“Hangman’s Reel” (French: Le Réel du Pendu) is a French-Canadian reel from Québec, documented in the late 19th century in the Saint-Philippe-de-Néri area and first recorded commercially by Montreal fiddlers Isidore Soucy and Joseph Allard in 1927 and 1928 respectively. Allard’s version is notable for treating the fourth degree as approximately D-sharp — a Mixolydian inflection that gives the A-major melody its slightly ambiguous, restless quality. Jean Carignan later brought the tune to wider international attention through his virtuosic recordings, cementing it as a signature showpiece of the Québécois fiddle tradition.
The name carries a folk legend: a condemned man was offered freedom if he could play a reel no one present had heard before, performing it on an out-of-tune fiddle at the gallows. The story is not historically documented but is too well-integrated into the tune’s identity to dismiss. An American old-time derivative played in AEAE cross-tuning also circulates, sharing melodic DNA with the Québécois original while belonging to a different regional tradition.
Bryan Sutton recorded it for Bluegrass Guitar (Sugar Hill, 2003), with Tim Crouch on fiddle, Tim O’Brien on mandolin, and Dennis Crouch on bass. Sutton’s flatpicking arrangement brought the French-Canadian reel into the bluegrass guitar idiom, and the recording is one of the channels through which “Hangman’s Reel” entered the Anglo-American bluegrass jam circuit as a crossover piece for technically ambitious flat-pickers.
