Issue 537: Reel of the 51st Division. jig tune in reel recording?!?

New issue submitted

Assigned changed to »tone2tone« (previously »None«)
Disposition changed to »Fixed« (previously »New«)

That’s not an issue, Heiko. Not even the DANCE “Christie Mac Leod”, both times based on the same tune, is a always a jig. Mitchell’s version of Whetherly Book 4 is a reel. The TUNE depends on the arrangement - it is used in both, reels and jigs all the way through. We can close this issue.

Assigned changed to »anselm« (previously »tone2tone«)
Disposition changed to »Needs help« (previously »Fixed«)

I don’t believe that in this instance it’s quite as simple as that. I listened to the Colin Dewar recording and the reel-time tune played there is (as far as I’m concerned, anyway) completely different from, e.g., the jig at the start of the Marian Anderson recording – certainly not an instance of jig-played-as-a-reel. The fact that we seem to have 26 recordings of the tune in the database and all except one – the one in question here – are in jig time should also raise a red flag.

One hypothesis might be that there are actually two tunes called “Christie MacLeod”, a jig by Jim Johnstone and a reel by somebody else (i.e., “Traditional”). John W Mitchell may have had the second tune in mind when he wrote the dance in Whetherly 4, while the person who entered the Colin Dewar recording may have assumed that the two were identical. After all, it is not completely unheard of for recently-devised tunes to show up in CD booklets as “Traditional”, for whatever reason, and reassigning the composer for a tune in the database from “Traditional” to a more specific name is something that we do as a matter of course if additional information comes to light. Or perhaps Jim Johnstone liked Ms MacLeod so much that he wrote two different tunes for her which later somehow became conflated.

Unfortunately I don’t have the CD booklet for the Colin Dewar CD here (anymore, it seems) so I can’t check what the tune list actually says for that recording – it might be an error during data entry – but perhaps someone else can do that?

I’m reopening that issue for the time being.

I have the CD. The tunes listed for track 10 are exactly as in the database. Christie MacLeod is given as “Trad.” - as are all the other tunes on that track though the database assigns a named composer to the first two.

Most other tracks on that CD have at least some tunes with composers given so they arent all just claimed as Trad. But I see at least a couple of other cases where a tune with a composer in the database is given as Trad in the CD insert.

So they might have done that for Christie MacLeod. Not enough evidence there for any solid conclusion, sorry. But if it sounds like a different tune…

I also noticed that among the 26 recordings including that tune, there is also Eva Three Step which is claimed to be a march (X16) so presumably could be using the reel version of the tune? Only 24 are jigs.

I have the recording of Colin Denwar here as well, and tune number 7 sounds NOTHING like the tune given here: https://thesession.org/tunes/11704
I think we need to peep into the “The Jim Johnstone Collection” for his tune of that name to figure out if it is the same as the jig elsewhere or really a different tune. Anyone in possession of it?