Learn to Play the Fun and Breezy 19th Century Dance Tune “Jenny Jenkins”

Back in the days prior to radio, tape-recorded music, and DJs for hire, celebrations such as quilting bees and church functions frequently included enjoyable interactive tunes where youths might securely fraternize each other. Going back to a minimum of the early 1800s, “Jenny Jenkins” is among these discussion tunes, a car for a kid to ask a woman to dance. The kid would sing the very first lines, choosing a color, and the woman would need to comprise an action that rhymed. If she could not develop a rhyme, she would dance with the kid. Take a look at more Campfire Songs here. “Jenny Jenkins,” which has actually been covered by the similarity Jerry Garcia (with David Grisman) and Lisa Loeb, is as basic as it is sweet. I’ve organized it here in the guitar-friendly secret of D significant utilizing simply 3 chords, consisting of the typical open D and G shapes. Rather of a routine open A, I play a more colorful-sounding A7sus4– an A7 chord with the 4th (D) changing the 3rd (C#). These 3 voicings share the typical note D (string 2, fret 3), which calls throughout for a beautiful droning result. When it comes to the choosing hand, I begin the tune with a light boom-chuck, playing single bass notes on beats 1 and 3 and upper-string chord strums on beats 2 and 4, like notated here in the tune’s 4 bar introduction. As seen in the accompanying video, I utilize that very same pattern throughout. With the boy-girl discussion of “Jenny Jenkins” in mind– and through the magic of contemporary picture-in-picture innovation– I had my singer-actor good friend Margaret Belton join me to react to my unrelenting barbecuing concerning her closet strategies. Roll, Jenny Jenkins, roll! This post initially appeared in the March/April 2023 problem of Acoustic Guitar publication.