The Villagers - Kum Ba Ya

Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
Oral tradition is a broad stream of communication that encompasses everything from hazing traditions in wealthy fraternities to field hollers used by African-American farm workers in the South. For years, folklorists sought to narrow the scope with sociological definitions of the deserving folk.

D. K. Wilgus’ 1954 dissertation defined the legitimate, i.e., academic, collections from the less rigorous popular ones. [1] The Kingston Trio erupted into the popular music world in 1958. [2] The next year, Rutgers published Wilgus’ Anglo-American Scholarship since 1898. [3]

Ray Lawless sped the canonization process in 1960. In Folksingers and Folksongs in America he provided short descriptions of the genuine folk artists, folk song collections, folklore societies, and recordings. While his range was broad enough to include Bradley Kincaid, who appeared on Chicago radio station WLS, it did not include the Carter Family. He accepted Harry Belafonte, but not The Kingston Trio. [4]

He issued a revision in 1965 that admitted some artists who emerged after 1960, like Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Odetta. He gave a brief mention of The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary with the caveat:

"However much some of the above groups may have commercialized or confused the folk music scene, they at least gave something that made more sense and music than Beatlemania." [5]

Lawless’ book was the sort of reference James Leisy could have used when he was preparing The Folk Song Abecedary. [6] Indeed, he included a higher proportion of songs from Lawless’ than it did from Sandburg and Lomax combined, 55% to 35%. The ones unique to Leisy included spirituals and Southern gospel songs, as well as ones from drinking and African-American traditions.

Leisy wanted to do more than guide his readers to the better folk songs. He wanted to educate their taste by listing the more authentic recordings. For that, he probably relied on Lawless’ list of albums. The artists mentioned most often by the two men were interpreters who were popular in the 1940s: Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennett, and Josh White.

This time Leisy did not mention The Weavers’ recording of "Kumbaya." Instead he listed albums by Baez and the Womenfolk. The latter made an album for RCA that included five songs by the women, five by The Villagers, and one with the two together. It was actually The Villagers who performed "Kum Ba Ya."

The recording was made in 1963 at the Ice House, a folk-music club in Pasadena, California. [7] The group followed what had become the accepted routine for "Kumbaya." The woman acting as spokesperson introduced it by repeating a variant of the legend introduced by Pete Seeger in 1957, [8] that it was an American spiritual taken to Africa by missionaries. [9]

Next she invited the audience to join them. Her technique was for the group to "sing one verse through for you first so you get a general idea of how it goes," and then shout out the verb as the group started each iteration. While this approach was popularized by Seeger, it was Baez’s 1962 recording that embedded it into the standard performance of "Kumbaya."

Their performance violated two of Leisy’s protocols. The tempo was quick, rather than slow, with the rhythm emphasized by hand claps. The Villagers treated another spiritual, "Good News," as a vehicle for comedy, rather than religion. For "Kumbaya" they added "sleeping" from Seeger and "shouting" to the usual verses. They treated "shout" as a verb for speaking as loudly as possible, rather than as a noun defining one way African Americans approached the Lord.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none

Vocal Group: Elaine Fink, Janet Perlstein, Harvey Gerst, Steve Cohen

Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: hand claps

Credits
Arr: Fink, Perlstein, Gerst, Cohn
ASCAP

Introduction: "The origin or the title of this song comes from American missionaries going over to South Africa in the 1800s bringing with them a Negro spiritual called ‘Come By Here’ and the African interpretation of that was ‘Kumbaya’."

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum Ba YAAH
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying, sleeping, shouting

Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord

Special Terms: they used "shouting" to refer to the loudness of the voice rather than to a way African Americans addressed the Lord.

Basic Form: four-verse song framed by kumbaya repeated twice at start and end

Verse Repetition Pattern: A-A-x-x-x-x-A-A where A = kumbaya
Ending: repeated "oh Lord, Kumbaya" twice
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: quick; slowed the last "oh Lord, kumbaya"
Dynamics: uniform, except for shouting verse which was louder
Basic Structure: strophic repetition

Singing Style: one syllable to one note including final "Lord"
Group: parallel chordal harmony, with no low voices

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: the guitar maintained a constant rhythmic pattern

Notes on Performance
Occasion: 1963 concert
Location: Ice House, Pasadena, California

Microphones: album photograph shows two floor mikes for the singers and one for one woman’s guitar.

