One more folk song : Barbara Allen

Surely one of the best-known of all traditional songs on both sides of the Atlantic, "Barbara Allen" was collected by Cecil Sharp on various places during his Appalachian trips (see previous post).

It is a very old song, of uncertain origin, going back to the 17th century in England and Ireland as well. See here for more details about the song.

As Mr. Wikipedia says "Most versions of "Barbara Allen" can be summarised thus: a young man is dying of unrequited love for Barbara Allen; she is called to his deathbed but all she can say is, 'Young man, I think you're dying.' When he dies, she is stricken with grief and dies soon after. Often, a briar grows from her grave and a rose from his, until they grow together."

Following a request for early and traditional version sof the song, I dug and found a few interesting ones.

In the 1950s song collectors from America went to Ireland and recorded traditional singers, in a sort of Cecil Sharp trip in reverse. Here is one of them, Sarah Makay, recorded in 1954 by Jean Ritchie.

Sarah Maken - Barbara Allen (buy) (1960)

Let's cross the ocean once again and hear a bluegrass version by The Lilly Brothers and Don Stover (banjo), recorded for Folkways in 1961.

The Lilly Brothers & Don Stover - Barbara Allen (buy) (1961)


Then, back to England, with Shirley Collins and her sister Dolly's strange and beautiful portative organ. Shirley was an important figure in British folk revival in the sixties and after.

Shirley Collins - Barbara Allen (buy) (1968)

But Barbara Allen was not only sung by folk musicians. Barbara could be pop and jazzy and swinging sometimes.

Doris Day - Barbara Allen (buy) (1941)

(quote from Wikipedia) : "Johnny Cash re-wrote lyrics to this song and performed it live at Austin City Limits in 1987. The song was re-named "The Ballad of Barbara". The main theme of the song is about divorce instead of death.".

In fact the song was first recorded in 1977 on The Last Gunfighter Ballad. I prefer the original version.

Johnny Cash - Ballad of Barbara (buy) (1977)

Unfortunately I don't have the beautiful Bob Dylan version, but here it is on the Deezer player

Découvrez Bob Dylan!

Cecil Sharp in the Appalachians

Cecil Sharp was the founding father of the English folk revival in the beginning of 20th century. When he came to America in 1915 he realized that nearly all of he English folk songs the immigrants had carried with them in America had vanished, replaced by more sophisticated and "educated" versions.
Then he heard abut the Appalachian, the geographical isolation and the strong folk song tradition of the mountaineers. Sharp made three visits to North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and collected 1700 traditional English ballads, including versions that were not being sung in England and Scotland anymore. The whole story is told in this excellent article. The collected ballads included "The House Carpenter", "Barbara Allen", "The Gypsy Laddie", or immigrant songs like "Pretty Saro" (look here for the song's origins).

Dolly Greer - Pretty Saro (buy) (From the album "Doc Watson & Family, 1963)

Dolly Greer is a distant cousin of Doc's. She sings it a cappela, in the open, the way people sang to Sharp in 1917.

Imagine a very British scholar in a 3-piece suit climbing the mountains and meeting with bewildered but cooperative families of mountainers, and you won't be far from the truth.

But when he visited the Appalachian, the place was changing, opening to the outside world. Coal mines were attracting a population of new settlers coming from different parts of the continent and from overseas. This new melting pot was about to give birth to what we now call country music.

Sharp was only interested in the survival of English ballads and didn't pay much attention to native American ballads of any origin.

There's also this controversial quote in his diary :

We tramped - mainly huphill. When we reached the cove we found it peopled by niggers... All our troubles and spent energy for nought.

In his obsession for lost British folklore, Sharp (who was not so sharp-eyed after all) totally missed what was about to happen to American folk music. Nevertheless, his story is a great document to study the origins of country music.

In September of 1916, Sharp collected 26 songs from a Mrs Bruckner in Black Mountain, NC, including "The Farmer's Curst Wife", that Bill & Belle Reed recorded under the name "Old Lady and the Devil" 12 years later. In the mean time, the guitar had begun to replace the banjo.

