Hi!
*** First, to clear up the issue of the hurdy gurdy in the 1937 movie _Captains
Courageous_ starring Spencer Tracy. I checked the Project Gutenberg Etext of
_Captains Courageous_, by Kipling. The words hurdy and gurdy do not appear in
it. The instrument Manuel played was the machette (or machete)
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... here were the makings of an hour-long discussion of the kind that fishermen
love, where the talk runs in shouting circles and no one proves anything at the
end, had not Dan struck up this cheerful rhyme:
"Up jumped the mackerel with his stripe'd back.
Reef in the mainsail, and haul on the tack; For it's windy
weather--"
Here Long Jack joined in:
And it's blowy weather;
When the winds begin to blow, pipe all hands together!"
Dan went on, with a cautious look at Tom Platt, holding the accordion low in
the bunk:
"Up jumped the cod with his chuckle-head,
Went to the main-chains to heave at the lead;
For it's windy weather," etc.
Tom Platt seemed to be hunting for something. Dan crouched lower, but sang
louder:
"Up jumped the flounder that swims to the ground.
Chuckle-head! Chuckle-head! Mind where ye sound!"
Tom Platt's huge rubber boot whirled across the foc'sle and caught Dan's
uplifted arm. There was war between the man and the boy ever since Dan had
discovered that the mere whistling of that tune would make him angry as he
heaved the lead.
"Thought I'd fetch yer," said Dan, returning the gift with precision. "Ef you don't
like my music, git out your fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' Long
Jack arguin' 'baout candles. Fiddle, Tom Platt; or I'll learn Harve here the tune!"
Tom Platt leaned down to a locker and brought up an old white fiddle. Manuel's
eye glistened, and from somewhere behind the pawl-post he drew out a tiny,
guitar-like thing with wire strings, which he called a machette.
"'Tis a concert," said Long Jack, beaming through the smoke. "A reg'lar Boston
concert."
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There's a drawing of this scene in my copy of Kipling (showing accordion,
fiddle, and machette) although its accuracy is questionable, since it shows the
fiddler holding the bow with his left hand (perhaps the engraving was
reversed?). The machete is shown as a small ukulele-like instrument. We'll
probably never know why they substituted a hurdy gurdy for it in the movie.
*** I did some further searching on Google (search term "hurdy gurdy" "New
Orleans"), and found a few promising lines of research. In the Lark in the Morning web site's
history of the Hurdy Gurdy ( http://larkinthemorning.com/article.asp?AI=41&bhcd2=1151589961 ), they
mention:
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Meanwhile, the hurdy gurdy has come to the United States, no doubt in the hands
of traveling Frenchmen. It is said that around 1850, there were a few hurdy
gurdys being played in New Orleans. There is mention of one in New York about
around 1940. There is an early California dance tune discovered in Watsonville,
California, which is actually a French tune called La Valso-vienne. No one
knows how it originally arrived from France. A friend of mine remembers a man
coming to town with his hurdy gurdy back in the Oklahoma oil days. Any
information on the use of the hurdy gurdy in the United States which anyone
would like to share with us is welcomed.
...
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
BAINES, ANTHONY, European & American Musical Instruments, The Viking Press, New
York, 1966
BROCKER, MARIANNE, The Hurdy Gurdy, Archiv Productions, Hanover Germany, 1972
D'ALBERT, ARRIGO, Mendocino, California
JENKINS, JEAN, Eighteenth Century Musical Instruments: France and Britain,
Thanet Press, London, 1973
LEPPERT, RICHARD D., Arcadia at Versailles, Swets & Zeitlinger B.V., Amsterdam,
1978
MUNROW, DAVID, Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Oxford
University Press, London, 1976
MARCUSE, SIBYL, Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary, W.W. Norton &
Co., New York, 1975
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*** In The Strange Life of the Hurdy Gurdy and other Tales (
http://www.exulanten.com/hurdy.html ), there is an interesting connection
between California and Australia gold rush saloon dancing girls and the hurdy
gurdy.
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...
The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound similar to a
bagpipe. The continuous sound is produced by the action of a rotating wheel,
turned by a hand crank, rubbing against strings, just as violin strings are
sounded by a bow being drawn across them. Some think that the instrument was
imported from France by the Ukrainian Cossacks who took part in The Thirty
Years War, but others think it originated in the northern part of Iberia some
time prior to the eleventh century A.D., and still others have said it
originated with the Moors. It has been around for a long time and has a
colorful history.
An English decree from 1651 that travelling musicians had proper licenses. "The
hurdygurdyists, both men and women should be removed completely so that we no longer need
to see their vulgar and disorderly talk and gestures which the travelling musicians
delight in cultivating together with other impertinances."
