Early Oregon - played in Stayton Feb 14, 2015

Set list for gig at Santiam Historical Society Feb 14, 1:30-3:30
   (approximate, from memory):

A nice afternoon in Stayton, in the Historical Brown House, for the Santiam Historical Society.  Thought it would be a 45 minute - one hour program, but it went for a full two hours.

Rights of Man   ("that was written around in Northumberland 1843 by... and wasn't representative of OTrail music, should be more like a hoedown...

 like Betty Martin;  Quote from at an oldtimers reunion in Salem 1878: "on our train of 1845, young Steven Smith played that Betty Martin from one end of the trail to the other" )
Pretty Betty Martin  & comments on its history and variants

(After two tunes we invited comments and queries from everyone, which led to several of the tunes below); 

Wait for the Wagon  (one of the most popular songs of the mid-19th century...)
   (the Hutchinson family singers; the homestead act, which applied only to Oregon Country...)
Uncle Sam's Farm 
(The beginnings the blackface minstrel music era.; Thomas Moore's "Irish Songs" that were popular 1810,20,30, and how traveling singer Pappy Rice learned the next song from a stevedore in Pittsburg... and had to borrow his rags.)
Turkey in the Straw
Wagoner  (named for the horse of 1841)
Oh Suzanna   (this gold rush version was the number one hit of 1849, much bigger than the original song written in 1848) In D & G alternately
Gal I Left Behind Me
    & the Oregon version,  Girl I Left Behind   (as printed in the Oregon Territorial Observer in 1855; the first newspaper west of the Mississippi, published by a literary society of about 8 men, led by Doc Newell)
Mississippi Sawyer and its early version  The Fall of Paris  both.
At the Foot of Yonders Mountain (which is about being far away from the loved one)
The Parting of Friends   (O'Carolan, sweet and sad instrumental; played at a gathering in Northern Ireland 1798; discussion of the Scots-Irish emigrants from the Presbyterian northern counties to Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, then to Appalachia and West, and their tremendous influence on American music)
Barbara Allen  (a sample of the long ballad)
Old Dan Tucker  (Discussion of Pa Ingalls' music and the importance of the Little House on the Prairie series as a look at the nature of music on the frontier; Laura said she wrote the books to pass on her father's songs and stories... she names 58 different songs, quoting many of them in entirety... I've learned all but two)   :
Nellie Bly  (played by a German emigrant family on the Oregon Trail in 1854, two months after it was published)
Western Country (Fly Away, my pretty miss)  (reference to one young lady's account, in Holmes, of walking across the prairie and the daily routine, including frequent evening dances after walking 15 miles)
Soldier's Joy  (with dance calls for Duck the Oyster, one couple through and chorus)
Rosin the Bow
..a bit of Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel  (as sung in Jacksonville in 1855, as was the next:)
The Days of  '49  
Rose on the Mountain   (a lovely tune, now forgotten, written down by Knauff in 1839)

& maybe more! ... skipped the story of Letitia Carson, slave turned freedwoman, who won the lawsuit over her property near Corvallis in 1854, because I didn't bring my songbook in and was afraid I'd blow some of verses of my song about her. ..

I had to end it after two hours, but I think everyone there, including me, enjoyed it, and we could have kept going....  !

Tunelist from jam 15 Feb 15