Stumbling – Fiddle Tune a Day – Day 215

Tonight I had an opportunity to entertain as the strolling violinist (fiddler) at the Opera Fort Collins Songs of Summer Gala. It’s always a good time, and the people are super friendly.

When I play gigs like this, I like to play the game of stump the fiddler with the guests of the event. I don’t have a perfect record, and they usually do stump me a few times in a night, but they are always amazed when they ask for a tune from the 20’s and I happen to know it.

Well, I had been playing this tune for the last week or two, and I couldn’t remember the name of it, and when I played it, one of the elder gentlemen there asked me, “Is that called Stumbling?” And I said, “Why yes it is.”  He said that his mom had it on their player piano. When I looked it up, I found that it was written in 1922 by a guy named Zez Confrey, who wrote novelty piano pieces.

Ironically, my dad just found a piece of Zez Confrey piano music called Dizzy Fingers, and was asking me about it just a few weeks ago. What a strange and wonderful world we live in. 🙂

I have done some searching for more information about Stumbling, all I can find is that he wrote it in 1922, and it was one of Zez Confrey’s bigger hits in the realm of Novelty Ragtime Piano.

I also recorded this tune in a jam session with Albanie Falletta and Will Webster, check that out here

Learn to Play Stumblin’ on Fiddle here