“Whiskey Before Breakfast” is one of the most widely played fiddle tunes in the contemporary bluegrass and old-time canons, and one whose origins are genuinely contested. The tune is generally credited to Andy De Jarlis, the influential mid-20th-century Manitoba fiddler, whose copyrighted arrangement appeared in his 1957 collection Canadian Fiddle Tunes from Red River Valley. De Jarlis himself was credited only for the arrangement, however — a footnote suggesting the tune predated his version.
The tune is a longtime favorite in Métis fiddle culture across the Canadian prairies, particularly in Manitoba, where De Jarlis had Métis ancestry. One persistent oral tradition (recorded by the folklorist Paul Gifford) attributes the tune’s title to a long evening’s drinking session between De Jarlis and the elder Houle — father of fiddler Teddy Boy Houle — the two men playing through the night until the title became literal at dawn.
“Whiskey Before Breakfast” is often used as accompaniment for the quadrille “Reel of Eight” in Canadian Métis dance traditions; the Manitoba fiddler Myllie Barron, born 1910, recalled hearing the tune played for the dance as a boy. The tune crossed the U.S. border through old-time and bluegrass workshop circuits in the 1970s and 1980s and is now a near-universal jam-session call across the contemporary acoustic-music traditions.