Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  When the ship sprung a leak and down she sank,

  And she sank to rise no more.

  What hills, what hills so fair and so bright,

  What hills so white and fair?

  Oh those be the hills of heaven, my dear,

  But you won’t never go there.

  What hills, what hills down in yonder sea,

  What hills so black as coal?

  Oh those be the hills of hell, my dear,

  Where we must surely go.

  This selection was originally released on Smithsonian Folkways 2301.

  * * *

  Well into the twentieth century Edwin Kirkland collected and recorded some fine versions of British ballads from his colleagues and peers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Most of the mid-to-late-twentieth-century ballad singers documented by collectors tend to be from the South, particularly from the Appalachian or Blue Ridge mountains. A few outstanding ballad singers, such as Sarah Cleveland (New York), have been “discovered” in the Midwest and the Northeast. Some of the best of them, Horton Barker (Virginia) or Aunt Molly Jackson (Kentucky), continued the old-fashioned style by singing without musical accompaniment, but their performance style tended to be formal, rather emotionally detached in delivery. Other singers of older ballads, such as Frank Proffitt (North Carolina) and Jean Ritchie (Kentucky), often used their own stringed instrumental accompaniment despite the fact that a cappella singing permits greater freedom from both meter and strict phrasing.

  BROADSIDES

  Not all of the ballads with British roots are contained in Child’s collection, which was subjective, selective, and labeled “popular.” Another category of non-American, English ballads are called broadsides because they were printed pieces with strong journalistic ties. Broadside ballads are ephemeral by their very nature and few survived into oral circulation, particularly in the United States. Such ballads tend to be topical, placing immediate temporal limitations on them.

  Broadside ballads are usually considered inferior to the classic Child ballads by scholars who suggest that they lack the refinements and polish of good poetry. Formulas are an important feature of broadside ballads, most often through the use of stock phrases such as the come-ye-all salutation that opens “When the Battle It Was Won” (J 23):

  Willard Watson and his nephew Doc Watson in Deep Gap, North Carolina, circa 1962. Ralph Rinzler photo courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

  Come all you aged people, I pray you lend an ear,

  You’ll hear my feeling story, you can’t but shed a tear.

  ’Twas of an aged couple that had one only son;

  He was shot as a deserter when the battle it was won.

  Broadside ballads often take the first-person perspective, rely upon stereotyped characters, and frequently lack the objectivity of Child ballads. These ballads are also more often subject to recomposition, often with condensation of plot and sometimes with not so subtle shifts in details.

  Because they are largely part of an oral tradition, ballads are subject to alterations in time, place, or other details. If the ballad is immediately recognizable and changed only in minor ways, it is said to be a version of some older, usually printed, text. Major changes can be fashioned, but if the fundamental plot is unaltered it is considered a variant. G. Malcolm Laws (1957) undertook the most intensive study of broadside ballads, classifying them thematically and assigning them an alphabetical symbol: War (J), Sailors and the Sea (K), Crimes and Criminals (L), Family Opposition to Lovers (M), Lovers’ Disguises and Tricks (N), Faithful Lovers (O), Unfaithful Lovers (P), Humorous and Miscellaneous Ballads (Q). The categories themselves underscore the types of themes most often found in broadside ballads and reflect the interests of the people who sang them.

  Though they sound very distant from postmodern America, some broadside ballads survived well into the twentieth century. Ballads about war, sailors, and crime were not as well preserved as those related to love and its consequences. Many versions and variants of broadside ballads about love were collected up through World War II by English professors and others interested in ballads. Broadsides such as “The Drowsy Sleeper” (M 4), “The Banks of Dundee” (M 25), “The Girl I Left Behind” (P 1), and “The Butcher Boy” (P 24) are found from Maine to California. Broadside ballads have circulated through the medium of commercial recordings, too.

  In the middle 1960s California folk/rock group The Byrds recorded “John Riley” (N 36), about a soldier who returns from war in disguise so that he can test his love’s fidelity. Not surprisingly early hillbilly recordings reflect the importance of broadsides, with Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, Kelly Harrell, and the Dixon Brothers, among the many who dipped into this well. Perhaps the most famous broadside ballad related to the problems of love, “The Bad Girl’s Lament” (Q 26), is related to another broadside, “The Unfortunate Rake.” In America it is known as “St. James’ Hospital (or Infirmary),” “The Streets of Laredo,” “The Young Girl Cut Down in her Prime,” or “Cowboy’s Lament.” It has been recorded many times since the 1920s and relates, in very oblique language, the consequence of contracting a venereal disease.

  NATIVE AMERICAN BALLADS

  With the strong ballad tradition in folk music from the British Isles, the emergence of indigenous American ballads seems inevitable. As soon as the Puritans settled in New England, the process began in the United States; however, nearly all of the best-known Native American ballads, such as “John Henry,” “The Titanic,” and “Casey Jones,” come from the second half of the nineteenth or the early twentieth century. Ballad making in the United States was not dissimilar to the British broadside tradition, especially in its stereotyping of character and situation. The authorship of Native American ballads is almost always anonymous; until the twentieth century their dissemination was by way of oral or written means. Not surprisingly their topics encompass the same human impulses that have attracted ballad singers for decades: love, violence, scandals, and tragic events or disasters.

