The Southern Appalachian Region

“Three Little Babes“, a British ballad sung by Texas Gladden. LYRICS. Recorded by Alan Lomax in Salem, Virginia: 1959. In the oldest mountain vocal styles, the singer sings alone and unaccompanied. Appalachian vocalists commonly prefer a strident, nasalized vocal timbre — the “high lonesome sound“ — and their singing is forthright and uninhibited. Gladden sings a ballad on the theme of excessive grief keeping the dead from finding a permanent resting place. British versions of this ballad are usually known under the title “The Wife of Usher’s Well” (Child 79). The melody here uses only six tones (an authentic pentatonic mode with the octave repeated) and remains within the range of an octave. Gladden recorded numerous ballads for the Library of Congress in the 1930s and 1940s. At the time of this recording, she was neither in the best of health or voice. Source: Southern Journey: Ballads and Breakdowns, Vol. 2. Alan Lomax Collection. Rounder CD 1702, 1997.

“Little Margaret,” Sheila Kay Adams (Madison County, North Carolina, 1982). A contemporary Appalachian version of Child Ballad #74 known in the British Isles as “Lady Margaret and Sweet William.” This style of unaccompanied singing was widely familiar throughout the mountains when Cecil Sharp, Maud Karpeles, and Olive Dame Campbell published their collection English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917).

“The Sailor Being Tired,” American ballad sung by Dillard Chandler of Madison County, North Carolina. LYRICS. Recorded in 1963 by John Cohen. Old Love Songs and Ballads (Folkways 1964). http://search.alexanderstreet.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/glmu/view/work/74809

Roscoe Holcomb’s “In the Pines.” Recorded ca. 1964 in Perry County, Kentucky. Source: The High Lonesome Sound: Roscoe Holcomb (Smithsonian Folkways, CD 40104, 1998) (For other versions of this often-recorded song see Roots and Roots page.)
(Recommended listening: Roscoe Holcomb’s album The High Lonesome Sound
http://search.alexanderstreet.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/glmu/view/work/73393 )

“Bonaparte’s Retreat,” Norman Edmonds. Recorded by Alan Lomax in Hillsville, Virginia: 1959. One of numerous tunes which commemorate Napoleon Boneparte. Edmonds offers a traditional rendition in a 4/4 meter. Two of the fiddle’s strings are tuned to D, producing drones suggestive of bagpipes accompanying the advancing and retreating army regiments.

The fiddle, perhaps the most common and typical folk instrument of the Southern Appalachians, was introduced by the mid-to-late eighteenth century as settlers of the Southern Appalachian region made their way down the Valley of Virginia. Played at dances, with and without vocal accompaniment, by Anglo-Celtic and African American musicians, the fiddle’s rough hewn tones complement the mountain vocal style. The first British colonies were established in America about the time that the fiddle reached its peak of popularity in Great Britain, where it had gradually replaced the bagpipes, except in isolated parts of the Gaelic world. The fiddler, with a tune bag of Irish jigs, Scotch reels, and English hornpipes, provided the dance music for pioneer and frontier America. Source: Southern Journey: Ballads and Breakdowns, Vol. 2. Alan Lomax Collection. Rounder CD 1702, 1997.

“Coo Coo” performed by John Snipes, banjo. Recorded in 1974 in North Carolina by Cecelia Conway.

The banjo, believed to have been introduced into the Southern Appalachians in the early to mid-nineteenth century directly and indirectly from African American sources soon became a staple of mountain music. John Snipes was an African-American performer. Source: Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia (Smithsonian Folkways CD 40079, 1998)

“Country Blues,“ Recorded by Dock Boggs, New York: 1927. LYRICS.
“Country Blues” is an American folk song better known by the title “Darling Corey.” “Dock” Boggs (1898-1971) was from Norton, a coal mining town in the Virginia panhandle. Boggs, a white musician, was influenced by the African-American music in his region and his banjo playing and singing has a bluesy feel. After recording for Brunswick Record in the 1920s, Boggs had hoped a music career might help him avoid a life in the mines. Instead he worked as a miner most of his life, retiring in 1952. He was rediscovered in the 1960s by Mike Seeger and played various folk festivals, including the 1963 Newport Folk Festival and the 1969 Festival of American Folklife. Source: Smithsonian Folkways/Anthology of American Folk Music.

