Music Used on the Series

Season 1, Episode 10: "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?" which begins the episode, is a traditional spiritual, used well in the score.

I’m impressed with your attention to these details on this old show. What was your inspiration for this effort? Are you a music historian?

Season 2, episode 24: Music: Lyrics and tune resemble the song "Little Tillie's Grave" by B. R. Hanby, in particular the line:

Now the wildcat is wailing and the night-hawk screams
And the copperhead is hissing in the shade;
They shall come not hither to disturb thy dreams,
For I'll watch where thy sleeping dust is laid.

Both tunes resemble B. R. Hanby's "Darling Nelly Gray" (1856).

There's no reason to think this song predates 1860.

Season 2, episode 25: 00: Song being sung as the first scene opens.

"Springfield Mountain" is supposedly the first original American ballad. This song is the true story of twenty-two-year old Lieutenant Timothy Merrick, a young man who was about to be married, who was bitten by a rattlesnake in Springfield Mountain, Massachusetts, on August 7, 1761. Unfortunately he died within three hours of the attack. His grave can still be seen fourteen miles north of that city.

There are many different versions of this ballad, which became a humorous minstrel song in the 1830s. Some were wild exaggerations by vaudeville performers, in which Merrick’s wife-to-be died as a result of trying to suck the poison out with a broken tooth.

On a personal note, our fourth grade class sung one such version in 1971. Our teacher, one Robert B. Long, loved the song, and noted that every year some parent would object to it. The one we sang ended with, "Now Moll-eye had a rotting tooth, and so the pizen killed them both." Earlier versions were more serious. The listener may decide which type of version is used in this Daniel Boone episode.

Season 3, Episode 12, fiddle tunes: 24:25: "Turkey in the Straw," 25:25: "Soldier's Joy," 26:01: "Miss McLeod's Reel," 26:42: "Cotton-Eyed Joe."

Season 3, episode 23: Music: 6:25: "Buckeye Jim," first documented version collected in 1939, popularized by Burl Ives in 1962. (It was used by William O. Steele in his book "Winter Danger," which is set back in Boone's time, if that helps.) 10:30: "Soldier, Soldier, Won't You Marry Me?" Probably of English origin, known on both sides of the Atlantic, but not collected till 1903. (Disappointed here; I always pictured a Revolutionary War soldier at least.) 49:39: "Sourwood Mountain," traditional, said to be at least 150 years old, putting it back to the 1850s-1870s or so. The second two we sang (different versions of) in school in the 1970s.

Season 4, episode 5: 1:40: Opera, don't know the piece. 23:10: "Blue Skies, Green Meadow" by Lionel Newman, and, of all people, Randy Newman. 41:20: Introductory harpsichord music. 42:34: Music from "The Marriage of Figaro," composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Season 4, episode 6: 10:42: "The British Grenadiers," though here they sing "the finest Britishers." The tune dates from the early 17th Century and has been used by the Royal Artillery since 1716. The words may date back to the War of Spanish Succession (1702–1713). Possibly the lyrics change here was made so as not to infringe on any actual British Grenadiers, or possibly not.