Last of Callahan

A traditional Old Time breakdown in A major (D major in some versions), played in AEae or standard tuning, with documented use at the Berea, Kentucky, fiddle contests in the 1920s and listed in three of twenty-two Berea student tune lists from 1915. The tune is inseparable from a legend — documented from Clay County, Jackson County, and elsewhere in Kentucky — of a condemned fiddler named Callahan who played one last tune before his execution around 1835, a story closely paralleling the Scottish “MacPherson’s Farewell” legend. Luther Strong and W.H. Stepp both recorded it for the Library of Congress in 1937; the Highwoods String Band recorded it on Fire on the Mountain (Rounder 0023, 1975).