Clothing: album photograph showed the group standing in order of the height with the women together and the men together. The men had short hair and wore dark suits with light-colored ties. The women were wearing identical pleated skirts, blouses, and weskits. They had bangs and their short, permed hair framed their faces.

Notes on Movement
In the album photograph, the women were standing with full-sized guitars. One man stood with a smaller guitar, and the other stood with a string bass.

Audience Perceptions
An industry trade organ said The Villagers added "humor and rousing singing to their material." [10]

Notes on Performers
The Villagers was an ephemeral group in a constellation of such groups. Harvey Gerst said he had started several groups before he met Elaine Fink. [11] He and Steve Cohen hung around the Troubadour coffeehouse in West Hollywood, where artists could perform on Monday nights. [12]

Terry Kirkman remembered one night in 1964 when a friend called people in the audience to come on stage. They sang songs they all knew: Baez’s "Banks Of The Ohio," The Highwaymen’s "Michael Row The Boat Ashore," The Kingston Trio’s "Darlin’ Corey," and Woody Guthrie’s "This Land Your Land." It was, he said, "twenty-plus minutes of the best musical fun anyone had experienced in some time." [13]

Cohen recalled "there was no planning or anything that led up to that moment. It was just unrehearsed. It just happened." [14]

Gerst and Cohen continued to sing with Kirkman’s group, which became The Men, but left in March 1965 before it became The Association. [15]

The Villagers evolved from a similar network of friends with a common repertoire who imbibed the air of Los Angeles area folk-music scene. Gerst was brought into the group by Fink, and brought in Cohen. Cohen was the most typical folknik in the group. He spent time around Washington Square in New York and was president of the Queens College folk song club. [l6]

Fink was born in Waukegan, Illinois, and studied voice and piano at the University of Illinois and University of Michigan. She met Janet Perlstein when she moved to Los Angeles to study how to score films at UCLA. [l7]

Perstein was raised in Los Angeles and studied music at Mills College in Oakland. After working for a music publisher in New York, she moved to Santa Monica to teach in a high school and study at UCLA. [18]

Gerst seems to have been the only member who remained active in professional music. He was born in Chicago and raised in California. [19] He began working with microphones and amplifiers, and was designing speakers for JBL while he was performing with The Villagers and The Men. He continued working in the technical areas of electric instruments, and in 1988 opened his own recording studio in Texas. [20]

The others had more common names, but I could find nothing more about them on the web.

Update 4 April 2020:
Laurie Burke sent me an email that identified her mother, Elaine Fink, was the spokesperson.  She added Fink continued “in music (mainly as an amazing pianist and orchestrator, musical writer, etc.) and she raised an entire family of professional musicians.”  Burke’s brother is a drummer and composer.  Burke is a singer and voice-over coach.

Burke also said her mother remembered well “what happened when they toured through the South in the 60's and the dealings with racism they encountered against an African American group touring with them(I believe they were in Texas and since the group was being denied the same treatment as the white groups, they all refused to play.”

Availability
Album: The Villagers. "Kum Ba Yah." On The Womenfolk and The Villagers. We Give a Hoot. RCA Victor LPM-2821, Ice House, Pasadena, California, 1963.

YouTube: The Villagers.  “KUM BA YA (Kumbaya).”  Uploaded by PS109VanBurenHigh, 24 August 2015.

End Notes
1. D. K. Wilgus. "A History of Anglo-American Ballad Scholarship since 1898." PhD dissertation. Ohio State University, 1954.

2. The Kingston Trio was discussed in the post for 13 October 2019.

3. D. K. Wilgus. Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1959.

4. Ray McKinley Lawless. Folksingers and Folksongs in America. New York: Meredith Press, 1960.

5. Ray M. Lawless. Folksingers and Folksongs in America. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. 1965 edition. 704.

6. Leisy’s Folk Song Abecedary was discussed in the post for 22 December 2019.
7. Wikipedia. "The Ice House (Comedy Club).".  It is the subject of my article in Voices.  The abstract is available on the Papers tab.  A copy has been uploaded to the Academia.edu website.

