Here’s Ricky Scaggs and Roseanne Cash on Transantlantic Sessions, playing American traditional music in ensembles that include whistle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jxvPK8KJm8&list=PL3B2A41018000D7FC&index=7&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnMMWledtZ8&list=PL3B2A41018000D7FC&index=8&feature=plpp_video
What’s been your experience with whistles and American music? Can you post other examples?
Best wishes,
Jerry
Jerry,
Mike McGoldrick sat in playing whistle during the TransAtlantic Sessions with Julie Fowlis, Donal Lunny, Jerry Douglas, Aly Bain, and others on “The Blackest Crow”. I am sure there are other examples as well. Great music.
Regards,
Cayden
The old time tune, President Garfield’s Hornpipe is very popular among Irish whistle players. It was written in Bb but it’s usually played in C or D by whistle players.
Tommy
This old chestnut again: https://www.box.com/shared/ctm1umvkap
The tune is Dubuque. Myself on whistle, Mark O’Connor on fiddle, Jane Gillman on dulcimer. From Jane’s first album, Pick It Up (GLCD1068). The whistle is a stock Generation D.
Also see this older thread: https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/country-music-tin-whistle-cds/73854/1
John,
Great tune and some fine playing by all. 
Regards,
Cayden
When I was in a jug band in the early to mid 70’s, I used my whistles fairly frequently, mostly on songs that didn’t suit the 5-string banjo (my main instrument at the time).
As far as modern recordings go, Steve Earl has used a whistle on several of his songs/albums; “Dixieland” on “The Mountain” album and “Galway Girl” on the “Transcendental Blues” album come quickly to mind.
The Dave Bromberg Band has a great number called “Yankee’s Revenge”. You can listen to it on YouTube. Don’t watch the 1990 video - the whistle is painfully out of tune. Listen to the 1980 version. It’s great!
Janet Beazly with the Southern Cal group" Backcountry" uses whistles on a number of tunes on their CD’s. Check out one number (Saints and Strangers) on their CD of the same name.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/cstuart2
Gene Milligan
Jerry: Sorry, that’s not the right YouTube recording of “Yankee’s Revenge”. It’s the correct piece, but the sound is bad. It’s the one with the album cover that’s says “David Bromberg” and there’s a drawing of a guitar on it. I wish I were more computer literate and could upload it, but I don’t know how. If anyone would like to tell me how to do it, I’d be glad to.
-Maureen
Billy Novick played in Bromberg’s band back in the day and I believe he may be the whistle player on Yankee’s Revenge recording. I’ve played folk sessions with Bromberg on a couple occasions, nice guy and a good player.
My initial interest in the whistle came in the late 60’s early 70’s as a general accompaniment instrument for American Folk and Old Time music. It was not seen as odd at the time. I wasn’t the only whistle playing guitarist roaming the area. I only got involved in Irish dance music some years on from that. I still play flute and whistle with a group of rootsy players in the area but we limit their use to irish/scottish tinged tunes and slower paced folk pieces. Even in that setting many of the more hardcore bluegrass guys are put off by anything other than the usual string instruments and are not shy about expressing their opinions. They generally refer to my playing as “hippie music” no matter what the source of origin might be for what I’m playing.
I love the Transatlantic Sessions. They hit me right where I live musically.
Feadoggie
This is great work, MT. Especially your interpretation of the B part sounds quintessentially American. Most of the whistles in these pieces fit well and contribute beautifully to the music, but don’t add to the American flavor. Yours does that in a very effective way. Kudos.
Best wishes,
Jerry
I played old time music in the early 60’s, mainly playing banjo in groups formed around fiddle as the main melody instrument. In 1963, at the national old-time fiddle championships in Weiser, Idaho, there was a band that used tin whistle. Instruments other than the normal strings would show up and play. No one seemed to make anything of it, as long as they could play the music. Another band even used a hammerd dulicimer, the first I ever heard. I asked the whistle player, whose father started him on it about it. His father was from Ireland and he had learned whistle at an early age. He said his father sometimes sat in with the group on flute. I got my first Generation whistle from a local music store because of hearing him play. I guess my introduction to whistle came from listening to it played by an American old-time player, playing American music. That year, the champion fiddler was a young kid from Texas no one had heard of named Byron Berline. What I remember most was a blisteringly fast version by the band with the whistle playing Colonel Frazier. I have since run into a number of city folks playing “bluegrass” who turn up their noses at anything other than the strings they are used to. They always say that American folk music is “string band” music and that whistles have no place in it. I usually reply that bluegrass is a narrow slice of American folk music and that a large number of instruments have been used to express American music, including whistles, flutes and concertinas etc., not just strings.
Bravo Mr. Guru! You certainly held your own with two fine players, and you played so well in style the one would think whistle was always used in that kind of music. Just goes to show…
Thanks for posting this. I had not discovered it before.
Nice work Guru, and that Mark O’Connor fellow isn’t bad either…
I busk with a group, banjo, guitar, fiddle and me on D whistle and also G and sometimes A fife.
We do folk, bluegrass,oldtime, country music, gospel, ragtime, blues. I learned to play this stuff before I learned ITM,
and I do think I sound pretty ‘American.’ I really think whistle (and fife) lend a great deal to all this music,
and I note that whistle can play wailing blues very well and expressively.
Playing with others (outside my busking group),
I sometimes run into resistance to whistle/flute, which I think is pretty silly. Others pull me aside and
tell me the instruments sound ‘great.’
Here’s an American OT tune on a D flute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1BR33JOQGE&feature=endscreen&NR=1