“June Apple” Charlie Higgins (fiddle), Wade Ward (banjo), and Bob Carpenter (guitar). Dance music recorded by Alan Lomax in Hillsville, Virginia: 1959. This vigorous breakdown is played by 81-year-old Higgins. The tune is characterized by whole-step harmonic alternations between the sub-tonic (G) and tonic scale degrees (A) in a heptatonic mixolydian mode. The banjo’s ability to produce percussive, nasal tones and emulate the melodic slides of the fiddle well-suited it for mountain music. The fiddle-banjo duet became a perferred ensemble type by the latter part of the nineteenth century. Source: Southern Journey: Ballads and Breakdowns, Vol. 2. Alan Lomax Collection. Rounder CD 1702, 1997.

“Soldier’s Joy.” Fiddle band dance tune recorded by Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers. Atlanta: 1929. Columbia Records. Tanner, fiddle; Clayton McMichen, fiddle, spoken interjections; Riley Pucket, vocal, guitar; Fate Norris, banjo. “Soldier’s Joy” is a well known fiddle piece with origins in eighteenth-century Britain. This popular north Georgia band, whose name typified the self-parody often favored by early rural fiddle bands, played with a tangy, wild abandon. The two fiddlers featured here represented strongly contrasting musical impulses: Tanner was a rural, undisciplined hoedown fiddler, while McMichen was a more controlled and eclectic player with a liking for pop music and jazz. They were backed by Riley Puckett, the blind musician from Alpharetta, whose rapid multiple guitar runs were a distinguishing feature of Skillet Lickers recordings.

The guitar, which was known in the Southern Appalachians before the mid-nineteenth century, only became integraged into mountain music in the early part of the twentieth century in the wake of its use by commercial country stars such as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family in the 1920s.

“Lazy Farmer Boy” Buster Carter and Preston Young American ballad performed by this string band duo from Virginia (vocals and fiddle). Recorded in 1930. LYRICS
See the version transcribed by Cecil Sharp in Tennessee in 1916.

“The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe His Corn” Alison Krauss and Union Station. April 2002 at the Louisville Palace in Louisville, Kentucky. Vocal by Dan Tyminski. Fiddle and harmony vocal by Alison Krauss. Contemporary bluegrass version of the American ballad.

“How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” performed by Blind Alfred Reed (vocal and fiddle). 1929. Reed (1880-1956) born in Floyd, Virginia, was one of the artists who recorded at the Bristol Sessions in 1927, alongside more famous musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers and theCarter Family. LYRICS

“West Virginia“ American ballad sung by Hazel Dickens, vocal. John Baker, harmony. Recorded in 1980. Starkly true to her rural West Virginia upbringing, Dickens performs with the barest of ornamentation. In the mountainous state where she was raised, the coal camps were numerous, the wages low, the families large and poor. Hazel’s father was a powerful singer, banjo-picker, Primitive Baptist preacher who farmed and used his truck to haul timbers for the mines and coal for the miners to heat their houses. Third from the youngest of eleven children, Hazel left home at sixteen and supported herself in a variety of jobs. Source: Hazel Dickens: Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People (Rounder, 1980).

“Decoration Day’ Contemporary American ballad written and performed by Jason Isbell,formerly of the Drive-By Truckers. (Moulton, Alabama, April 13, 2013.) LYRICS

The Carter Family:

“John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man,” American ballad, possibly of African-American origin, recorded by the Carter Family in Camden, New Jersey, 1928. LYRICS.
Sara Carter, vocal and autoharp; Maybelle Carter, guitar. The Carter Family band from Maces Spring, Virginia consisted of A.P. (Alvin Pleasant Delaney) Carter (1891-1960), Maybelle (1909-1978) and Sara (1898-1979). One of the most important groups in the history of American music, the Carter Family, with various family members, was active off and on for over seventy years. In early August 1927, Victor talent scout Ralph Peer advertised in a Bristol, Tennessee, newspaper for musicians to come to an audition. These “Bristol Sessions” were responsible for the discovery of the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers (The Singing Brakeman), the two most important recording artists in early country music. A.P. Carter collected folk songs from the Southern Appalachian region near their home and arranged them to the Carter Family’s style. He was one of the first musicians to copyright these traditional arrangements in his own name and prepared song folios for sale at their shows. The Carters’ music was a mixture of sacred and secular songs. Many of their songs have become country and bluegrass standards and their music has influenced countless musicians.