8. Seeger’s legend is discussed in the post for 16 October 2022.  It is the subject of my article in Voices.  The abstract is available on the Papers tab.  A copy has been uploaded to the Academia.edu website.

9. She specified the missionaries went to South Africa in the 1800s. South Africa was divided between Dutch and British interests for most of the nineteenth century with the established churches of each jealously guardian its position. Some early attempts by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions were subverted by wars between natives and Boer farmers. Most of the missionaries did not survive. [21]  Her comments are quoted in the Voice article.

It was only after the discovery of diamonds in 1871 and gold in 1886 [22] that colonial authorities saw a need to socialize Africans into becoming mine laborers. Methodist missionaries from the United States appeared in 1901, [23] toward the end of the Second Boer War. [24] The Pentecostals mentioned in the post for 29 August 2017 arrived in 1908. [25]

10. Review of We Give a Hoot. Billboard. 21 December1963. 28.
11. We Give a Hoot. Liner notes.

12. Malcolm C. Searles. The Association ‘Cherish.’ Leicester, England: Troubadour Publishing, 2018. 15–16.

13. Terry Kirkman. Quoted by Searles. 18. He was not part of The Villagers.
14. Steve Cohen. Quoted by Searles. 18.
15. Searles. 41–42.
16. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
17. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
18. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
19. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
20. "Harvey Gerst." LinkedIn website.

21. J. du Plessis. A History of Christian Missions in South Africa. London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1911. Chapter 13, The American Zulu Mission, 219–232.

22. Wikipedia. "History of South Africa."
23. du Plessis. 391.
24. Wikipedia, History of South Africa. The war was fought between 1899 and 1902.
25. Wikipedia. "Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa."

James F. Leisy - Folk Song Abecedary

Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
The rapprochement between politics and the folk-music revival began to unravel in 1965. What had been dormant since the early 1950s was resurrected in 1962 when Peter, Paul, and Mary recorded "If I Had a Hammer." [1]

The relationship grew stronger in 1963 when folk revival singers performed at Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. [2] That was when the Journeymen began encountering problems touring in the South. [3]

The following year, King won the Nobel Peace Prize [4] and Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. [5] In 1965 King led the march from Selma to Montgomery to enforce African-American rights. Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary again sang, this time at a concert organized by Harry Belafonte in March. [6] Congress passed the Voting Right Act in August. [7]

With those laws, the hard work of implementing them began, as the impact of the legislated changes became more obvious. People started seeing Blacks in their motels, restaurants, and shopping centers. Concrete reality clashed with latent prejudices, both in the South and in the North.

Whatever consensus that had formed around folk music began to fray. For instance, Bob Dylan performed in Washington, but not in Alabama. [8] He moved toward Nashville’s country musicians and performed with electrified instruments at the Newport Folk Festival. [9]

Academic folklorists began calling the commercial music fakelore, because not all the songs were traditional and the singing styles incorporated popular music motifs. Early supporters of Sing Out! complained about the intrusion of the profit motive. [10]

Joni Mitchell found one financial consideration that inhibited the free exchange of folk songs was that "each city’s folk scene tended to accord veteran performers the exclusive right to play their signature songs." This wasn’t limited to songs they’d written, but traditional ones as well. [11]

This attitude was different than that of apprentices in country music, who began singing the material of better known artists to develop the singing and instrumental style of the genre. When they auditioned for road bands, they were expected to already know their parts.

Mitchell said that exclusiveness forced her to write her own songs. The guardians of commercial folk music then complained about original songs that were copyrighted. Performers, or their agents, had become aware of their value and charged for reproduction. That effectively limited both other performers from singing them and editors from including them in collections without paying royalties.

James Leisy entered the fray in 1966 with his Folk Song Abecedary. Unlike his earlier collections, which included songs that were being sung, this one focused on songs that ought to be known. The anti-war songs were from Ireland, [12] not the contemporary protests against the war in Vietnam.

