More on the Copland Circle

As j pointed out to me, to complete my Copland circle the obvious thing is to play Copland's Hoedown (from Rodeo) for contra dancers. (Sound of palm slapping my forehead - of course!) Which raised a question for me - was Hoedown "inspired" by country dance music in some general way, or did Copland simply appropriate the song. And if it's the latter, why not play the original?

a little searching brings me this info: (short answer - it's the latter - "Hoedown" is "Bonaparte's Retreat")

In the Nov/Dec/Jan 96-7 Issue of Sing Out! magazine (Vol. 31. No. 3), Stephen Wade covers the matter in depth. I borrow from his article

"In October 1937, Alan Lomax recorded Kentucky Fiddler, William Stepp's rendition of "Bonaparte's Retreat."[...] In 1941, the Lomaxes included Stepp's arrangement of "Bonaparte's Retreat" in a book titled Our Singing Country. It was this arrangement that Aaron Copland chose as his theme for the hoedown section of Agnes DeMille's ballet, Rodeo. He adopted Stepp's version of "Bonaparte's Retreat" almost note-for-note."

And now, of course, Stepp is immortalized in beef commercials.

But here it gets muddy. If you find Bonaparte's Retreat on folk tune archives, you'll get something that looks nothing like Hoedown. What Stepp recorded is what he called Bonaparte's Retreat. Apparently, on Stepp's recording, someone called attention to the sound of the fiddle, saying, "That's the boney-part, that's the boney-part!"

I can find chart after chart of something called "Bonaparte's Retreat", but no sign of the original country tune that sounds at all like Hoedown. I'm happy to adapt Copland's version for a contra dance, but that's my second choice to using the true original. I guess I could just get the recording of Stepp, which is actually available from Rounder Records.