“Elzic’s Farewell” is a West Virginia fiddle tune in A Dorian — the modal minor key that gives it the haunting, unresolved quality characteristic of the deepest pieces in the Appalachian old-time tradition. “Elzic” is a phonetic corruption of the surname Elswick, whose final “w” is silent, and the tune traces to Harvey G. Elswick (1838–1915) of Pike County, Kentucky, who moved to Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1875. The most documented account holds that Elswick composed the melody in April 1889 when his dying mother asked him to “play his fiddle for her once more before she died” — the farewell of the title is a son’s farewell to his mother, not a soldier’s departure, though a later folk embellishment placed the tune in a Civil War context. Elswick is buried at Elswick Cemetery in Quick, Kanawha County.
The canonical old-time recordings come from Clay County, West Virginia: French Carpenter (1899–1965) passed the tune to Wilson Douglas (1922–1999), and both have recordings in wide circulation among players sourcing Appalachian tradition from primary carriers. The A Dorian mode means that even pickers who know the melody face a harmonic environment that can catch an inattentive backup player; the neutral third degree that hovers between C and C♯ is the defining sound of the piece.
Fletcher Bright and Bill Evans recorded it for Songs That Are Mostly Older Than Us (2016), a duo record sitting at the intersection of bluegrass precision and old-time repertoire. Bright’s fiddle and Evans’s mandolin bring the A Dorian melody into relief without over-smoothing the modal character, and the recording is a useful reference for pickers approaching the tune from a bluegrass rather than old-time starting point.
