- Style
- Bluegrass
- Tradition
- American fiddle
- Form
- Reel
- Key
- A
- Level
- 4
- Played on
- Fiddle
In the public domain. Source
Music
Click any note to start from there
Chord chart
History
Grey Eagle was a Kentucky racehorse, and the tune is tied to his famous race against the Tennessee horse Wagner at Louisville in 1838 or 1839. A Dallas newspaper wrote in 1900 that Kentucky "dropped more tears and money" that day than ever before. Louisville publisher William C. Peters printed Gray Eagle Cotillions around 1840, and the Grey Eagle tune in it is labeled a Scotch air: it is "The Miller of Drone" in a new key.
The tune spread west, and fiddlers in the Ozarks and Midwest remembered the horse race long after Kentucky players had forgotten it. Arizona fiddler Kenner Kartchner said Mormon fiddlers played it crossing the plains. J. Dedrick Harris made the first recording in 1924.