Chicken Reel

Joseph M. Daly wrote it for piano at 19 and published it in Boston in 1910, in C. Fiddlers moved it to D and took it over. Daly may have built it from folk strains he already knew, as James Fuld suggested. The long slide up into each phrase, followed by quick notes, imitates the jerky way a chicken moves.

It spread fast. Arizona fiddler Kenner Kartchner played it from the early 1900s, and Simon Bronner found it a favorite for dances in New York state, where players liked it because everyone recognized it. Vance Randolph recorded Ozark fiddlers playing it for the Library of Congress in the early 1940s.