City of Savannah Hornpipe

[Eric Lerner]

Here's a stage hornpipe from Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883). Ryan attributes it to Frank Livingston. The tune is apparently named for a ship, which is in turn named for the city in Georgia. But there have been several ships with that name, in both the U.S. & Confederate navies, and online sources disagree about which one Livingston may have meant. 

 

I’m playing my 40-button Wheatstone Edeophone 1934 D/A Anglo concertina.  It took a good deal of trial and error to figure out how to finger this tune smoothly.  I found that the Wheatstone 40-button layout was a real asset on this one.  It lets me play the B-part with very few changes of bellows direction.  It would be much harder to play with a Jeffries system instrument, or with only 30 buttons

 

The online sheet music that most closely match Ryan’s is online at ITMA -- https://www.itma.ie/scores/ryans-0833/

There are some slightly different versions at The Session, with ABC notation – https://thesession.org/tunes/1607

 

 

 

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

I really enjoyed that🌝