He included songs that had been popularized by the commercial folk music performers, but not the ones that required royalties. Thus, he included a number of the traditional ballads recorded by Baez [13] and some of the early material from The Kingston Trio. [14] The Buffy Sainte-Marie song [15] was closely related to a nineteenth century British Ballad. [16]

Instead of the popular versions of songs, Leisy offered the traditional ones. Rather than provide Kingston Trio’s "M. T. A," [17] he published Henry Clay Work’s "The Ship That Never Returned." [18] He reproduced "Man of Constant Sorrow," [19] rather than Judy Collins’ "Maid of Constant Sorrow." [20]

The exception to this exclusiveness was pre-World War II country music. He included five songs by the Carter Family [21] and two by Roy Acuff. [22] He also offered "Abilene," which had been popularized by George Hamilton IV in 1963. [23]

More than a third of his selections were English, Irish, Scots, or Southern ballads and songs, and a sixth were religious, including African-American spirituals. Occupational songs comprised another large group, including cowboy and western songs, and chanteys and sea songs. However, none were from the labor movement.

Although he disguised his selections by presenting the songs in alphabetical order, he was beholden to the collections of Carl Sandburg and John Lomax. Indeed, a third of his material came from their anthologies.

This shouldn’t have been surprising. In the biography that accompanied the collection, Leisy said Lomax and Sandburg visited his father when he was a child. [24] He added:

"I became a devoted student of the work of Francis James Child, Cecil James Sharp, Phillips Barry, Frank Clyde Brown, Vance Randolph, B. A. Botkin,"

and others. He also thanked Irwin Silber and Sing Out! for their help. [25]

He was able to reuse "Kum Ba Yah" from Folk Song Fest. He reworded the introduction, but kept the text exactly the same. He altered the change from the A to the D chord in the third line. In 1964 he changed on "kum." In this collection, he changed on "ya."

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: unison
Instrumental Accompaniment: chords
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
"There is a widely circulated theory that this song was based on the words ‘come by here’ as Africans attempted to imitate these words as spoken by missionaries. In any event, this fragmentary song became traditional in Africa, where it was ‘found’ and brought to America, to become part of our tradition."

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom bah yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying, hoping

Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: "many people use the English words ‘come by here’ instead" of "kumbaya"

Basic Form: verse-burden

Verse Repetition Pattern: "Many people use the English words "come by Here" instead. New verses are constantly being coined. A few examples are shown here. The chorus may be repeated after each verse."

Ending: none
Unique Features: "new verses are constantly being coined"

Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/2
Tempo: "usually sung very slowly and with dignity."
Key Signature: two sharps
Guitar Chords: D G A A⁷
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final "Lord"

Audience Perceptions
One Amazon customer wrote:

"The Leisy book is a wonderful resource. I use it for material in teaching music at the elementary school level, and for piano students to learn to read from a lead sheet. There are hundreds of songs with a wide variety of styles. The background notes Leisy supplies enriches the experience of the music and ties the culture to American historical." [26]

Another added:

"If you study the music that grew out of traditional songs... country, rock, blues, some jazz or modern folk... this book will strengthen your understanding. Jim Leisy explains the evolution of 200+ folk songs, describing the source, development and variations, and includes lead sheets (melody, chords and lyrics) for each tune. My edition is from 1966, I can see and hear the influence of scores of anonymous songwriters on later works, from Dave Matthews, George Strait or Bob Dylan to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen and countless others. Almost all popular music since the 1930s mimics the structure, the stories or the actual melodies of traditional roots music. Numerous music books offer more songs, of course, but if you want to know the back story to these songs, the Folk Song Abecedary is your ticket to greater appreciation of our musical roots." [27]

Notes on Performers
This was the last folk-song collection produced by Leisy. He produced another anthology for the Methodist church, [28] and turned his attention to other forms of music. In 1967, he began playing trombone with a San Francisco dixieland band, [29] and produced a songbook for the business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi. [30]

At some point he was inducted into the Bohemian Club. [31] The association had been formed by artists and writers in San Francisco in 1872, but had been coopted by conservative businessmen and politicians. They kept a few creative people, like Leisy. One reason may have been the pretense that the theatrical production staged at their annual retreat was mounted by members. [32]

He had published "Poor Lil" in a four part arrangement in 1964. [33] He first had published the humorous, slightly naughty song in Swingin’ Housemothers." [34] In 1971, he began issuing choral arrangements of original songs [35] or traditional ones like "The Rock Island Line" [36] through Fred Waring’s Shawnee Press.

