“Whiskey Before Breakfast” is a breakdown in D that came into the old-time repertoire from Canada. It is often taken for an old traditional tune, and one album even called it an Irish tune long popular in America. It has generally been credited to the Manitoba fiddler and composer Andy de Jarlis (1914–1975), probably because of his copyrighted arrangement. When the tune appeared in his 1957 book Canadian Fiddle Tunes from Red River Valley, de Jarlis was credited only for the arrangement.
De Jarlis, born Andrew Desjarlais in Woodridge, Manitoba, came from a family of Métis fiddlers, and the tune has long been a favourite of Métis dance troupes in western Canada. In Canada it often accompanies the quadrille known as the “Reel of Eight.” The researcher Paul Gifford has suggested that de Jarlis learned it from the father of the Métis fiddler Teddy Boy Houle. The story goes that the two men played through the night with the help of a bottle until they passed out, and that on waking de Jarlis remembered the last tune they had played and perhaps gave it its name. Ken Perlman places the tune in Canada’s Maritime provinces, where it goes by “Spirits of the Morning.” Several writers have noted that its first part resembles older tunes such as the “Liverpool Hornpipe” and the Irish reels “Silver Spire” and “Greenfields of America,” all of which may go back to “Speed the Plough.”
According to Gifford, its popularity in the United States is fairly recent. It probably stems from the Canadian fiddle champion Lloyd Sexsmith’s Voyager LP More Fiddle Favorites, and Sexsmith probably learned the tune from de Jarlis. By the mid-1970s it was reaching American players by other routes too. John McCutcheon recorded it in 1975 after learning it from Ben Hensley of Speedwell, Tennessee, and in 1976 Norman Blake used it as the title of an album on Rounder. The folk singer Mike Cross set words to the melody, and Bryan Bowers also recorded that song.
