money to go for it, but I did take a Russian class by a prof who had studied a lot of linguistics and he was able to show some awesome similarities that would have easily be overlooked between English, Spanish (which most of us had had in high school), and Russian. Like the word for "Eye," and, "Oyo," and "OKNO (no Cyrillic...just with letter on my keyboard...lol)," all meaning yer ol' eyeballs, but the implication behind the words, I.e., also the word for glass...window, etc., in Russian...and just the way they all look similar in writing and you can hear how they seem to not be that far removed from one another. He taught the whole Russian 101 class with really cool and interesting comparisons between English, Spanish, and Russian. Fascinating stuff.

Seems such abolitionistic sorts like Stephen Foster and Mark Twain are on the censored list these days...even Harriet Beecher Stowe. But they all had great ideas and probably helped to muster up the fight for the end of slavery in this country.  That is, referring back to Angeline the, or Angelina  Baker, etc.