He sold his technical publishing company to a British conglomerate in 1978, [37] and wrote his first musical production for children. Scrooge was based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It lasted an hour with seven major roles, and a number of smaller speaking parts. Shawnee still provides an accompaniment tape for those who don’t have pianists or other instrumentalists available. [38]

Leisy continued to produce these musicals until 1988. Most were based on children’s stories, and varied in their ambitions. "Tiny Tim" lasted 20 minutes with few speaking parts. This version of the Dickens’ tale was suitable for "children of elementary and middle school age." [39]

Leisy died in 1989. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times focused on his business. It said he was a member of the Young Presidents Organization, but did not mention his interest in music. [40]

Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Ya." In The Folk Song Abecedary. New York: Bonanza Books, 1966. 209–210.

End Notes
1. Peter, Paul And Mary. "If I Had A Hammer." Peter, Paul And Mary. Warner Brothers Records W1449. May 1963.

2. Wikipedia. "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom."
3. See post for 20 October 2019 for details.
4. Wikipedia. "Martin Luther King Jr."
5. Wikipedia. "Civil Rights Act of 1964."

6. Rachel Hassinger. "March 24, 1965: ‘The Night the "Stars " Came Out in Alabama’." WGBH website. 24 March 2018.

7. Wikipedia. "Voting Rights Act of 1965."
8. David Hajdu. Positively 4th Street. New York: Picador, 2001. 201.
9. Wikipedia. "Bob Dylan."

10. David A. De Turk and A. Poulin, Jr., included many of these articles in a 1967 anthology. [41] It included B. A. Botkin’s "The Folksong Revival: Cult or Culture?" and Irwin Silber’s "Folk Music and the Success Syndrome." [42]

11. Wikipedia. "Joni Mitchell."
12. "Johnny I Hardly Knew You" and "Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier."
13. For example, "Silver Dagger," "The House Carpenter," and "Banks of the Ohio."
14. For example, "Greenback Dollar " and "Good News."
15. Buffy Sainte-Marie. "Must I Go Bound." Many A Mile. Vanguard VSD-79171. 1965.

16. "Must I Go Bound" and "Butcher Boy, The [Laws P24]." The Traditional Ballad Index. California State University-Fresno website. Version 4.5.

17. The Kingston Trio. "M.T.A." At Large. Capitol Records T1199. Released 1 June 1959.

18. Work wrote "The Ship that Never Returned" in 1865. It was adapted for a 1924 Vernon Dalhart recording, "Wreck of the Old 97." Bess Hawes and Jacqueline Steiner reused the Dalhart version for "Charlie and the M. T. A." in 1948. [43]

19. Wikipedia. "Man of Constant Sorrow."

20. Judy Collins. "A Maid Of Constant Sorrow." A Maid Of Constant Sorrow. Elektra EKL-209. November 1961.

21. This included the two recorded by The Kingston Trio ("Tom Dooley" and "Worried Man Blues"), their two best known songs in 1966 ("Can the Circle Be Unbroken" and "Wildwood Flower"), and "I Never Will Marry."

22. "The Great Speckled Bird" and "Wabash Cannonball."
23. George Hamilton IV. "Abilene." RCA Victor 447-0717. Recorded 20 March 1963.
24. Leisy, Abecedary. Back cover.
25. Leisy, Abecedary. ix.
26. Kerry Cordell. Comment posted 22 July 2014. Amazon site for Abecedary.
27. Ross Gidcumb. Comment posted 18 April 2014. Amazon site for Abecedary.
28. James Leisy. The Good Times Songbook. Nashville: Abington Press, 1974.

29. "Franklin, James Franklin." The Writers Directory 1980–82. London: The Macmillan Press, 1979. Page 735. The band was T. Ford and the Model A’s.

30. The songbook mentioned in The Writers Directory was Alpha Kappa Psi Sings.
31. "James Franklin Leisy." Prabook website.
32. Wikipedia. "Bohemian Club."

33. James F. Leisy. "Poor Lil ." Park Ridge, Illinois: General Words and Music Company, 1964.

34. This collection was discussed in the post for 15 December 2019.

35. James F Leisy. "A Little Old Lady in Tennis Shoes." Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Malcolm Music, 1971.

