kitchen girl lyrics

[m3838]

Anybody knows Kitchen Girl lyrics? At what tempo it should be really played?

Thanks.

[JimLucas]

Anybody knows Kitchen Girl lyrics? At what tempo it should be really played?

Kitchen Girl is a well known fiddle tune. These days the tune seems to have many variants, though it supposedly comes from the repertoire of fiddler Henry Reed, and the other versions seem to be folk-processed from Reed's. Various sources say that it has no known lyrics, BUT...

 

Here is a link

to lyrics to a song of the same name. It shares verses with various other old Appalachian ballads.

 

Oops! I had found an audio sample of the song, but now I've lost it and can't relocate it. It's sung much slower than the fiddle tune, but it seems to me to be a related melody. I don't know that Harry Reed reworked the ballad's tune into a fiddle tune, but it does seem possible.

I hope the above is some help, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's not.

[David Barnert]

Tony Parkes, the contradance caller, once pointed out to me that a useful clue as to whether a tune has (or ever had) words is if the title of the tune fits cleanly into the melody. For instance, you can almost hear the 2nd measure of "Soldier's Joy" sing its name, while "Farewell to Whiskey" contains no such quote. It's not a hard and fast rule, just a suggestion that has served me well in the 30 years since I heard it.

 

The lyrics that Jim pointed to don't actually contain the words "Kitchen Girl," so it may be of no help here. It seems unlikely to me that a lyric that includes the words "Kitchen Girl" was ever sung to that tune. Both halves of the A section of the tune end with three notes but in this context, the word "Kitchen" seems to demand shorter notes.