64. The Unreel Reel / Schottische Du Stockfish: Shadish: The shadish has a variety of different
styles. The dance is similar to the cotton-I-Joe; however, depending on the song, the style of the
dance may change. To expand a bit on my previous answer, one of the reasons "The Cotton
Eyed Joe" was a popular tune at barn dances in Iowa and Nebraska, before the Great War, when
my grandfather was playing it several times a night, some nights, as a crowd request, was that
the big wheat and corn harvester crews that worked north from Texas to North Dakota in those
years before the Great War (say, 1908 to 1915), liked it. These "thresher" crews were made up of
40 to 60 scythe men, sometimes additional specialized reaper and thresher machine
crewmen/mechanics, and 10 to 20 2- or 4-horse teams, plus wagons, who moved north from
Texas to North Dakota, doing contract harvesting, first in the winter wheat, then in the corn, and
finally, maybe, in the soft wheat, late in the year, in Kansas and Oklahoma, and Panhandle Texas.
Those were hard men, who worked and traveled 7 days a week, for months at a time, doing the
toughest kind of agricultural work, in the days before the steam and gasoline engines made
possible mechanical reapers, threshers and, later, modern combines. If they got any recreation at
all, it was likely to be a couple hours at a Saturday night barn dance, tossing around each other,
and maybe a few local girls under the watchful eyes of their farmer fathers, brothers and
husbands. Out back, they might sneak a little whiskey, or maybe, if they were lucky, some locally
made beer or hard cider, and still get on the road or maybe the railroad, overnight, to their next
jobs, starting the following mornings.
They wanted tunes they knew, for dances like the shadish and melodies they learned as kids. All
the music some of those thrashers knew were "The Cotton Eyed Joe" and "The Turkey in the
Straw" and "Clementine" and maybe "Dixie," "The Yellow Rose of Texas" or "Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot." So my granddad and his little bands would play these, and the threshers would "whoop
it up," and "dance till the (barn) rafters shook, or horses bolted," 40 to 60 big men stomping
around in rough time, singing loudly, laughing, shouting, clapping, and "showing off" for a couple
hours, until the crew bosses pulled 'em out. Then things would quiet down a lot, and the little
bands would drop back to playing quieter polkas, waltzes and two-steps, for the local farmers and
their kin, for an hour or two, until the oil lamps ran low, and everyone hitched up the wagons and
left for home.
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