36. James F. Leisy. "Rock Island Line." Delaware Water Gap: Shawnee Press Inc., 1975.

37. "James F. Leisy; Leading Textbook Publisher." Los Angeles Times. 15 July 1989. The conglomerate was International Thomson Organization.

38. James F. Leisy and Jack Lambert. Scrooge. Delaware Water Gap: Shawnee Press, 1978.

39. James Leisy and Joyce Merman. Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol. Delaware Water Gap: Wide World Music, 1981. Quotation, 2.

40. Los Angeles Times.

41. David A. De Turk and A. Poulin, Jr. The American Folk Scene. New York: Dell Publishing, 1967.

42. Silber was discussed in the post for 13 November 2019.
43. Wikipedia. "The Ship that Never Returned."

James F. Leisy - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
The folk revival sparked by the Kingston Trio [1] assumed people who attended colleges had parties where they sang. It was one of those self-fulfilling concepts: because people believed this was what people like themselves were doing, they began doing it. With singing, one needed songs, and if a tradition did not exist, then there was an need for someone to create a repertoire.

James Franklin Leisy produced two songbooks in 1961 that filled that void. Songs for Swingin’ Housemothers [2] and Songs for Singin’ [3] provided words and tunes to the gross and naughty songs children and adolescents sang to shock their elders. They did not include the truly obscene ones young men, including those in fraternities, sang to impress each other. [4]

Mixed in with lyrics for "Grandma’s in the Cellar" [5] and "Worms Crawl In" [6] were drinking songs like "Unfortunate Miss Bailey" [7] and "Three Jolly Coachman" [8] that were recorded by the Kingston Trio. The only folk revival songs Leisy included were the Trio’s "Tom Dooley" [9] and "Worried Man Blues," [10] and Harry Belafonte’s "Banana Boat Song." [11]

Leisy’s background was similar to the men in the Trio. While Dave Guard and Bob Shane were in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed, [12] Leisy graduated from high school in 1944 [13] and served a year in the Naval Reserve. [14] At that time, he copyrighted some songs in the popular music vein. [15]

While all three members of the Trio graduated from college with degrees in business, Leisy attended Southern Methodist University where his father was on the English faculty. [16] Leisy himself was a business major. After graduation in 1949, he was hired as an editor by Prentice Hall. In 1954, he moved to Allen and Bacon. [17]

The Kingston Trio didn’t plan to create folk music. Each of the men began with the popular music traditions they heard when they were adolescents. For Leisy, that was country music. In the early 1950s, he had some songs [18] recorded by second tier artists who had a few popular recordings and mainly toured as the opening acts for others: Hawkshaw Hawkins, [19] Hank Locklin, [20] and the Davis Sisters. [21]

Leisy’s songwriting career ended in 1957 when the popularity of Elvis Presley changed the taste in popular and country music. He had founded his own publishing company the year before in California that specialized in technical books. Wadsworth Publishing prospered after the Soviet Union launched its first satellite in 1957. [22] He indulged his interest in music by producing collections for the Methodist Church. [23] Its publishing arm was still in New York City.

The success of Leisy’s two college collections led to a contract with Fawcett Publications. That company published magazines, like True Confessions and Woman’s Day, and issued original mass-market paperbacks. [24]

In 1962, Leisy published Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’. [25] It mixed sections of "Folk Songs and Ballads" and "Campus Favorites" with "Gospel and Spiritual." While it included Roy Acuff’s "Great Speckled Bird," [26] it didn’t include "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." "Kumbaya" didn’t appear because Joan Baez hadn’t yet released her recording of it. [27]

Leisy issued another collection for Fawcett in 1964 to exploit the popularity of the ABC Television program, Hootenanny, discussed in the post for 3 November 2019. Hootenanny Tonight! included a version of "Kum Ba Ya" influenced by The Weavers. [28] He took their word it was a fragment, and printed only one verse. He described it as "lullaby-like." [29]

The same year he produced a different collection for Sam Fox, the publisher of plays. Folk Song Fest was subtitled "Songs and Ideas for Performance Artistry."

As a songwriter and publisher, he understood the copyright law. He added his own verse, "someone’s hoping," to the usual three in Fest to create a unique text. While he always used the key of D, with two sharps, he changed the rhythm from publication to publication. Hootenanny used 3/4, while Fest utilized 3/2.

