Appalachian music. Ricketts' Hornpipe [music transcription]. Note sheet.

Key: D
Meter: 4/4
Transcribed by Alan Jabbour, from a performance by Henry Reed.
Compass: 12
Rendition: 1r-2r-1r-2
Strains: 2 (low-high, 4-4)
Title change: The title appears on the transcription as "Ricket's Hornpipe."
Phrase Structure: ABAC QRSC (abcd abc'e qrq's tuve)
Related Tune(s): Texarkana Hornpipe
Handwritten: Played thru 1 3/4 times (i.e., 2nd str. not repeated 2nd time). 1st time transcribed. Some variations below: -- I heard Mr .Reed play this tune on another occasion, & he began with what is here the 2nd str. The style is notable for sometimes leaning towar
John Bill Ricketts was an early circus entrepreneur who brought a circus from England to America in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Circuses in an earlier era usually included fancy dancing, and the circuses of Ricketts included dancers such as Pennsylvanian John Durang, who became famous in early America. Both Ricketts and Durang had hornpipes named for them that have endured in American tradition, in both the North and the South, right up through the twentieth century. The tune makes its appearance before 1800; it is included in "William O. Adams's Musick Book [1795]," a music manuscript book in the Library of Congress. Nineteenth and twentieth-century American tunebooks generally include "Rickett's Hornpipe" (the apostrophe is usually misplaced); see for example One Thousand Fiddle Tunes, p. 89, with dance directions, or Fillmore, American Veteran Fifer, #111. Other hornpipes from the tunebook tradition, such as "Texarkana Hornpipe" (One Thousand Fiddle Tunes, p. 98), seem by their similarity to "Ricketts" to honor its popularity. Modern tune collections also regularly feature it, such as Ford, Traditional Music of America, p. 50; Thomas, Devil's Ditties, p. 151. The Northern sets tend to be close to the sets from print tradition and to begin, like printed sets, with the lower strain, while some Southern sets vary more from the printed sets and even begin with the high strain (a Southern predilection).Henry Reed's performance agrees with Northern and print tradition in beginning with the low strain, but its melody departs in several particulars from the standard printed sets. Either because of the complexity of the tune or because of continuing ties to the older tradition of using hornpipes for fancy dancing, the pace of his performance is a bit slower than most of his breakdown tunes.