Hi Leeneia,

Thanks for the info and the MIDI. My knowledge of Eubie Blake is pretty limited, but I do know that he was musically literate, involved in show business etc. I agree it's inlikely that he ever heard the pipe tune, Chevy Chase but it is by no means impossible. The Northumbrian piper, Jack Armstrong recorded it in the 1920s, which is later than Blake's composition of course. But the piece has always been popular among Northumbrian musicians. Who's to say that he never met one ?

In fact, after posting my query, I remembered that the tune, Chevy Chase features in John Gay's Beggars Opera. An edition I have, dating from 1775, does not give the notations of the airs, but does specify their titles. However, I also have a facsimile (undated but doubtless later) which gives both melodies and titles. For that matter, Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music says the tune was used for over three dozen ballads before 1700, also that it is used in two other ballad operas, and that it appears no less than eight times in Durfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy.

I'd have said therefore that it was perfectly possible for Blake to have come across the tune in manuscript, and to have been sufficiently taken with this very beautiful air for it to inspire him into writing his own composition.

Like you, I see no reason to assume he was inspired by the name of a sports car.