"Stealing," by Leo Kottke

Happy New Year with a big throwback post to one of my first YouTube videos. This is the tune that essentially launched my personal channel and has been the most requested piece I've done over the last 10 years.

“Stealing” first appeared on Leo Kottke’s fourth commercial release, Mudlark, in 1971. The title “Stealing” refers to the borrowing of several different melodies from other songs. The main thematic material in the original recording is borrowed from the melody of “Doc’s Guitar,” by Doc Watson and “Buck Dancer’s Choice” by Sam and Kirk McGee. The original recording has a form of AABAABCACA, where one can hear a clear correlation to “Doc’s Guitar” for the A section, a slightly looser resemblance to “Buck Dancer’s Choice” for the B section, and original material composed for the C section. The multi-tracked material played over the first presentation of the B section would have been played starting on an A major chord with a capo on the third fret, thus changing the harmony to C. This material harmonizes with the B section, but in later live performance Leo plays this as a standalone section, serving a modulation to A major. The harmonized material in the third iteration of the A section does not appear in any later recordings.

“Stealing” appears again on My Feet Are Smiling, which was a collection of live recordings from late December of 1972. He has added a brief introduction and two new sections. The new “A” section has thematic content borrowed from Mitch Greenhill’s “Won’t You Tell Me,” a piece Kottke performed as a solo at least as early as 1968 at the No Exit Coffeehouse and as late as 1971 before becoming a permanent part of “Stealing.” The second new section is used as a segue from “Won’t You Tell Me” to “Doc’s Guitar” and closely resembles the main theme of Kottke’s “The Brain of the Purple Mountain.”

Kottke was still playing “Stealing” as a solo in the earlier half of 1973, but started playing it as a medley with “The Last Steam Engine Train” some time in the later half of the year.

This transcription corresponds almost exactly to the performance from My Feet Are Smiling, with a few corrections drawn from other early sources.

My original recording on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBf0mDYgMKY

How many errors can you spot??

Here is the private lesson video for patrons: https://youtu.be/UQ5aC0H7uMY

The brand new transcription is attached below. I know some of you here have studied this piece with me in the past. The new transcription is worth every minute of your time, there are many new intricacies and bits of nuance to uncover. I pulled out all the stops for this one.