Most of the original Carter Family’s lead vocals were done by Sara. Maybelle played guitar and autoharp. During their career they recorded over three hundred songs including such standards as “Wildwood Flower”, “Jimmie Brown the Newsboy,” and “Keep on the Sunnyside.” . The Carters continued to record through the Depression, before they stopped performing as a group in the early 1940s.

The Carter Family went across the Texas-Mexico border in 1938 and started broadcasting on the radio stations XERA, XEG, and XENT. These Border radio (“X” stations) were able to get around FCC limitations on the power of their transmissions. They broadcast performers’ music far and wide in the US and include the return of the “medicine show” to the airwaves– alternating music and comedy with sales pitches for patent medicines and dubious medical procedures.

Maybelle Carter played guitar in a distinct style, picking out the melody on the bass strings. It is a style that she learned from an African-American neighbor, Leslie Riddle. “Mother Mabelle”‘s picking influenced many guitarists and is a strongly identified with the folk revival. She and Sara made appearances at folk festivals during the 1960s including Newport and the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife.

The next generation of the Carter Family saw a group made up of Maybelle along with June, Helen, Anita, and Jeanette. The younger women starting performing with A.P., Sara and Maybelle during their border radio period. The later Carter Family was also a top selling recording group during the 1960s and 1970s. The extended Carter Family group also included June’s husband Johnny Cash and daughter Roseanne who continues to perform and record.

“Single Girl, Married Girl,” American ballad, recorded in Bristol, Tennessee: August 2, 1927. Sara Carter, vocal and autoharp; Maybelle Carter, guitar. “Single Girl” is one of the six songs recorded for Ralph Peer during their initial Bristol recording session. Sara Carter’s performance on this song convinced Peer to offer the Carters a contract. LYRICS Source: Smithsonian Folkways/Anthology of American Folk Music

“Can the Circle Be Unbroken (Bye and Bye)” Country gospel song performed by the Carter Family. New York: 1935. LYRICS. Maybelle Carter, vocal, guitar; Sara Carter, vocal, autoharp; A. P. Carter, vocal. A classic recorded by many musicians in many styles over the years.

Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Doc Watson

Clarence “Tom” Ashley (left) and Doc Watson

Tom Ashley—Old Time Appalachian Musician

Raised by his mother and grandparents in Mountain City, Tennessee, Clarence Tom Ashley(1895-1967) learned to sing and to play the banjo under the tutelage of his music loving family.

“House Carpenter“ Clarence Tom Ashley, vocal and banjo. Columbia 15444 recorded in 1928.LYRICS. Example of a British Ballad (Child 243) kept alive in America. (Alternate titles: Can’t You Remember When Your Heart Was Mine; The Daemon Lover; James Harris) . Source: Smithsonian Folkways/Anthology of American Folk Music

In his early professional career Clarence Ashley traveled with medicine shows. During the 1920s and 1930s he acted as front man in many of the groups he played with, mixing humor with music. Ashley recorded on several labels and with various old time string bands. After his initial recording career ended, he made a living sawmilling and farming, supplementing his income by what he called “busting” (passing the hat for money as he played. By the mid-1940s, Ashley had stopped playing banjo after suffering a work-related accident to his hand. Folklorist and musician Ralph Rinzler, one of the many younger musicians influenced by Harry Smith‘sAnthology of American Folk Music, ran into Ashley in North Carolina at the 1960 Union Grove Fiddler’s Convention. Rinzler remembered Ashley from the Anthology and asked if he could record him. He encouraged Ashley to resume his banjo playing. This subsequent recording session also brought the brilliant guitarist Arthel “Doc” Watson to the attention of Rinzler. One of the chief talent scouts for the Newport Folk Festival, Rinzler saw to it that Ashley and Watson were presented to folk revival audiences via appearances at festivals and nightclubs. Ashley influenced artists such as the New Lost City Ramblers, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and theRed Clay Ramblers.

“John Henry” Doc Watson. Atlanta, 1990.

