Coke Oven March | Performance
Added 2019-02-13 17:01:01 +0000 UTCf#DF#AD (relative) AKA "Dock Boggs" or "Southern Texas" tuning.
I learned this tune from the recording of Dock Boggs of Wise County, Virginia. Boggs was a three-finger picker, but as a child I learned to emulate some of his sound using my own two-finger style. Played on a 1930s Gibson "Kalamazoo" banjo.
Boggs said he learned this piece from a little music box he bought while working a large oven used to turn coal into coke (a fuel used in iron smelting). He never learned the name of the tune so he called it "Coke Oven March."
Comments
I use two rolls there: a simpler one copied from Dock Boggs, and a more complex one I developed myself. The simple one is 42312, the complex one is 425231. I will update this post today with a tab for this song. All members will receive an email notification.
Clifton Hicks
2021-03-02 13:53:25 +0000 UTCClifton, can you confirm the first couple rolls on the 5th and 7th fret are strings 421231? I musta slowed this down and blew up the screen 10x and still not sure. I love this upbeat little tune. Thanks man.
8Banjos
2021-03-02 06:58:50 +0000 UTCYou are 100% right, it's f#DF#AD. Thanks for the correction.
Clifton Hicks
2019-02-14 19:32:01 +0000 UTCHey Clifton. Isn't this in open-D (f#DF#AD) aka "Reuben" tuning rather than f#DGAD? The harmonics sound like an open D chord to me. It's also easier to do the barring on the 5th and 7th frets in the open D tuning. Let me know what you think. It might be in the liner notes of the 2-CD Folkways set too but my copy is in storage right now.
Glenn Patterson
2019-02-14 19:21:05 +0000 UTC
