Hi, Jocelyn!
I had a similar set of experiences and questions when I started to bring my hurdy gurdy
to Civil War reenactments. There was a brief set of exchanges on this list in June of
2006 on the topic "Hurdy gurdies in American Civil War?". You might be able to
look them up in the list archive; if you have problems, let me know off-list and I'll
forward them to you.
To summarize, I found a number of references putting an instrument called a hurdy gurdy in New Orleans in the
1850's and in California and several points in the western frontier in the mid to late 1800s (supposedly they
were carried west with the '49ers to the Gold Rush.) The saloons that you see in the westerns were actually
called "hurdy gurdy houses" (Mark Twain mentions a visit to a "hurdy gurdy house" in his
book _Roughing It_), and the dancers were called "hurdy gurdy girls".
HOWEVER - I have been unable to determine whether the instruments referred to were our
cranked violins, a variety of barrel organ (monkey grinder style), or a mechanized music
box - all were referred to as "hurdy gurdy".
I passed my query on to Sara Johnson, who writes a living history column for the reenactor's
catalog and newsletter "Smoke & Fire", in August 2006. I haven't heard from
her since, so I don't know if she has done any more work on it since then.
Following is a copy of a couple of my message to her.
I take my instrument to Civil War reenactments and farmers market gigs, playing
a selection of Breton and early American tunes. You can see some pictures of
me playing it at http://www.BearCreekMusic.us and on my Yahoo profile
http://profiles.yahoo.com/g_plazyk
Best regards,
-Gary P.
Marengo, IL
============================================================
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Please pass this on to Sara L. Johnson, who writes living history articles
for S&F
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:13:11 -0500
From: Gary F. Plazyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hi, Sarah!
I recently came across a collection of your articles in the Kitchen Musician
web site: http://www.kitchenmusician.net/smoke/smokepage.html
I play music at several American Civil War reenactments each year on hammered
dulcimer and concertina. I have recently begun to play the hurdy gurdy. I'd
like to play my hurdy gurdy at the reenactments, but have a bit of a problem
establishing authenticity. I can certainly play period tunes on the
instrument, but am trying to find documentation of hurdy gurdy being played in
an American Western or Civil War context.
One problem I have is that the term "hurdy gurdy" is used to refer to several
very different instruments:
- the "vielle a roue": basically a mechanized violin, which uses a crank to
turn a circular bow, and a piano-keyboard-like array of buttons to stop the strings (see
my Yahoo profile for a picture of my instrument)
- the barrel organ: either a small portable box, or larger cart-mounted
instrument; this is the monkey organ grinder instrument, which uses a paper
tape similar to a player piano to select notes played on air powered pipes or
reeds
- the music box: a cranked disk or cylinder which has pins which twang tuned
metal tongues
All these and more can be found for sale at Lark in the Morning (order a free
catalog at their web site: http://www.larkinam.com/ ).
What I am trying to establish is whether it was my type of instrument that was
actually used, locations and dates it may have been played, and what tunes were
commonly played.
I am hoping the result of this research to be a CD recording "The Hurdy Gurdy in the
American West".
I would appreciate any direction you may be able to give me in furthering my research. If you are
interested, I'd be happy to send you copies of what I have found so far. I'd appreciate any
references or citations. I have several promising leads - especially in the areas of "hurdy
gurdy house" and "hurdy gurdy girls".
Thank you very much.
Very best regards,
-Gary P.
============================================================
============================================================
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: hurdy gurdies
Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 08:56:08 -0500
From: Gary F. Plazyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Sara Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hi, Sara!
Thanks for your response! I've really enjoyed you S&F articles.
For some background, here is a posting I made to the Hurdy Gurdy List
maintained by Olympic Musical Instruments (who made my hurdy gurdy), and an
e-mail to Arthur Hart, an Idaho historian (who, unfortunately, was not able to
help me):
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [HG] Hurdy gurdies in American Civil War?
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 11:05:41 -0500
From: Gary F. Plazyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi!
<snip - removed some material not relevant to this discussion>
*** 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:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
*** 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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
...
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.
...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
*** 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" [!]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 on the Internet 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.
============================================================
Jocelyn Demuth wrote:
I live in New England and recently played the HG at a colonial craft
day. I told the organizers that I didn't think the HG was very big in
colonial America but they didn't care. It was old, it was cool looking
at it was loud - so I played anyway. It then dawned on me that I have
absolutely no knowledge of the history of the HG in the US. Anyone know
how the HG was used in the US? I guess some of them must have been
packed with the clothes, pots, pans and other stuff people brougth from
Europe - but anyone know anything more than that?
- Jocelyn
