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“ORANGE BLOSSOM SPECIAL”: THE HOEDOWN
Every time there's a hoedown on the main street of Dodge, Ellie Sue picks up her fiddle and plays "Orange Blossom Special" for 60 to 90 minutes straight, with Sadie on washboard, Doc Yada-Yadams on jug, Marshal McDillon on musical saw, Deputy Fester on guitar, and two mules from the Dodge City Horse Store on kazoo and gut-bucket bass. The citizenry dances up a storm and Ellie Sue's nostrils and eyes get wilder and wilder and eventually she starts frothing at the mouth. At that point, Doc Yada-Yadams calls a halt to the song and performs a quick bit of neurosurgery on Ellie Sue to bring her back to normal. That's the way it always plays out. So now everybody considers "Ellie Sue’s Orange Blossom Special" a bona fide Dodge City institution.
What is it about that song that causes some otherwise perfectly respectable folks to go plum loco?
“Orange Blossom Special” makes use of two musical devices not often found together in a country song:
- A long vamp on a single chord over which a fiddler improvises; and
- Modulation to a closely related key.
The instrumental and vocal versions are somewhat different.