Photograph by Carl Fleischhauer, reproduced with permission. When I began recording Henry Reed, I was immediately struck by both the size and the unusual qualities of his repertory of traditional tunes.
Most fiddlers know dozens of tunes, and some know a hundred or more.
But when one examines the repertories of enough fiddlers, one realizes that many tunes are common, and most recur in the playing of at least a few fiddlers. Yet Henry Reed not only knew hundreds of tunes, he knew dozens that I had never heard anyone else play. The 185 performances I recorded in 1966-67 comprise over 140 different tunes, as well as multiple performances of a number of tunes on different occasions. Some are common, some are unusual, and some are utterly unique. In the aggregate, they are an amazing repertory, and all the more amazing considering that his death prevented my recording even more.