Southern Appalachian Murder Ballads:

“Ommie Wise“ G.B. Grayson, vocal and fiddle. Recorded in Atlanta, 1927. LYRICS.
Source: Smithsonian Folkways/Anthology of American Folk Music Grayson (1888-1930) was a blind fiddler from East Tennessee. Most of his significant recordings were done with his partner Henry Whitter (1892-1941). Whitter was one of the first country musicians to play guitar with a harmonica rack around his neck, an image that has come to be identified with Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

Grayson and Whitter’s recordings were big sellers for the Victor Talking Machine Company and some of them were the first major recording of songs that now have become standards. These would include “The Banks of the Ohio”, “Train 45″, and “Handsome Molly.” In 1930, the duo also were the first group to record “Tom Dooley”, the well known North Carolina murder ballad popularized in the1950s by the Kingston Trio. The Sheriff Grayson who arrests Tom Dooley in the song was G.B. Grayson’s real life grand uncle.

“The Banks of the Ohio” Blue Sky Boys. Earl Bolick (1919-1998), lead vocal and guitar; Bill Bolick (b. 1917), tenor vocal and mandolin. Recorded in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1936. This American ballad has been frequently recorded. The Blue Sky Boys from western North Carolina were role models for many of the brother harmony teams in country music who learned from their records of traditional songs. Their slower, more sentimental style contrasts with that of the Monroe Brothers, who emphasized challenging high harmonies and aggressive speeds. Source: Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4 (Austin, Texas: Revenant, 2000)

“The Banks of the Ohio” Ruby Vass, vocal and guitar. Recorded by Alan Lomax, August 28, 1959 in Hillsville, Virginia: 1959. LYRICS. Source: Southern Journey: Ballads and Breakdowns, Songs from the Southern Mountains, Vol. 2. (Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records, 1997).

“Poor Ellen Smith,” Molly O’Day & The Cumberland Mountain Folks, 1949. Evidence of the hard driving sound that would become a major feature of bluegrass is present in O’Day’s treatment of this old American ballad. LYRICS Lois LaVerne Williamson (b.1923 in McVeigh Kentucky; d. 1987), better known as Molly O’Day, was perhaps the most widely admired traditional female country singer of the 1940s. Source: Columbia Country Classics: The Golden Age. Another version of “Poor Ellen Smith“ by Wilma Lee Cooper (1979).

“Tom Dooley,” Grayson and Whitter’s 1929 recording for Victor Records, Memphis, Tennessee.

“Tom Dooley,” Kingston Trio, 1958. LYRICS. Dave Guard, vocal, guitar; Nick Reynolds, vocal, guitar; Bob Shane, vocal, banjo; Buzz Wheeler, bass. 1958. Capitol Records.

Twenty-five-year-old Thomas C. Dula was hanged on May 1868 for the murder of Laura Foster in Wilkes County, NC. Before the Civil War, Tom had been lovers with both Laura and her cousin Ann Foster. After returning home from the war, he took up again with Laura. Ann, meanwhile, had maried James Melton. In May 1866 Tom suggested eloping, and Laura was not seen again. A posse found Dula in Tennessee and brought him back a prisoner. Dula and Ann Melton were tried for murder (by some accounts, he had contracted a veneral disease from Laura and passed it on to Ann). Dula was found guilty; he appealed, was retried, and found guilty a second trime. Ann Melton was acquitted after two years in jail waiting for trial, but according to local legend she confessed on her deathbed. Source: Folk Song America: A 20th Century Revival, (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Collection of Recordings, 1990) More on “Tom Dooley.”

“Pretty Polly” Estil C. Ball, vocal and guitar. Recorded by Alan Lomax in Rugby, Virginia, 1959. VIEW LYRICS Source: Southern Journey: Voices from the American South, Vol. 1 (Rounder CD 1701, 1997)

Revising the murder ballad

African American Banjo Styles

“Coo Coo.“ John Snipes of Orange County, North Carolina. Recorded in 1974 by Cecelia Conway. Many elderly Black and white banjo players in the region play this complex, haunting piece about the cuckoo, who lays her eggs in another’s bird’s next.

“Going Where I’ve Never Been Before.” John Snipes. This song is a sequence of emotional core lines about a lover moving on. Each line is repeated once and the stanzas are improvisationally varied. The form suggests the banjo’s influence on the composition of the earliest recorded blues, which repeated one line over and over.

