Red Prairie Dawn

It often happens that my students bring interesting tunes to my attention and this is one of them. (Thanks, Dennis!) This was written by Illinois banjo and fiddle player Gary Harrison in an Old-Time style. I read somewhere that this may be his most famous tune, but he wrote many others that are played in folk circles as well. Some of the phrases in this one remind me of other tunes, and it occurs to me that maybe it’s not so much that there’s a recycled melodic fragment here or there as much as it is the syncopation that appears in measure 4 sounds like phrases in other tunes, like Spotted Pony. When choosing a source to transcribe, I liked the sound of the melody in G major, whereas most other recordings I found were in A, D or even E. It seems to suit the fiddle that way, as it resonates so nicely every time we play the G at the end of each section.

About this Arrangement

What you see below is very close to what you hear in the Barn Owls’ recording. I added my own bowings, however. I also changed a few things to be more consistent, in other words, I took out some slight variations that happen here and there. (You can listen to the YouTube of the Barn Owls below. It sounds like the fiddle player is improvising a little bit.) I also changed one note at the end of the 4th measure. It was a G, but I realized it would make life simpler for my students to make it a B, avoiding the quick string crossing and having to move the 3rd finger quickly to the A string.

And here is the composer’s version. May be in Bb or it’s just a high-tuned fiddle.