Bill & Belle Reed - Old Lady and the Devil (buy) (1928)

Find more versions of this song here, on my fellow French roots blogger Gadaya's wonderful site, Old Weird America, entirely devoted to the Harry Smith anthology. It's a real gold (or coal ?) mine !

A week of folksongs (6) : I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground

What a strange and beautiful song ! Recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who was himself a folklorist and minstrel (and a lawyer by trade) from North Carolina. According to Harry Smith, Lunsford wrote that this song is "typical of the Pigeon River Valley".

The following is a quote from a short Wikipedia article about the song :

As stated in his own words within his recordings, Mr. Lunsford considered
himself an archivist and never took credit for this song or any songs he
recorded. He traveled the western mountains of North Carolina and learned this
song from the "locals" as it was his goal and passion to archive songs that he
heard growing up for historical reference.

Novelist and critic Robert Cantwell says: "Listen to 'I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground' again and again, learn to play the banjo and sing it yourself over and over, study every printed version, squander your time in the bargain, and you still won't fathom it." He's right.
(Retrieved from the folktunes site)

Bascom Lamar Lunsford - I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground (buy) (1928)

Swedish folksinger Kristian Matsson aka The Tallest Man On Earth, mentions Lunsford as one of his main influences. In his song "I Won't Be Found", the opener of his great self titled debut album that came out last year, he even quotes Lunsford's verses about the mole in the ground and the lizard in the spring.
Check this song on his myspace page .

So that was the last post for this week of folk songs. I'm taking the kids to the country this week end and I'll be back next week.
See you !

A week of folk songs (5) : In The Pines / Black Girl

Hi,

I first planned to post about "Frankie and Johnny", but Glenn at the musical blog So Well Remembered made an excellent post about the Harry Smith anthology including a review of Mississippi John Hurt's "Frankie". You have to check it out !

According to a good Wikipedia article, "In The Pines" dates back from at least the 1870s and may be of Southern Appalachian origin.

It was first published by Cecil Sharp, founding father of the folklore revival in England. His story is very interesting and this man had a crucial role, even though it is an indirect one, in the emergence of country music. I will come back to his story in a future post.
Sharp collected the following lines :

Black girl, black girl, don't lie to meWhere did you stay last night?
I stayed in the pines where the sun never shines
And shivered when the cold wind blows

The wikipedia article gives a big list of people who performed that song, including the Monroe Brothers, great Georgia bluesman Peg Leg Howell, and Louisiana Cajun accordion player Nathan Abshire who recorded a French version (I really should hear that one).

But the version I want to play you is not part of the list. It's by Darby and Tarlton and it's from 1927, so it's probably one of the earliest versions of the song. Darby and Tarlton, a hillbilly duo featuring Hawaiian-style guitar, played in such a bluesy manner that people often mistook them for Afro-American performers.

Darby & Tarlton – Lonesome In The Pines (buy) (apr. 1927)

And then, of course, the Leadbelly version, "Black Girl", made famous by Nirvana's cover. Leadbelly was from West Louisiana / East Texas, home of the piney woods, and I've always found his version menacing and mysterious. But I'm a Leadbelly fanatic…
It seems that Leadbelly took from Darby & Tarlton, because he also recorded a song called "On A Monday", that may originate from D & T's biggest hit, the great "Birmingham Jail".

Leadbelly – Black Gal (Where Did You Stay Last Night ?) (1944) (buy) (NYC, feb.1944)


Links and sources :

Wikipedia article about "In The Pines"

On Darby & Tarlton, see this intersting post on American String Conspiracy

On Leadbelly, see AMG bio

On Harry Smith's anthology, see this great blog dedicated to the Anthology

And Glenn's posts on So Well Remebered

A week of folk songs (4) : Careless Love

This one's a traditional tune, whose origin is not very clear. Is it from Britain, Ireland, or is it an American creation ? Nobody knows for sure.
It was first published by WC Handy as "Loveless Love", and it is more common in blues and jazz than in country music.

