Forgive my ignorance

but didn’t this site used to have a list of tunes in order of their popularity? I know we aren’t supposed to post discussions about the way the website is run, but I sent an email a while back and I missed the reply…

Go to ‘Members’ and click the ‘Tunebook’ tab.

https://thesession.org/members/index.php/tunebook?countstart=1

Oh you rock, I knew I’d seen it before! Thanks so much!

I was wondering why Drowsie Maggie dropped from the top of the chart--she didn’t. That link should be:

https://thesession.org/members/index.php/tunebook?countstart=0

Oops 🙂

Being a curious old git I set about trying to find some of the least popular tunes that were downloaded. It took me hours thralling backwards but I got there in the end. These are a sample of the names that I recognised.

At time of writing - Drowsy Maggie came top at 1916
At around 100 were tunes such as Maids of Castlebar - The Ace and Deuce of Pipering and The Cat’s ramble to the child’s saucepan
At 50 we had Garrett Barry - The cat that ate the candle - The White Cockade and would you believe a tune called Nelson Mandela’s welcome to Glasgow
At 25 it was The High Level and The Wisemaid
At 18 I spotted Lad O’Biernes
At 16 Father Kelly’s
At 15 The Wonder Hornpipe and the wonderfully titled Throw another potato on the fire Edith
At 13 I spotted The Manchester Hornpipe
At 11 The Kilavil Postman caught my eye among the many pages of number eleven.
At 10 The Brides and Kate Dalrymple (there were twenty pages of tunes download ten times)
And the three tunes that were only downloaded once were
Secs and Cosecs - Elmers Tune and Ballinara Ora
(I must have a listen to Elmer’s Tune, surely it can’t be the old jazz classic famous for its drum solo).

You can go backwards much faster if you type bigger and bigger numbers at the end of the URL. For example, https://thesession.org/members/index.php/tunebook?countstart=1000 has winners such as Wallop the Potlid, downloaded 57 times (okay, so was the Dusty Miller).

Change 1000 to 5000 and you get widely played tunes such as The One Night Fling and Throw Away the Keys, downloaded 12 and 11 times. You can keep going back until page 8000, which as the three mentioned above.

My old teacher used to say “ You can do this the easy way or the hard way” Sorry now I didn’t listen to him….

Things you always wanted to know
The Elmers Tune on here which was downloaded only once is a polka
Elmer’s Tune ..as played by Glenn Miller is not the same tune (surprise surprise).
" It puts the kick in the chicken, the magic in June
It’s just Elmers Tune"
and finally the drum solo I mention is in a piece called Bernie’s Tune

i forgive you.