National Accordion Awareness Month was established in 1989 to promote the accordion, help spread the word about the resurgence in popularity in the accordion and to educate people about the accordion. Here’s some info.
I’m sure there are bunches of (old) square dance records that feature the accordian. I tend to associate MacGregor with accordian arrangements.
Relevant Records
Whether or not you mark this event is very dependent on your group. You could do a tip where all the men dance the girl’s part and the women dance the boy’s part. Or you could do a “Denmark” tip, where all the dancers change gender roles every time a gender-based call (like Star Thru or Slide Thru) is called. Or (easier) a tip where everybody changes roles at the end of every sequence.
If your club has transexual members, make sure they’re okay with this kind of playing around. No point in inadvertently offending anyone.
If you Google this phrase, you’ll find lots of references to both the day and the traditional song. I’ve found versions of the song by Hank Williams, Sr. (go to Disk 2; if you click on the link, you can listen to a Windows Media version of the song), Ricky Nelson, and Louis Armstrong. You can hear an instrumental, dixieland version of the song here. You can see one version of the lyrics here.
Of course, my immediate thought, fueled by at least three square dance afterparties (see this story), was the song “There’s a Hole In My Bucket”.
Neither song is really suitable for a square dance singing call (“My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” is usually done too fast, “There’s a Hole in My Bucket” is a waltz). I looked for a MIDI version of “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It” online, but couldn’t find anything. If I were a musician, it would be easy enough to arrange a singing call version; it’s a pretty straight-forward blues-y type song.
Calls with the word “Bucket”
There are four:
None of them are what I look for in a “theme” call: they’re not quick and easy teaches. Hinge the Bucket is probably the easiest:
From lines of four: All partner hinge, arm turn 3/4 where those facing out trade to end in facing lines.
This would be trivial for an Advanced floor, but I think a weak MS/Plus floor would have problems with the hinge/cast off 3/4 combo…plus I’d need to workshop “half a trade” (which I would use instead of partner hinge, which isn’t on the MS or Plus lists).
I suppose I could write a call for the occasion, but I prefer to use “real” calls; to me, it makes it more amusing that someone else actually wrote a call that works for the “special day”.
Songs that I know have square dance versions that were number 1 on May 30:
Relevant Records
Wynonna is the daughter in the mother/daughter duo, the Judds, and is now a solo C&W performer.
Here are the Judd records that I own:
Relevant Records
Walt Kelly’s comic strip featured Pogo, the possum, and other characters from Okefenokee Swamp.
I grew up with this comic strip; it started in 1949 (the year I was born) and continued throughout my childhood. Pogo, Peanuts, and Mad Magazine…what a combo. My mom had every Pogo book ever published, I think.
Okay, what could we do at a square dance? Buddy Weaver released a version of “Deck the Halls” this year; one could do it today using the words for “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie”.
There’s always “Swamp Thing” for patter, and Hanhurst lists a couple of records with possum in the title.
And then there’s old time patter:
Chicken on a fence and possum on a rail
Take your honey and away you sail.
Raccoon’s tail got a ring around;
Possum’s tail is bare;
Rabbit ain’t got no tail at all,
Just a little old hunk of hair
Tree songs? There’s a patter record on Chicago Country called “Tree Huggin'”. For singers, there’s “Home Among the Gum Trees”, “Lemon Tree”, “Just a Lemon Tree”, “Pine Tree”, “Sweetheart Tree”, and “Tall, Tall Trees”. If you search Hanhurst for trees, you’ll get an amazing number of “street” songs.
The Puckle gun was a British flintlock machinegun invented by James Puckle in 1718. It took a nine-round revolving block, was mounted on a tripod and was designed to be portable and especially to prevent an enemy boarding a ship. An unusual feature was that it fired square bullets.
Good day to workshop Crossfire.
Bartholomew Gosnold, an English explorer, visited the Cape in 1602 and named it for the abundant fish found in surrounding waters.
Good day for using the singing call “Old Cape Cod”. The song was originally done by Patti Page, and redone by Bette Midler (and probably many others).
How about doing the first singing call that you ever performed in public? Or the first square dance music you ever bought?