It fell from popularity for a time, then re-emerged as a popular novelty among the nobility in the
17th and 18th centuries, and older guitars and lutes were sometimes rebuilt into hurdy-gurdies. By
the 18th century, Haydn wrote two concerti for the hurdy-gurdy, Mozart included it in a couple of
pieces, and its use was later suggested in Schubert's piece "Der Leiermann." ("The
Hurdy-Gurdy Player")
Then,there was the other definition of a Hurdy Gurdy. Poor Hessian farmers in the 1820s
made wooden brooms and fly-whisks during the winter to sell in summer at nearby markets
in the surrounding areas, and to increase sales they expanded into other German cities
and town and eventually even to France and England. Then they found that their wares sold
better if they brought along dancing girls who played the Hurdy Gurdy. This gave birth to
a sort of 19th century "pimp" who would talk the parents of these young girls
into letting them travel with him and entertain in dance halls on the promise they would
send a fair portion of their earnings home.
The "Hurdy-Gurdy girls" and "Hessian Broom Girls" ended up all over the globe.
Many travelled out to gold-rush California, others ended up in the Australia mining regions. By
1865, laws were passed in Germany to prevent the practise of enticing young girls into what was
considered a debauch life,and the practise, at least in public, died out.
...
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*** Following up on this, I checked the Dance History Archives at
Streetswing.com ( http://www.streetswing.com/histclub/a1a.htm ), which
documents all sorts of musical theatrical performances; they actually have a
distinct category for hurdy gurdy. If I'm reading their table correctly, they
document hurdy gurdy performances at:
* the Alabam Night Club, Chicago IL, 1920's
* the Bird Cage Theater, Tombstone AZ, 1880
* La Paradis, Washington WA, 1920's
* Valentino's, New York NY, 1890's
There was a saloon called The Hurdy-Gurdy House in Virginia City MO.
"The Hurdy-Gurdy Girl" performed at the Wallack Theater in 1907.
There was a dance called the "Hurdy Gurdy", possibly originating in France in the 1850's
associated with "Prostitution, Striptease, Hootchy Hootchi - Cootchi" [!]
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*** The web site The Hurdy-Gurdy Girls ( http://www.hotpipes.com/hggirls2.html
) has some pictures and the disreputable history of the association between
hurdy gurdy and the American Gold Rush.
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In looking into all of this further, this writer finds it interesting that something so once-notorious
and spectacular as this lengthy and widespread episode seems to have been largely overlooked or
misunderstood by modern historians. For example Susann Palmer, in her excellent reference work
"The Hurdy Gurdy" (David & Charles: London, 1980) bristles at the suggestion of
hurdy-gurdies in dance halls; she writes, "A supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (1976)
humiliates the hurdy gurdy further ... it gives as ... used in North America: 'hurdy-gurdy girl, a
dance hostess in a hurdy-gurdy house, being a disreputable type of cheap dance hall.' ... It is almost
certain that these 'hurdy-gurdy houses' were places where mechanical barrel-organs were
installed." (pp. 41-42). Meanwhile, we find the government of British Columbia, Canada exhibiting
confusion on its web site dedicated to the gold rush there, not about the presence and nature of the
hurdy-gurdy girls who came the
re during the 1850s (see photo above), but about the meaning of the term "hurdy-gurdy"
and the womens' relationship to the instrument. We at Nova Albion Research are continuing to look
into this subject and will expand these comments as information is uncovered. We would also like to
bring Kurt Reichmann's "Hurdy-Gurdy Girls" exhibition to North America, if suitable
sponsorship can be found.
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This site highlights the confusion created by the fact that "hurdy gurdy" is
commonly used to refer to at least three vastly different music producing mechanisms:
- the rotating bow on keyboard stopped stringed instrument we play
- the "organ grinder" music roll pipe or reed barrel organ
- the cranked music box
*** There's quite a treasure trove of references when you use the search terms "hurdy gurdy
house" and "hurdy gurdy girl" - mostly references to saloons and houses of
ill-repute!
http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060606/NEWS04/606060345/1037
http://www.phantomranch.net/folkdanc/articles/boysnite.htm
http://www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/17161/609/7
http://www.umwestern.edu/Academics/library/libroth/MHD/vigilantes/DIMSDALE/chapters/chap1.html
http://www.rootsweb.com/~orgenweb/bios/jamespoindexter.html
http://www.bookideas.com/reviews/index.cfm?fuseaction=displayReview&id=1454
http://members.aol.com/Gibson0817/bbasin.htm
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20060616/DAYTON/106160070
I would guess that there is good material here for a Master's Thesis on the
history of the hurdy gurdy in North America. I'm particularly intrigued by the
assertions that the hurdy gurdy was used in Western saloons during the
1840's-1880's. (Does anybody have access to a Masters Thesis database? Maybe
somebody has already done this?)
-Gary P.
