Frosty Morning

“Cold Frosty Morning” (also “Cold and Frosty Morning” or simply “Frosty Morning”) is a traditional Appalachian old-time reel in A Dorian, played widely in both old-time circles and American Irish sessions. The version in common circulation is generally traced to Virginia fiddler Henry Reed (born c. 1885, Monroe County, West Virginia; lived at Glen Lyn, Giles County, Virginia), whom Alan Jabbour recorded in the 1960s and whose repertoire Jabbour spread through the Hollow Rock String Band. A recurring origin story linking the tune to the 1746 Jacobite defeat at Culloden Moor traces to a single source (Hetzler’s Fakebook) and is not corroborated elsewhere.

The title is shared by at least two unrelated tunes. West Virginia fiddler Melvin Wine of Braxton County played a distinct “Cold Frosty Morning” in A major and AEae cross-tuning, transcribed in the Milliner-Koken collection, while Henry Reed’s A-modal tune, this listing, appears in the same collection under its own name, “Frosty Morning.” This listing also appears as “Frosty Morning” in the Fiddler’s Fakebook. A third, wholly separate tune is the 18th-century Scots air in 3/4 found in James Oswald’s Caledonian Pocket Companion (vol. 4, 1760), itself descended from the song-air “At Past One a Clock, and a Cold Frosty Morning” printed by Playford in 1687.