e-mail:turtleband@aol.com Home the Band Catch Us the Music the Turtle Valley String Band

Here are sound clips from some of the tunes we play. Tony's added some notes about two of them. You'll need to download the free version of RealPlayer to listen.

Write us if you have any questions about the music: turtleband@aol.com.

YELLOW BARBER
(440 KB)

If I could take but one CD to a desert island it might well be Buddy Thomas' Kitty Puss (Rounder 0032), from which I learned the tune Yellow Barber. This powerful Kentucky fiddler, who died in 1974, learned tunes from a wide variety of sources and was most attracted to the "old tunes", some of which he knew only from his mother's whistling of her father's fiddling. Quite a few of these tunes are current among today's younger fiddlers. For some reason the tune Yellow Barber reminds me of the Irish tune The Wise Maids, also in the key of D.

ADA'S WALTZ
© Tony Mates 1999
(1,038 KB)

The tune Ada's Waltz came to me on the mandolin a few years back and I promptly named it in honor of Mrs. Ada Robertson. She is a dear friend to many, an accomplished artist and a great-grandmother 8 times over. Our families have been entwined since at least 1916, when she strew flowers in the path of my just-married grandparents. This Christmas I sent her a transcription of her waltz (prepared by Chrissie Marshall) and she has been working it out on the piano.

BRIAR PICKER BROWN
(900 KB)

the YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS
(428 KB)