Call this one at a jam and hands go up. Whiskey Before Breakfast sits in D major, runs AABB, and stays inside a range most players can reach. The title sounds like a hundred-year-old fiddler’s joke. The tune is younger than that, and the paper trail behind it is thinner than the stories people tell about it.
Where it came from
The oldest hard document is a book. Andy De Jarlis, a Manitoba fiddler of Metis descent, printed the tune in Canadian Fiddle Tunes from the Red River Valley in 1957, and the credit there covers the arrangement, not the composition. That distinction matters. Publishers copyright arrangements of traditional tunes as a matter of routine, so a name on a page proves less than it looks.
De Jarlis (1914 to 1975) was born near Woodridge, Manitoba, and built his career in Winnipeg. He led a band called the Red River Mates on radio station CJRC from 1937 to 1948, cut about twenty-five LPs, and wrote more than 175 pieces. His reputation rests on his waltzes. He recorded Whiskey Before Breakfast for London Records on Backwoods Fiddle Tunes, credited to Andy De Jarlis and His Early Settlers.
Now the famous part. Paul Gifford, relayed in the Fiddler’s Companion, suggested that De Jarlis learned the tune from the father of Metis fiddler Lawrence “Teddy Boy” Houle. The two played until dawn with the aid of libation before passing out. On waking, De Jarlis remembered the last tune they played and perhaps hung the whiskey name on it. Read the hedges in that account: suggests, probably, perhaps. A separate telling on Mudcat, passed on from Teddy Boy Houle himself, names his father as Lawrence Flett and calls the tune a joint effort with De Jarlis. The two versions do not line up. Neither one comes with a date, a document, or a recording.
How the tune reached American players is also contested. Gifford pointed to a Voyager Records LP. The Fiddler’s Companion text names More Fiddle Favorites by Canadian champion Lloyd Sexsmith. The Traditional Tune Archive’s current text names More Fiddle Jam Sessions by Texas champion Dick Barrett, and Voyager 304 under Barrett’s name sits in the same discography. One claim, two different records.
What is documented is the tune’s family. Several writers note that the A part resembles older melodies: Liverpool Hornpipe, Great Eastern, Bennett’s Favorite, and the Irish reels Silver Spire and Greenfields of America. Speed the Plow may sit behind the whole group. Ken Perlman identified a Maritime version under the name Spirits of the Morning. The bones are old, whoever set the current shape.
On rights, everyone treats the melody as traditional. Norman Blake’s 1976 album credits it that way, and De Jarlis holds an arrangement credit only. One caution: Mike Cross wrote lyrics to the melody that became popular in bluegrass circles. Those words are his. The tune is free. The song is not.
How it works
D major, AABB, cut time, played as a reel or a breakdown. Each strain runs eight bars and repeats.
In Nashville numbers, the A part opens on 1, moves to 4 in the third phrase, drops back to 1, and closes through 5. The B part starts on 1, shifts to 2 minor for the second phrase, passes through 5, then returns through 1, 5, 4, and 1 to a cadence. Four chords total. Plenty of jams drop the 2 minor and run straight 1, 4, 5, which works fine against the melody.
The A part lives low on the fiddle, starting near the bottom of the D string and staying under the octave. The B part jumps to the high register and holds there before walking back down. That contrast gives the tune its shape and makes it a useful early lesson in crossing strings without changing position. Guitar and mandolin players get the same benefit in a friendly key, which explains part of its reach.
In Canada the reel accompanies the quadrille figure called Reel of Eight, and Metis dance groups in the west have long kept it in rotation. In sessions and jams it turns up beside Saint Anne’s Reel, Arkansas Traveler, and Cooley’s. Members of The Session have added it to more than 1,300 tunebooks, which places it alongside Soldier’s Joy as one of the small handful of tunes that cross every regional line.
Recordings worth hearing
Start with the source. Andy De Jarlis and His Early Settlers recorded it on Backwoods Fiddle Tunes for London (EBX 4118), listed on Discogs as a 1968 release, with the tune as track four on side one. His reading is measured and dance-minded rather than showy, which fits a repertoire built for quadrilles.
For the version most American pickers absorbed, go to Norman Blake’s Whiskey Before Breakfast, Rounder 0063, from 1976. The tune shares a track with Fiddler’s Dram, and Blake plays it as a guitar duet with Charlie Collins. That album title alone did a lot of work in spreading the name.
Two earlier documents are worth chasing. John McCutcheon recorded it on How Can I Keep From Singing?, June Appal 003, in 1975, learned from Ben Hensley of Speedwell, Tennessee, which shows the tune already loose in the southern mountains by the mid-1970s. Dick Barrett’s contest-style version on Voyager 304, More Fiddle Jam Sessions, is the recording most often named as the American entry point. For the Metis side of the story, Richard Callihoo plays it on Drops of Brandy from the Gabriel Dumont Institute (2001).
Sources
Core history comes from the Traditional Tune Archive annotation and its predecessor, Andrew Kuntz’s Fiddler’s Companion, which supplied the De Jarlis arrangement credit, the Gifford and Houle accounts, the Perlman note on Spirits of the Morning, the melodic relatives, the Mike Cross lyrics, and the printed and recorded source lists. Competing detail on the naming came from the Mudcat Cafe thread on tune origins, and further discussion came from the Fiddle Hangout and Banjo Hangout tune-of-the-week threads.
Biographical facts on Andy De Jarlis came from the Manitoba Historical Society and The Canadian Encyclopedia. Release details came from Discogs for Backwoods Fiddle Tunes and for Norman Blake’s Whiskey Before Breakfast. Form, chords, alternate titles, common set partners, and tunebook counts came from The Session.