“Jaybird March.” Etta Baker (b. 1913-2006) on banjo and her sister Cora Phillips on guitar. Etta Baker, raised near the Blue Ridge Mountains in Caldwell County, North Carolina, is also a remarkably expressive blues musician who plays guitar and electric guitar. She was honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Award in 1991.

“Roustabout” Dink Roberts, clawhammer banjo and vocals. Along with “Coo Coo,” this is one of the important showpiece tunes in the African American banjo repetory.

Source for black banjo styles: Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia (Smithsonian Folkways CD 40079, 1998). See also the book African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia by Cecelia Conway (Knoxville: Univ. of TN Press, 1995)

John Henry

“John Henry” is among the most important and widely-known American ballads. “Tracking John Henry,” writes folklorist Richard Spotswood, “is analogous to documenting the historical Jesus. In neither case do contemporary written records survive. In both cases, legends arose out of oral tradition later committed to paper. The resulting mythologies required no historical basis to sustain them; indeed, the legends might not have flourished had they been burdened with documentary detail. Christ the martyr became the symbol for universal human redemption, while John Henry’s martydom symbolized the tension between manual labor and the industrial revolution, from which, at least for many, there was no redemption. His steam drill has come to symbolize worker obsolescence through every new industrial refinement from the cotton gin to computer-driven factories.”

Read: John Henry

Listen: American Icons–JohnHenry This eleven-minute audio feature presents an overview of the John Henry ballad and the continuing significance of this legendary character.

Some Versions of “John Henry”

“John Henry Blues” Evans & McClain, n.d. Joe Evans was born in the early 1900s in Knoxville (TN) where he spent most of his career as a musician and later as a boot black. His repertoire covered earlier string music as well as the contemporary blues of the period. Nothing is known of Arthur McClain. Source: Before the Blues, Vol. 3 (Yazoo 2017: 1996)

“Gonna Die With My Hammer In My Hand“ The Williamson Brothers and Curry, 1927. The Williamson Brothers came from Logan County, West Virginia, not far from John Henry’s legendary Big Bend Tunnel, built between 1870 and 1872 by the C & O Railroad. Source: Smithsonian Folkways/Anthology of American Folk Music.

“John Henry Was a Little Boy” J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers. Recorded in Charlotte, N. C., in 1936. Joseph Emmet Mainer, fiddle; Wade Mainer, vocal and banjo; Zeke Morris and Beacham Blackweller, guitars and chorus.

“John Henry” Ed Lewis, vocals and axe strokes, 1959. Recorded at Camp B, Mississippi State Penitentiary, Lambert Mississippi. Work song.

“Spike Driver Blues” guitar and vocal by Mississippi John Hurt. LYRICS. 1963. “This is the hammer that killed John Henry, but it won’t kill me.”

“John Henry” Vocal and guitar by Doc Watson. Atlanta, 1990.

John Henry painting

Painting by Frederick Brown (ca 1977).National Museum of American Art, Washington, D. C.

“Black Lung Disease Rates Skyrocket To HIghest Levels Since 1970s” Huffington Post, September 15, 2014.
“Black Lung” American ballad written by Hazel Dickens. Sung by Kathy Mattea (2007). LYRICS.

Two widely known and frequently recorded coal mining songs written by Merle Travis that became popular hits:

“Dark as a Dungeon” Merle Travis, vocal and guitar 1946. LYRICS.

“Sixteen Tons” Tennesee Ernie Ford. Hollywood: 1955. Capitol Records. LYRICS. Ford, vocal; Jack Fascinato, conductor; unknown orchestra. “Sixteen Tons” was one of the glittering commmercial successes of American recordings in the 1950s. Released in mid-October, 1955, it reached the number one position on the Billboard charts by November 26 and sold over a million copies by the end of the year. Coming in the midst of Eisenhower conservatism, its popularity probably owed little to its social message, which seemed more appropriate to the mood of the 1930s. Rather, the song was made appealing by the beat that accompanied it and by Tennessee Ernie Ford‘s (Ernest Jennings Ford, from Bristol, Tennessee) reading of the lyrics. Above all, it benefited from the national exposure give it by Ford’s daily network television show. The song’s composer, Merle Travis, had first recorded it in 1947, but it received only modest exposure until Ford’s hit version.

