Kerry Blech

There was a 1929 song called "Razors in the Air" that was a minor hit for Vernon Dalhart (singer/guitarist) and fiddler Adelyne Hood (also harmony singer), that was a three part melody, with a chorus of "Hoe the Corn Moses/Moses Hoe the Corn". Their rendition was learned from sheet music published in 1879-80 by Harry Bennett and J.E. Murphy, whom I think were Tin Pan Alley composers in NYC.

In the 1970s my friend Pat Conte (from NYC) "re composed" it as "Moses Hoe The Corn" (as the only lyric) and as a two-part blues fiddle tour-de-force, in the key of E major. I liked what he'd done and asked him to send me a recording of his rendition and the Dalhart/Hood recording. I turned it into a two-part old time dance tune (using the same two parts that Pat had used) in the key of D that my band, "The Rhythm Gorillas", played often for square and contra dances. I taught it to the Canote twins while visiting on the West Coast in 1980, so it caught on out there. - Kerry Blech

From The CD Liner Notes: Kerry learned and adapted this from the Ira Ford Traditional Music in America book, which is full of transcriptions of mainly Ozark regional tunes. This melody does not remind us of anything we've ever heard elsewhere. Though this title is appended to several tunes, none seem to bear any relationship to the present melody.

Allen learned French Waltz, neither a waltz nor from France, from the late Clyde Troxell