David Kaynor and Chitter at Dance Musicians Week – Photo courtesy of JCCFS
As I mentioned in last week’s post, our friend David Kaynor used to stay with us each summer when he came to Brasstown to teach at the Folk School.
I remember sitting on the couch with David the first time he visited us. As he looked around our living room with a big smile on his face he said “I didn’t know whether you’d live in a rustic cabin or a mountain mansion.” I said “Well its certainly not a mansion but I don’t guess its a cabin either so I guess its somewhere in between.”
Before that first visit Chitter had already been teasing David about having to rough it while staying at our house and somehow she started calling our house the Pressley Manor as a way of teasing David.
After staying with us various times over the years David composed a tune about the time he spent at our abode and titled it “Pressley Manor.”
I hope you enjoyed the beautiful tune David wrote for us. To hear David play it with the orchestra he led go here.
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This is such a beautiful and happy tune. What a treat to hear Katie and Corie play it so beautifully and then the orchestra together too. The fiddle is my favorite; I could listen to that all the time! What a wonderful talent the Lord has gifted them all with. So beautiful!!
What a pretty little tune and such an honor for it to be named Pressley Manor! The girls did a lovely job playing it.
Ya know Tipper, in alot of ways, to us what we live in , is a mansion to us. I know 1 thing for sure is God has really blessed us with a roof over our head and food and clothing and a way to go back and forth. What God we have.
Thanks Ed and Patricia for clearing up my confusion. So I guess for many of us here it is “to the (Appalachian) manner born”. Now that I can relate to.
Tipper, if you don’t chase comments this late that’s OK.
I love this tune also. My friend Nancy and I will be doing Morning Song Friday, and we are going to play High Clouds. Thanks for the reminder, from when you posted the girls playing that recently.
Sweet tune! Such a pleasure!! Thanks to you and your talented daughters for sharing!!
Easy tune to listen to while patting foot!!
I always thought it was “manor” (as in hifalutin’), but I just looked it up. Shakespeare used “to the manner born” in Hamlet, and it meant “locally born.” (Does anybody else out there use “hifalutin’ “, or am I just old?)
I enjoyed that catchy and happy tune- David Kaynor captured the Pressley essence in my opinion- upbeat, uplifting, happy, and joyful about Appalachia. May he now play in the angel’s band.
What an honor to have a tune for such a lovely memory. Thank you for sharing it with us Tipper. It’s all a bit foreign to me having been born and raised in Washington but something draws me in like a comfy pair of slippers.
What a special little tune, so beautifully played.
So your girls can trest misconceptions about Appalachia and Appalachians with humor. I think that is how we typically respond unless the wrong-headedness is particularly bad. From your, their and Miss Cindy’s comments its plain none of you expected anything like that from David. It was just good clean fun.
By the way, I wish somebody could clear up.something for me. I have seen the phrase “to the manor born” and also “to the manner born”. Anybody have an idea which is the correct one? Or are they both correct?
I’m no expert on linguistics but I’ve always thought of it as “to the manor born”. Back in the days of serfs and lords and stuff those born in the manor house were the privileged. They might only be the sons and daughters of servants but being born in the sovereign’s domicile gave them status above children born into huts and hovels in the surrounding countryside.
The same continues into today described in different words. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!
Ron, “to the manner born” came from Shakespeare’s HAMLET. Hamlet meant that
he had been brought up in a certain way. “To the manor born” began as a take on
the Shakespeare phrase to mean that someone had been brought up rich and high-class.
David was such a sweet spirit in this world, I always enjoyed when he came to visit!
I loved it…so beautiful.
Very pretty tune!