Sarah Ogan Gunning sings her composition “Come All You Coal Miners.” LYRICS.

Sacred Songstyles

“When I Went Down in the Valley to Pray” Performed by the Dry Branch Fire Squad. Camp meeting spiritual sung in a cappella quartet style.

“Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah“ Hymn sung by Ike Caudill and congregation. Recorded September 6, 1959 at the Mt. Olivet Old Regular Baptist Church, Blackey, Kentucky. Old Regular Baptists sing “lining hymns,” a style that grew directly out of the Protestant Reformation. Church reformers sought to involve church members directly in the service by doing away with choirs and letting everyone raise their voice to sing God’s praises. They faced difficult challenges, as most church-goers of the time could not read, and frequently had no secular models to follow for group singing. One solution was for the congregation to repeat each line of a hymn after a leader, with each individual singer following the melody according to his or her own inspiration.

Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this foreign land.
I am weak, but Thou art mighty,
Hold me with Thy powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,
Feed me, till I want no more.

Source: Southern Journey: Voices from the American South, Vol.1. Alan Lomax Collection. (Rounder CD 1701, 1997).

What is “shape-note” and “Sacred Harp” singing?

“Rocky Road“ Performed by Alabama Sacred Harp Singers. Recorded in Atlanta, April 16, 1928. Source:Smithsonian Folkways/Anthology of American Folk Music. LYRICS.

This style, which relies both upon printed song books and oral tradition, originated in New England in the eighteenth century and spread extensively below the Mason-Dixon Line by the mid-nineteenth century. Sacred Harp singing is a non-denominational community musical event emphasizing participation, not performance. Singers sit facing inward in a hollow square. Each individual is invited to take a turn “leading,” i.e. standing in the center, selecting a song, and beating time with the hand. The singing is not accompanied by harps or any other instrument. The group sings from The Sacred Harp, an oblong songbook first published in 1844 by B.F.White and E. J. King. The repertory includes psalm tunes, fuging tunes, odes and anthems by the first American composers (1770-1810), and also settings of folk songs and revival hymns (1810-1860). The current 1991Edition contains many songs in these styles by living composers.

Visit Sacred Harp–Shape Note (Website created by Prof. Warren Steele at the University of Mississippi.)

“The Last Words of Copernicus” Sung by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers. Recorded by Alan Lomax, September 12, 1959 in Fyffe, Alabama. Lomax had recorded Sacred Harp singing in 1942, and a handful of commercial recordings made of small groups of singers attempting to recreate something of the Sacred Harp’s unique beauty had also been made. The recording technology of the time, however, simply could not capture the extraordinary polyphony of Southern shape-note singing. Armed with sensitive ribbon microphones and the first portable stereo recorder, Lomax was at last able to approximate the glory of the Sacred Harp style on tape.

Sacred Harp has deep roots in the Protestant churches of England and Scotland, where the democratic ideals of the Reformation held that everyone should have a voice in church. The style was first developed in eighteenth century New England as a way to teach the small congregation lacking instruments and trained singers to function as a choir. Hymns were written out with bass, treble, and soprano parts (alto parts were added in the nineteenth century) and singers learned melodies from shaped note texts. When fully realized, the results are stunning. Typically, singers will begin a hymn by singing the melody using the fa, sol, la, andmi syllabales of the scale to fix the tune, following it with the actual text of the hymn. The bass, tenor, treble, and alto parts are relative and not fixed to concert pitch.

Sacred Harp singing died out in New England as greater prosperity enabaled churches to buy organs and establish full-time choirs. The style spread south with the Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, finding favor among Baptists and Methodists. A separate black Sacred Harp tradition also developed. The style of singing flourished in the South partly because of the proscription of musical instruments in some Baptist denominations, but mainly because Sacred Harp meetings or “singings” (which are not actual church services) attracted hundreds of singers and constituted a vital form of fellowship among the small, scattered country homesteads and churches of the South in the days before paved roads and telephones. Even in today’s electronic age, Sacred Harp singing remains a robust tradition and a unique experience. The singing is still filled with the exhuberance and passion of its participants and has even moved back into the Northeast, as well as the rest of the country.

Ye golden lamps of Heav’n Farewell thou every changing moon,
Pale empress of the night. And thou refulgent orb of day, In brighter flames array’d
My soul which springs beyond thy sphere, No more demands thy aid.

