Put Your Little Foot

Subject: Put Your Little Foot
From: GUEST,O-C Charles
Date: 08 Sep 24 - 03:36 PM

I am interested in the children's song known to me (a chronologically advanced US-born American) as "Put Your Little Foot."   A cursory internet search this morning turned up two easily found lead sheets, one of which seemed to be the tune familiar to me. (I don't read sheet music fluently, at best I glean information one piece at a time.) According to what I read, the tune is found from Arkansas to New Mexico.

Possibly it comes from Poland, by way of France: an earlier version is called "La Varsovienne", which supposedly means, woman from Warsaw.

Does anyone know anything more about the origins, or earlier versions, of this little dance tune? Thanks!

Subject: RE: Put Your Little Foot
From: Helen
Date: 08 Sep 24 - 04:23 PM

O-C Charles, there is another discussion about this tune and the origin of the name Varsovienne, and the dance of that name here:

Put Your Little Foot

I'm racking my brain to remember why the tune is so familiar: is it on a CD, do we play it at our music sessions, or have I heard it performed live by a band? Can't remember.

Subject: RE: Put Your Little Foot
From: gillymor
Date: 08 Sep 24 - 04:33 PM

The tune was used as the love theme in the movie version of Shane. I started playing it on the mandolin one day and wasn't sure how I knew it until I heard it in the movie.

Subject: RE: Put Your Little Foot
From: Helen
Date: 08 Sep 24 - 05:45 PM

Thanks gillymor, it has been a large number of decades since I saw that movie.

I think I have figured it out. By trawling through the pages of The Session website I found a reference to the tune also being known (cryptically) as La-Va and that tune is on our music session group playlist.

Subject: RE: Put Your Little Foot
From: gillymor
Date: 09 Sep 24 - 04:11 PM

There are two entries for it in
The Fiddler's Companion (scroll down)-

PUT YOUR LITTLE FOOT DOWN. Old-Time. Probably the varsovienne "Put Your Little Foot (Right Out/There)." The title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954.

                     

PUT YOUR LITTLE FOOT (RIGHT OUT/THERE). AKA and see "Varsovienne [4]" [4]. Old-Time, Waltz or Varsovienne. USA; New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Arkansas. G Major (Christeson): D Major (Phillips). Standard tuning. AB (Christeson): AABB (Phillips). The tune was recorded for the Library of Congress by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph from Ozark Mountain fiddlers in the early 1940's. In Ireland a dance called “Shoe the Donkey” is performed to the tune. Sources for notated versions: Forest Delk (Grant County, New Mexico) [Christeson]; Bob Wills (Texas) [Phillips]. R.P. Christeson (Old Time Fiddlers Repertory, vol. 2), 1984; pg.150. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), vol. 2, 1995; pg. 297.



There are quite a few comments down the page and 21 settings for it at The Session , where it's know as Shoe the Donkey.

Subject: RE: Put Your Little Foot
From: clueless don
Date: 11 Sep 24 - 06:58 AM

The tune I know for "Put Your Little Foot" has the same A part, but a different B part, as the tune "Shoe the Donkey".

Subject: RE: Put Your Little Foot
From: leeneia
Date: 14 Sep 24 - 04:58 PM

Here's a fun video of Texas Jim Lewis and the Lone Star Cowboys doing this varsovienne. The words are trivial, because they are merely what a caller would teach you. But the tune and the instruments are enjoyable, and it's nice to see, that despite Hollywood's and Nashville's stereotypes, that Texans knew about Old World tunes and culture.

Helen's link to an older thread didn't work. I'll just repeat that "Varsovienne" is French for either 'woman from Warsaw' or 'dance from Warsaw,' or maybe both. But the dance actually seems to have come from Scandinavia. You can find a number of varsoviennes on YouTube, many of them from places far from Europe, such as South American or the Phillipines. The dance shows off the feet more than most.