My favourite version is by New Orleans guitar player Lonnie Johnson. I love his almost introspective singing.

Lonnie Johnson – Careless Love (buy) (New York, nov 1928)

There's also a great country version by The Delmore Brothers, one of the greatest harmonizing duets. Sort of musical grandfathers to Gary Louris & Mark Olson (fathers being the Everly Bros, of course).

Delmore Brothers – Careless Love (buy) (Chicago, jan 1938)

A Week of folk songs (3) : Gambling Barroom Blues (St James Infirmary)

"Saint James Infirmary" is an American folk song with English origins. In Britain it was called "The Unfortunate Rake" and it was about a sailor who dies after spending his money on prostitutes. In America it became a more drinking or gambling-related song.

The most famous and influential version was Louis Armstrong Dixieland jazz rendition in 1928, but I really love what Jimmie Rodgers did with that song, keeping the melody and the setting but telling a slightly different story. His "Gambling Barroom blues" is the first country version of SJI.

For more details, check out the Wikipedia article, it's fine.

And go to the excellent blog Honey Where You Been So Long to see a list of St James Infirmary versions.

Jimmie Rodgers - Gambling Barroom Blues (St James Infirmary) (buy) (1932)

Please feel free to mention your favorite versions in the comments section

A Week Of Folksongs (2) : Fatal Flower Garden

The second song in Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music didn't draw my attention when I first heard it. The sound quality was rather bad, I was in the subway, and I didn't notice the lyrics. Then when reading the liner notes I realized what it was all about and came back to it, and now it's one of my favorite songs from the anthology.

Favorite ? Well, I don't know in fact... Certainly most striking though, as it is about the murder of a child. Now that I have kids, I've grown very sensitive about that subject. Searching for documentation about the song history, I learnt that it goes back to the Middle Ages, and that it was originally an (very sadly) popular anti-semitic story, the murderer being "the Jew's daughter".
For more details, see here.

Well at least in that version from Alabama, the anti-Semitsm is absent : the woman is a "gypsy" which is the symbol of the fearsome stranger, the unknown, the otherness of evil.
The song has a mysterious, almost gothic athmosphere, emphasizing contrasts (the flower garden/the hideous murder), and is a mini horror movie in itself. And the melody and the singing are rather sweet and lovely, with those smooth Hawaiian guitars… Creepy !
A sort of moral story : don't talk to strangers !!! Well, a really ambiguous song, but very interesting anyway.

Nelstone's Hawaiians - Fatal Flower Garden (buy) (1930)

PS (2) : Still haunted by that story, I've dug and found two interesting links, one including the original lyrics and some fine comments, and the other (on Scottish folk singer Dick Gaughan's site) about the real facts that might have inspired the song in 1255. A quote from the first one :

"Charges of ritual murder was common against Jews. They were first levelled in 12th-century England, and occurred throughout Europe as late as the 1880s. Jews were said to kill Christian children, often before Easter, for ritual purposes. These fabrications, known as the Blood Libel, made a cult of the supposed victims and was an excuse for persecution which took a toll of thousands of Jewish lives over many centuries."

A week of folksongs (1) : The Coo-Coo Bird

You can't talk about the origins of pop music, of country music, of the blues, without mentioning folk songs from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. I owe them (at least) a week.

So I'll try to post folk songs this week (starting from today), hopefully everyday, with a few historical comments.

Most of these songs come from the great compilation Folksongs : Old Time Country Music 1926-1944 from the French label Frémeaux et Associés, and of course from The Anthology Of American Folk Music compiled by Harry Smith.

First song is "The Coo-coo Bird", first recorded by old time banjo player Clarence Ashley in 1929. The song comes from England or Ireland (no one really knows). Ashley sings it his own way, making it sound very Appalachian with his unique 5-string banjo tuning.

You can read about the story of that song on Ashley's website. I forst intended to post the original version, but that one, with Doc Watson on the guitar, recorded in 1961, is indeed way better.

Doc Watson & Clarence Ashley - The Coo-Coo Bird (buy) (1961)