Week #314 ~ Bonnie Kate

  1. Barbara Shultz
    Barbara Shultz
    This week's winner is Bonnie Kate, which was submitted as an Old Time tune. From what I've found online on a tune by that name, it's a reel.... one place says it's a Scottish Reel. I'm not sure if there's another tune by that name, or if I've got the right one!

    Here is the link to six settings for this tune on thesession.org

    Here is a link to abc and standard notation from John Chambers music book on abcnotation.com






  2. crisscross
    crisscross
    Me too, I'm not sure, whether there's another Bonnie Kate, or maybe the origin of the reel is a vocal song, but I found this easy version http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/se...onnie_kate.htm
    Since my current fad is early jazz on my tenor banjo, I arranged Bonnie Kate as a swing tune with a La Pompe back-up on my Cigano gypsy jazz guitar, and the melody played by my tenor banjo and my Kentucky e-mando
  3. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Very imaginative and well arranged! Nice blend of instruments too.
  4. Tavy
    Tavy
    Lovely version crisscross - works brilliantly in that style!
  5. Jim Garber
    Jim Garber
    I never heard of an old time tune by that name. This is a real showpiece played in ITM.
  6. Jim Garber
    Jim Garber
    Nothing on Fiddler's Companion site that would indicate OT: http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/BONN_BONNY.htm
  7. woodenfingers
    woodenfingers
    Hey Criss, very nice!!! Great sounding emando and love the guitar work too.
  8. crisscross
    crisscross
    Thanks John, Tavy and Woodenfingers! In Germany we have a saying:"Aus der Not eine Tugend machen" which means something like "to turn your limitations into advantages".
    Knowing that I'm technically not able to play Bonnie Kate at a breakneck reel-tempo, I arranged it as a relaxed swing tune. Hope that won't deter the other players from posting their versions of BK like it should really sound.
  9. dustyamps
    dustyamps
    This version from thesession.org differs from the traditional Bonnie Kate that Michael Coleman and most Irish players play.
  10. Gelsenbury
    Gelsenbury
    There are several completely different tunes called Bonnie Kate or Bonny Kate. I was just going to put one of them in the poll tune suggestions, but as a dutiful student I checked the tables of contents first and found this thread.

    The tune I want to learn is basically the one crisscross found, but not in the jazzy version. Famous English melodeon player John Spiers (Bellowhead, Gigspanner Big Band, Spiers & Boden, etc.) has been putting virtual sessions on YouTube, in which he introduces a couple of tunes every Sunday morning, waits for people to send him clips of themselves playing along, and edits those contributions into a single film. It's great fun to listen, and to play along if you know the tunes and can play them at a fair speed. Bonnie Kate is featured in today's session, in a set with The Sloe, which we've also had as a song of the week before.

  11. Martin Jonas
    Martin Jonas
    "Bonnie Kate" is one of those intangible tune names that everybody associates a different tune with. For what it's worth, the tune I'm thinking of when I hear that name is the lead tune in the instrumental set that forms the B-side of Fairport Convention's 1970 single "Now Be Thankful". The name they gave that set was "Sir B. McKenzie's Daughter's Lament for the 77th Mounted Lancer's Retreat from the Straits of Loch Knombe, in the Year of Our Lord 1727, on the Occasion of the Announcement of Her Marriage to the Laird of Kinleakie", but that was solely to get into the Guinness Book Of Records with the longest song title -- which they did. It was a set of Bonnie Kate/Up The Chimney/The Kilfenora Jig/Ril Gan Ainm (Biff, Bang. Crash)/Tail Toddle (with vocals)/The Boston Tea Party. It would have been barely shorter if they had put those tune names on the label! On subsequent live albums, the set sensibly appears either as "Bonnie Kate" or as "Sir B. McKenzie's".

    For what it's worth, here is a 1976 live recording on German TV Rockpalast, by a very short-lived Fairport line-up featuring Dave Swarbrick and Roger Burridge on fiddle and Dan Ar Braz (!) on electic guitar:



    The first tune in the set is "Bonnie Kate" -- not that anybody will recognise it at that speed!

    Martin
  12. Gelsenbury
    Gelsenbury
    I just about managed to learn (one version of) Bonny Kate for John Spiers' online tunes session! You can find me in the top left corner of the video for the second and third tunes (The Sloe and Bonny Kate).

  13. Frithjof
    Frithjof
    Congratulation for taking part in John Spiers' online tunes session, Dennis. It looks like great fun.
    Unfortunately, you came a little late and therefor was squeezed in a dark corner on the top shelf of the shed.
    Nevertheless, thanks for sharing this video with us.
  14. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    Nice to see all those folk having fun even through the Covid, thanks Dennis.


    This setting’s known locally as Sussex Bonny Kate, a bit different…

  15. Aidan Crossey
    Aidan Crossey
    For many years I found Bonny/Bonnie Kate very hard to pick up. Fiddlers tend to play the second part with streams of descending triplets and my ear couldn't pick out the basic underlying melody. The penny dropped when I heard Len Graham and others perform a comic song whose name I didn't catch which namechecked lots of reels. I recognised the core melody as Bonny Kate and at the end of each verse the singers lilted another of the reels which had been namechecked in the preceding verse. The sung version was quite streamlined and it enabled me to "get" the tune for the first time...

    Dots and tab of this simplified, bare-bones version...



    My playing of the above...

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