“June Apple” is a traditional American old-time fiddle reel from Virginia, played most commonly in the A Mixolydian mode — the modal, neither-major-nor-minor harmonic vocabulary that characterizes much southern Appalachian fiddle music. A “June apple” is an early-ripening apple variety that matures in late spring or early summer in the southern United States, smaller and tarter than later-ripening apples, and the tune’s title nods to the agricultural rhythm of the rural South where the music developed.
The exact origins of the tune are unclear, as is typical of orally transmitted Appalachian fiddle music. The most influential modern reading is by Tommy Jarrell (1901–1985), the Mt. Airy, North Carolina, fiddler whose recordings became canonical references for the older mountain-fiddling tradition. Jarrell’s version added a distinctive sung second strain that has become part of the tune’s standard performance practice. Benton Flippen of Surry County, North Carolina, plays the tune in plain A major, an interesting variant from the more common Mixolydian setting.
“June Apple” sits among the most reliably called old-time fiddle tunes at jam sessions where modal-fiddle traditions are at home. It is also widely played in bluegrass settings, often straightened slightly toward major-key tonality, and remains a workshop standard for fiddlers learning the modal-Appalachian idiom. The tune’s clean two-part structure and memorable opening phrase have kept it in active circulation for at least a century.