  American ballads are often categorized according to a genre or are attributed to an occupational or folk group such as miners, sailors, cowboys, or African Americans. Many early ballad scholars such as James Francis Child, Phillips Barry, or Gordon Hall Gerould tended to downplay Native American ballads because they lacked both the antiquity and the poetic qualities of their British counterparts. Eventually, when compiling the state and regional collections that began in the 1920s and continued through the 1950s, collectors slowly recognized the importance and unique qualities of Native American ballads. This trend was driven both by waves of nationalism that swept the country and the championing spirit of popularizers like Alan Lomax, Carl Sandburg, and Ben Botkin. By the 1950s most such collections gave similar weight to Child, broadsides, and Native American ballads.

  In 1964 G. Malcolm Laws published a revision of Native American Balladry, the major collection in this field. Laws divides Native American ballads into nine primary categories:

  A. War Ballads

  B. Ballads of Cowboys and Pioneers

  C. Ballads of Lumberjacks

  D. Ballads of Sailors and the Sea

  E. Ballads about Criminals and Outlaws

  F. Murder Ballads

  G. Ballads of Tragedies and Disasters

  H. Ballads on Various Topics

  I. Ballads of the Negro

  The qualities found in Native American ballads are similar to British oral poetry, especially the broadsides. They also leap and linger, downplay detail, and concentrate on the overtly dramatic. Like broadsides, Native American ballads are often recounted in the first person or from a less objective perspective. The events, though, are distinctly American in their origin.

  The murder of Pearl Bryant by two dental students was disseminated to the entire nation through newspaper coverage. During the early years of the twentieth century a ballad about this murder circ
ulated across the country and later appeared on country music recordings of the 1920s. Notice the typical greeting, a variant of “come ye all,” that opens this ballad and its somber, warning tone:

  1. Young ladies if you’ll listen, a story I’ll relate, Which happened near St. Thomas in the old Kentucky state. It was January the 31st, that awful deed was done, By Jackson and Walling. How cold Pearl’s blood did run!

  2. But little did Pearl Bryant think when she left her happy home, That the grip she carried in her hand would hide her head away. She thought it was a lover’s hand she could trust both night and day. But alas! it was a lover’s hand that took her life away.

  3. But little did Pearl’s parents think when she left her happy home, That their darling child in you would never more return. Her aged parents, you know well, a fortune they would give, If Pearl could but return to them a natural life to live.

  4. Now all young girls take warning, for all men are unjust. It may be your truest lover; you know not whom to trust. Pearl Bryant died away from home on a dark and lonely spot. My God, believe me girls, don’t let this be your lot.

  These ballads touched not only the general population but also singers. They were especially important to the new generation of aspiring hillbilly musicians, who recognized their immediate appeal to a mass audience and suspected that the fledgling country music audience would enjoy such tragic ballads. These singers apparently did not make strong distinctions among the ballad types, certainly not like the contemporary scholars who carefully pigeonholed each specimen, searching for examples in other printed collections and listing the possible variants. Many circulated orally, but their printed version would do just as well.

  It is ironic indeed that phonograph records from the 1920s helped to keep some Native American ballads in our minds and hearts. The fact is that many traditional American ballads were documented and disseminated by way of phonograph records. The Columbia Old-Time country series of the middle 1920s through the early 1930s, for example, included the cowboy ballads “Bandit Cole Younger” and “On the Old Chisholm Trail” among its releases.

  SINGING COWBOYS

  Ballads are also found far to the west and as an integral part of the cowboy tradition. Cowboy songs describe their life and, quite often, their work. The early (late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century) cowboy singers represent a distinctive musical genre. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, and the other western states were largely the domain of first- or second-generation settlers who lived, worked, and performed music in a world quite separate from the country music that developed in the Southeast and Midwest.

  Although we frequently refer to commercial country music as country and western, this moniker did not develop until the middle 1930s. Tex Ritter, Roy Rogers, Rex Allen, Jimmie Wakely, and all of the other movie cowboys literally rode the cowboy image onto movie screens across the United States. But it was Gene Autry, with songs that he popularized on the silver screen, such as “Back in the Saddle Again” and “Riding Down the Canyon,” who initially mythologized and romanticized cowboys by way of the electronic media.

  * * *

  MUSICAL EXAMPLE

  Harry Jackson was a cowboy who worked the western plains during the 1930s and 1940s. He learned many songs and poems during his life, many of which were recorded in the 1950s and released by Moe Asch. This selection was well known to cowboy singers and bears the unmistakable influence of a rather maudlin Tin Pan Alley composition.

  Title “When the Work’s All Done This Fall”

  Performer Harry Jackson

  Instrument one voice

  Length 2:24

  Musical Characteristics

  1. Jackson’s solo voice is in the middle register.

  2. The form of this piece is strophic.

  3. He uses a major scale.

  4. Several times during the song he uses a distinctive leap of a major fourth.

  5. “When the Work’s All Done This Fall” has a monophonic texture.

