#Squarch 23: Ed Haley’s Woodchuck

I’m not super happy with the way I’m playing this tune, but it’s probably the best I’ve ever played it (at least at this speed), and I think I’m going to keep it so I can come back to it in a year and see if I’ve gotten any better. There are just so many notes in this.

I don’t know what to do with the title of this tune, though. It’s originally (or at least by the time it was recorded) called “Indian Ate the Woodchuck”, and while I don’t think there’s anything necessarily disrespectful in that, I’m not particularly comfortable with old-time tune titles that have “Indian” in them. My top candidates for renaming this right now are “Ed Haley Ate the Woodchuck”, “Ed Haley’s Woodchuck”, and “Whistle Pig”.

This is another that I would love to be able to play a fraction as well as Grace Forrest does; that’s the video I mostly picked this up from, although listening to it now I hear that there are a couple places I’ve gotten a phrase a little wrong. (As in, even if I were playing exactly how I intended to, which I’m not, I wouldn’t be matching how I think I ought to be doing it now.)

In any case, it’s #Squarch 23rd, and this is Whistle Pig. Ed Haley’s Woodchuck. Whistling Pig? Bah.

ps: I’m pretty sure Ed Haley didn’t have a dog named Indian; that origin of the tune title is conflating it with Snake Chapman’s story about where the title for “The Devil Eat the Groundhog” comes from. And having a dog named Indian would definitely be disrespectful, so that doesn’t make it any better.

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