Source: Southern Journey: Voices from the American South. The Alan Lomax Collection, Vol. 1 (Rounder Records, CD 1701, 1997).

Dry Branch Fire Squad :Memories that Bless + Burn (Rounder Records: 1999)

Appalachian sacred singing as performed by the Dry Branch Fire Squad.

“Looking for the Stone” (a cappella quartet style). LYRICS.

“Looking for the Stone” (Bluegrass style).

“I’ll Be No Stranger” (a cappella quartet style).

“When I Went Down in the Valley to Pray” (camp meetingspiritual sung in a cappella quartet style).

Song of religious prophecy: “Great Speckled Bird” Roy Acuff and His Crazy Tennesseans. Chicago, 1936. LYRICS. Vocalion Records. Composed by Rev. Guy Smith. Acuff, vocal; Jess Easterday, guitar; James Clell Summey, steel guitar; Red Jones, bass. Roy Acuff, longtime star of the Grand Ole Opry recorded this in his first Okeh-Vocalion session and performed it until his death in 1992. It was based on Jeremiah 12:9: “Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her.” Persumably a description of the universal persecuted church (believers in Christ), the song was adopted as an anthem by somePentecostal groups. Acuff first heard it performed in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Bluegrass gospel: “I’m Working on a Building” Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. 1954.LYRICS. Source: The Best of Bill Monroe (MCA 1999).

Loretta Lynn:

“Coal Miner’s Daughter” Loretta Lynn. Nashville: 1969. Decca. LYRICS.

Loretta Lynn came from a coal mining famiy and was the second of eight children. Her first hit, “Honky Tonk Girl” (1960) on Zero Records of Vancouver, Canada, took Lynn to Nashville. She became a regular on the Wilburn Brothers television show and continued to write and record many songs: “Success,” “Blue Kentucky Girl.” But it wasn’t until her recordings of “You Ain’t Woman Enough” and “Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’” that Lynn’s mucis took a new direction. Instead of using traditional country music themes, she wrote songs that were more realistic and less compromising. In a familiar pattern, her outspoken songs such as “Fist City” and “The Pill” used humor to address highly-charged issues of sexual roles. In 1976, Lynn’s autobiography,Coal Miner’s Daughter became a best seller and was made into a hit movie starring Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones. Spacek won an Oscar for her portrayal of Lynn.

“The Pill” Loretta Lynn. Nashville, 1972 (MCA Records). LYRICS.
Written by Lynn. Produced by Owen Bradley.

Dolly Parton:

“Coat of Many Colors” Dolly Parton. Nashville: 1971. RCA. Written by Parton. LYRICS.

Dolly Parton talks with Nick Spitzer, host of American Routes radio, about her musical and family roots in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. (8 and 1/2 minutes)

Bluegrass:

“Blue Moon of Kentucky” Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. 1954. LYRICS. Source: The Best of Bill Monroe (MCA 1999)

“I’m Working on a Building” Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. 1954. LYRICS. Source: The Best of Bill Monroe (MCA 1999)

Bill Monroe. “In the Pines“ 1952. Source: The Best of Bill Monroe (MCA 1999) (For other versions of this often-recorded song see the Roots and Roots page.)

Biographical sketch of Monroe.

The mandolin, which like the guitar, had been available by mail order through the Sears Roebuck catalog since the early 1900s, rose to importance with the advent of bluegrass in the 1940s. Its prominence was in large part due to the virtuoso playing of the “father of bluegrass.” Bill Monroe was born into a musical family in Rosine, Kentucky, in 1911. It was an area where the state’s rolling hills teemed with verdant grass known as the bluegrass region, a term Monroe would borrow to name his music. He took up the mandolin as a child and began playing with his uncle Pendleton Vandiver, an accomplished fiddler. In the early 1930s, Bill team with his brother Charlie to play old-time music as The Monroe Brothers. When they split in 1938, Bill determined to forge a new style using his distinctive high tenor voice and mastery of the mandolin as starting points. “I was going to put the high, lonesome sound in it,” he later recalled, “the hard drive to it, and play the melody where it would have a feeling in it.” With his new group, which became known as the Blue Grass Boys, Monroe made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 1939.