  A group of jolly cowboys discussing plans at ease,

  Says one “I’ll tell you something, boys, if you will listen please;

  I am an old cow-puncher, and here I’m dressed in rags,

  I used to be a good one, boys, and go on them great jags.”

  “Well, I have got a home, boys, a good one you all know,

  Although I have not seen it since long, long ago;

  And I have got a mother who’s waiting for me, that’s all,

  And I shall see my mother when the work’s all done this fall.”

  That very night this cowboy went out to stand his guard,

  The night was very dreary and stormin’ very hard;

  Them cattle they got frightened and rushed in wild stampede,

  And he was a-tryin’ to head them and turn them at full speed.

  While ridin’ in the darkness, and givin’ the cattle call,

  His saddle horse did stumble, boys, and on him he did fall;

  Next morning we did find him, no hat upon his head,

  We picked him up so gently, we thought the poor boy dead.

  We carried him to the wagon and put him on his bed,

  He opened wide his blue eyes, and this is what he said;

  “I’ll ne’er again go ridin’, nor give the cattle call,

  And I’ll not go see my mother, when the work’s all done this fall.”

  This selection was originally issued on Smithsonian Folkways 5723.

  * * *

  Autry’s early career included a stint as a musician and comedian with Fields Brothers Marvelous Medicine Show and a relief telegraph operator. In 1929 he traveled to New York City and recorded for RCA Victor, Champion, and several other companies. Determined to stay in music, Autry returned to Tulsa and broadcast over KVOO as “Oklahoma’s Singing Cowboy.” His local popularity brought him to the attention of the American Record Company, which enabled him to move to the “National Barn Dance” on Chicago’s WLS. On the strength of Autry’s puckish good looks, the radio broadcasts, and his first hit record, That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine, Republic Pictures signed him to the movies. Gene Autry eventually made a fortune exploiting this image in films and on records and the radio. He eventually became the owner of the California Angels baseball team and a real estate magnate in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In his final years Autry established a cowboy museum in Pasadena, California, which has emerged as a destination for fans of the Old West who come from across the world.

  Autry’s success in Tumbling Tumbleweeds and other grade B westerns helped to open the gates for others to follow and helped to solidify the connection between country music and a western image. This image remained strong for over twenty years. From Massachusetts to Oregon local country performers adopted names like “Tex” and wore bolo ties and cowboy boots. His or her backup musicians were likely to be called something like “the Lonesome Cowpunchers.” The “western” conception in country music faded in the 1950s as Nashville’s dominance of commercial country music rose. Nonetheless it was a powerful symbol that has not entirely dissipated.

  Before Gene Autry and the other celluloid heroes, singing cowboys were really closer to the reality of rural life in the West, rather than the image of the West. Such songs were first written and sung by cowboys as they drove cattle, mended fences, branded calves, and did other related ranch work. By the 1890s cowboy songs began showing up in newspapers and magazines, often as a poem or a broadside, or in songbooks. They often appeared as ballads whose structure and melodies owed much to contemporary folk and popular tunes. In 1908 the first important printed collection, Songs of the Cowboy, by N. H. Thorp was published, which was followed almost immediately by John A. Lomax’s seminal Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910).

  Gene Autry, circa 1940. Courtesy of the Southern Folklife Collection, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  Some cowboy songs began life as printed poems that were eventually put to a familiar tune. Cowboy
poetry, a related genre of oral folklore, has enjoyed a renaissance since the 1980s. Cowboy poetry gatherings have grown in size and now attract participants and audiences from around the country. Some cowboy poets are also singers, further blurring the lines between music and the spoken word.

  Many cowboy songs, some of which are also Native American ballads, were composed between about 1880 and 1930. The genre became so well known that Tin Pan Alley composers (who are discussed in the next section) also began writing songs with cowboy motifs at the turn of the century. Some of the best-known cowboy songs, “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” “The Dying Ranger,” and “Home on the Range” were first heard in the middle nineteenth century. One of the classic cowboy songs, “Western Pioneer,” apparently originated in the 1870s. Notice the opening lines, which use the standard formula so often heard in broadside and Native American ballads:

  Come, give me your attention and see the right and the wrong.

  It is a simple story and it won’t detain you long;

  I’ll try to tell the reason why we are bound to roam,

  And why we are so friendless and never have a home.

  My home is in the saddle, upon a pony’s back,

  I am a roving cowboy and find the hostile track;

  They say I am a sure shot, and danger I never knew;

  But I often heard a story which I’ll relate to you.

  In eighteen hundred and sixty-three a little emigrant band

  Was massacred by Indians, bound West by overland;

  They scalped our noble soldiers, and the emigrants had to die,

  And the living captives were two small girls and I.

  We were rescued from the Indians by a brave and noble man,

  Who trailed the thieving Indians and fought them hand to hand;

  He was noted for his bravery while on an enemy’s track;

  He had a noble history, his name is Texas Jack.