Folks,

When I sent out my request back in May soliciting lists of
recommended tunes for patter squares, I wrote:

> ... If you got this query via a mailing list, please send
> tune lists directly to me and *not* to the entire mailing list.
> .., I'm trying to see which tunes get mentioned
> *independently* by many recommenders, so I don't want the lists
> anyone sends me to be influenced one way or another by whatever
> suggestions other people have already sent. ...
>
> I plan to gather recommendations for the next couple months and
> to post a summary some time in July.

Now it's the end of July, and I find myself in a bit of a
quandary, since I haven't gathered nearly as much data as I'd
hoped, and I'd prefer not to have my results so far circulating
around and possibly biasing anyone else who might yet supply
input. On the other hand, I don't want to renege on providing
a summary. So what I'm going to do is take some more time
(possibly several months, at the rate things are going). But
meanwhile if anyone's impatient for a summary, you can contact
me off-list (Jim dot Saxe at-sign gmail dot com), and I'll send
a brief synopsis of what I've gathered as of today, July 31.
(Note: This will only include information from recent informants
and a few other recent sources, not all the stuff I'm still
working on from old books, articles, record catalogs, etc.)

Meanwhile thanks to the following persons who have supplied tune
lists in response either to my queries on trad-dance-callers and
the SharedWeight or (more commonly) to other requests either by
email or in person: T-Claw supplied a list of tunes that he and
other participants shared at a session called "List of Favorite
Square Dance Tunes" at the 2015 Dare To Be Square Weekend in
Nashville. Bob Dalsemer supplied a short list of tunes that
he had gathered from three Brasstown area fiddlers. He also
supplied a tune list from an unpublished manuscript by the late
D. B. Hendrix with more tunes than the ones listed in his book
_Smoky Mountain Square Dances_ (but I'm not including that list
in my "recent sources" category). I also got tune lists from
Erik Hoffman, Bill Litchman, Tony Mates, Jim McKinney, David
Millstone, Tony Parkes, Jordan Ruyle, Don Stratton, and Vivian
Williams. Thanks, all. I also got at least one well-intentioned
reply that seemed so far off target from what I requested that I
couldn't use it (thanks all the same if you know who you are).

--Jim