Funny you should that. I went into the Guinness store house one night last week through my work. I heard the entertainment in the background so I had to check it out. There was a fella singing & playing guitar, a girl playing fiddle and a girl playing box. Very, very good players but like you say focusing on the tourist appeal and using a stomp pedal. I’d never heard the stomp before and I was completely unimpressed. So there’s probably a bit of ying and yang in the overall scene. I guess I’m lucky enough to choose the good ones. My appreciation for the traditional runs a high level probably because I’m an Australian so I don’t take it for granted.

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A long time ago someone told me that if I really wanted to know what traditional Scottish fiddling sounded like, I'd need to listen to Nova Scotia players, who had kept the Scottish fiddle tradition alive in relative isolation, unlike on the Scottish mainland, where the style had morphed considerably and no longer sounded like the traditional form. 

I have a couple books from Cape Breton, they are downstairs in my discombobulated office, but years ago I was reading one of them where a fiddler was talking about how he learned from a nonagenarian, who was quite strict in his pupil following instruction exactly, who likewise learned from a nonagenarian (or so), and was likewise strict in the student following his instruction exactly.  HIs instructor said that the way he was teaching was the way that the fellow taught him played, which was ,the way it was played, when the Scots were moved to Nova Scotia around 1810.

Traditional American fiddling styles are less strict, featuring large variation in how tunes are played, so this would not be applicable in the more chord-based tunes, as opposed to the notey tunes, Scottish, Irish, quadrille, and other written dance tunes such as used by dancing masters.

That said, I have found the dominance of a variation of "The Snake River Reel," taught by someone who did not pay so much attention to how the tune was played, to be frustrating, because some of the juice of the tune has been left out.  Of course, this is a personal irritation and probably has no bearing on anything important.

I've been away and not following FHO, but somewhere I have, maybe on a CD, a recording of a tune called "Old Liberty" (on slippery hill its called "Old Time Liberty"). It's the same tune as the Skillet Lickers and didn't catch if anyone else mentioned it. I'll post What I have, when I find it.

This guy does a deep dive into Liberty history, and has a bunch of other great vids as well. Not sure if he's 100% on target, but I've not heard anything that I've recognized as BS.

youtu.be/WOFoZljcLns?is=RBLGTwmcoMvy8oCF

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Originally posted by bacfire

This guy does a deep dive into Liberty history, and has a bunch of other great vids as well. Not sure if he's 100% on target, but I've not heard anything that I've recognized as BS.

youtu.be/WOFoZljcLns?is=RBLGTwmcoMvy8oCF

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That's a nice video. The connections to the Colonial Era and beyond are pretty tenuous, and I don't think there's really enough similarity to make a compelling argument for a direct influence. Liberty was a popular theme and it shows up in all kinds of places throughout American history following the Revolutionary War.

As the video points out, the earliest version of the tune that's clearly identifiable as the tune everyone knows as "Liberty" does indeed come from Bob Wills. It makes sense listening to the melodic structure of the tune. The question of whether it was learned from his father is a dead end unless a credible account of it can be found. There are a number of tunes that were written more recently and quickly became accepted as old tunes because they were either played by musicians who played a lot of older tunes or because they had an older sound to them. It's not such a wild leap for a tune that's become standard to be younger than expected. The wide reach of its influence on players of different musical styles shows both how much players were listening to recordings even during the golden age of recording and how far the available recordings could reach, from the larger cities, to the prairies, to the mountains--all in short order.

The video starts by pointing out that the tune played by John Carson and by the Skillet Lickers is a completely different tune, but it doesn't go into that tune's origins. It would be interesting to see if there is any information available.

My takeaway from it all, having read a number of sources and seen this video, is that "Liberty" is a Bob Wills tune unless anyone can show concrete proof of a recording of that exact tune or sheet music that precedes it. There doesn't seem to be any actual anecdotal evidence, just some speculation. In referring to the earlier recordings with the same tune name, it seems a brief disclaimer that the tunes are unrelated and any name resemblance is purely conicidental is warranted.