“Randy Lynn Rag” Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs with the Foggy Mountain Boys. Flatt, guitar; Scruggs, banjo; Paul Warren, fiddle; Jack Shook, rhythm guitar; Curly Seckler, mandolin; Josh Graves, dobro; Ernie Newton, bass. Recorded in 1955 in Nashville for Columbia Records. Source: Classic Country Music (Smithsonian Recordings, 1990). In 1948 Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs left Bill Monroe to form the Foggy Mountain Boys, who became the most active country music group in the nation, taking their brand of music to mountain hamlets and Carnegie Hall alike. Scruggs, from Flint Hill, North Carolina, wrought a revolution in banjo playing when he popularized his three-finger method in the twenty years after 1945. The Scruggs style is known by millions of banjo pickers.

Two traditional songs performed by Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys: “Man of Constant Sorrow” (LYRICS) and “Oh Death” (LYRICS). Born in 1927 in Dickenson County, Virginia, the first two decades of Ralph’s career were spent as the younger half of the Stanley Brothers, one of the most popular bluegrass acts of their time, which ended with Carter Stanley’s death in 1966. In 1967, Ralph launched Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys and is now considered one of the major figures in bluegrass. His driving banjo style combines elements of the older clawhammer sound that he heard his mother play, with the more modern Scruggs-style three-finger picking that is synonymous with bluegrass banjo. Source: Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys: Man of Constant Sorrow (Rebel CD 1126, 2001).

Nick Spitzer interview with Ralph Stanley (12 minutes) from American Routes Radio.

“Rocky Top” Osborne Brothers. Nashville: 1967. Decca. Bobby Osborne, vocal, mandolin; Sonny Osborne, vocal, banjo; Ray Edenton, Grady Martin, guitar; Hal Rugg, steel guitar; Hargus Robbins, piano; Jerry Carrigan, drums; Lawrence R. Blackwell, bass. “Rocky Top” may very well be the best known bluegrass song in the world. Bob and Sonny Osborne from Hyden, Kentucky, began as traditional musicians. Sony played for a short time with Bill Monroe and both Osbornes belonged to bands that included such hardcore bluegass musicians as Red Allen and Jimmie Martin. Source: Classic Country Music (Smithsonian Recordings, 1990)

“Dixieland“ Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band, 1999.” LYRICS Source: The Mountain (E-Squared, 1999). Biography of Earle. Biography of Del McCoury.

Birmingham, Alabama, native Emmylou Harris sings and discusses her career, influences, country identity, and the writing of “Red Dirt Girls.” (RealAudio, 12:13 minutes). Biography ofHarris.

“The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn,” Alison Krauss & Union Station (2002). LYRICS. Traditional American ballad done in bluegrass style. Read about Alison Krauss.
The first recorded version of “Lazy Farmer Boy” (1930?) by Preston Young, Posey Rorer, Buster Carter.

“Decoration Day,” written and sung by Jason Isbell with the Drive-By Truckers. (2003) LYRICS.

Southern Appalachian Links of Interest:

WMMT Mountain Community Radio streaming live from Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Appalachia (Wikipedia).

Blue Ridge Music Trails. A traveler’s guide to live traditional music and dance along the Blue Ridge. The music venues selected for the Blue Ridge Music Trails have been identified by folklife fieldworkers. Though listeners may well hear an array of musical styles at a given event, each site includes a substantial amount of traditional Blue Ridge music performed by musicians native to the region. All of the events listed are on-going and are open to the public.

Sweet Is the Day: A Sacred Harp Family Portrait (Streaming video 59:34). This documentary film tells the story of the Woottens, one of the key singing families who have helped Sacred Harp music survive and flourish for more than 150 years.

Visit Clyde Davenport (born 1921), old-time fiddler and banjor player of south-central Kentucky. Davenport discusses his musical tradition, family history, and plays tunes. (Site created by ethnomusicologist Jeff Titon includes photographs, audio recordings, and musical transcriptions.)

Powerhouse for God (Streaming video 57 min) Powerhouse for God is a portrait of an old-fashioned Baptist preacher, his family, and their church in Virginia’s northern Blue Ridge Mountains.

Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance: Buck, Flatfoot and Tap (Streaming video. 1 hour and 27 min.) This documentary film is the first documentary to demonstrate the styles of flatfoot, buck, hoedown, and rural tap dancing.