Forty-five years ago this weekend, it seemed like everyone brought something new — a new picker, a new listener, a new tune, a new version of an old tune, or maybe just a new story — to the last Bowen Bash.
As you’ll hear in the video above, Joe Dobbs and Roger Samples won the prize for the most delightful surprise of that weekend of music.
Ever since he joined Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen six years earlier in forming The Flood, Joe was especially drawn Rog, frequently hunkering down with the young guitarist to work out imaginative duets, some of which they were still playing decades later.
About the Woodchopper Tune
This particular number — a rollicking rendition of “Woodchopper’s Reel” (also widely known as “Woodchopper’s Breakdown”) — was still a relatively young tune when Joe and Rog unwrapped for the bash bunch that September evening in 1981.
“Woodchopper’s Reel” — a staple of North American folk dancing and fiddling traditions, celebrated for its bright melody and its ability to utilize all the strings on the fiddle — is attributed to, and likely the composition of, New Brunswick fiddler Ned Landry.
Landry, who died in 2018 at age 97, rose to fame in the 1950s. He became a three-time Canadian Open Fiddle Champion, received the Order of Canada, and was inducted into the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia halls of fame.
Landry appeared on fiddler and bandleader Don Messer’s radio show “Backwoods Breakdown” in 1934 as a harmonica player, and soon formed his own group, the New Brunswick Lumberjacks, whose recordings begin in 1955.
French-Canadian titles for the tune include “Reel de la soupe aux pois” (Pea Soup), the title in Montréal, and “Reel des bûcherons” (Lumberjack’s Reel) or “Petit Bucheux (Le)” (Little Woodchopper). Messer recorded the tune on 78 RPM in 1952 (Apex 26322) under the the title “Pea Soup,” and it was included in his tune book Way Down East (1948), although under the title “Woodchopper’s Reel.”
Landry himself recorded the tune for RCA Victor in 1950, issued on their Bluebird Series 55-3249-B (78 RPM) as “Wood Chopper’s Breakdown.”
Landry’s career spanned more than seven decades. In 2012, he was still playing his fiddle and entertaining his peers at the veterans home where he lived.
He performed throughout Canada and recorded many of his several hundred fiddle tunes, composed in various Canadian styles. Some are published in the folios Ned Landry Favorite Fiddle Tunes (Empire 1952) and Bowing the Strings with Ned Landry (Thompson 1959). Among his best-known titles are “Ontario Swing,” “Bowin’ the Strings” and “Hillbilly Calypso.
More from Joe
Meanwhile, if this week’s podcast has you wanting more Joe Dobbs tunes, we gotcha covered. Just swing by the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature and, under the “People Picker” section, click on the Joe Channel. Or better yet, just click below to take the express route:
And remember, we’ve now got ways to mobilize the ol’ Floodanago. Click here to find out how to put the Flood’s radio activity on your computer desktop and on an iPhone to make your Flood fix always just a click away.
Finally, if you’d like to read about more happenings in Floodlandia in 1981, click here to reach those pages in the band’s online scrapbook.