His tone was that of a documentarian making polite suggestions, but not issuing decrees. He told Fest readers that "new verses are constantly being coined" and that they were free to use "use ‘kum ba ya’ or ‘come by here’." It also was the singer’s choice to treat the verses as an open ended song, a finite song, or one that alternated a "kumbaya" burden with unique stanzas.

His only requirement was that it be sung "slowly with dignity." [30]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: unison
Instrumental Accompaniment: chords
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Hootenanny Tonight!
"I’ve been told the song originated in the southern United States and traveled to Africa, where this fragmentary version became traditional. According to this legend the lyrics are an attempt to imitate the words ‘come by here.’ A few years ago this song was ‘found’ in Africa and brought back to the U.S., where it has now become part of our tradition."

Folk Song Fest
"There is a widely circulated theory that this song was based by Africans on the words ‘come by here’ learned from American missionaries."

Notes on Lyrics
Hootenanny Tonight
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom bay yah
Verses: kumbaya
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Folk Song Fest
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom bay yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying, hoping
Pronoun : Someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: may be open-ended or finite

Verse Repetition Pattern: "New verses are constantly being coined. A few examples are shown here. It’s use to you whether you use "kum ba ya" or "come by here." You will hear it performed both ways. You may repeat the chorus after each verse."

Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Hootenanny Tonight
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Rhythm: "six even beats to a measure"

Folk Song Fest
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/2
Tempo: slowly

Both
Key Signature: two sharps
Guitar Chords: D G A A⁷
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final "Lord"

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics - Song Fest: "light strumming accompaniment (down and up strum to each beat)."

Audience Perceptions
Leisy’s collections were used. One man said he bought Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’ to replace my wife’s falling-apart copy. [31] Another bought a replacement for Swingin’ Housemothers because "at sometime Ioaned" my copy "to someone (against my better judgement, and never saw it again. Was able to remember my favorites but missed the book Still play and sing. It is my ‘psychiatrist and mood elevator. And to be reunited with my book brings me peace and happiness." [32]

The books became part of family traditions. One woman said Pickin’ and Singin’ "has been a musical mainstay for my husband/family," [33] while a man told Amazon customers Swingin’ Housemothers "was a book of songs my family used to sing out of when I was a mere youth." [34]

Notes on Performers
Leisy came from a Mennonite family. His maternal great-great-grand father migrated from the Palatine [35] sometime after his son was born in 1832. [36] His grandfather edited the denomination’s newspaper [37] and helped found Bethany College. [38]

He used the name Jim Leisy for his country lyrics, James F. Leisy when he was publishing collections for Fawcett and the Methodist Church, and Frank Lynn for his college songbooks. His family moved to Dallas soon after he was born in 1927, [39] and he grew up in a Methodist social environment. This use of three pen names allowed him to isolate activities financed by the church from more secular ones. It is not known if this was a simply a businessman’s recognition of the need to keep Methodists happy by not offending their public morality, or signified some deeper ambivalence toward the various activities.

Availability
Book: James F. Leisy. "Kum Ba Ya. In Hootenanny Tonight. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1964. 39.

Book: James F. Leisy. "Kum ba ya." In Folk Song Fest: Songs and Ideas for Performance Artistry. New York: Sam Fox Publishing Company, 1964. 12.

End Notes
1. The role of the Kingston Trio was discussed in the post for 13 October 2019.

2. Frank Lynn. Songs for Swingin’ Housemothers. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1961.

3. Frank Lynn. Songs for Singin’. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1961.

4. It was only in 1959 that a Federal Court in the United States ruled books by D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller were not obscene because of their artistic intent. [40] No one pretended bawdy college songs were sung for aesthetic reasons, and so were essentially unpublishable in the early 1960s. Gershon Legman’s books that provided a scholarly rationale for publishing erotica didn’t appear in the United States until 1970. [41]

5. "Grammaws in the Cellar." 30 in Housemothers.
6. "The Hearse Song." 60 in Housemothers.

7. "Miss Bailey." 224 in Housemothers.

Kingston Trio. "The Unfortunate Miss Bailey." Here We Go Again! Capitol Records T-1258. 1959.

8. "Landlord, Fill the Flowing Bowl." 77 in Housemothers. Also, 11 in Frank Lynn. The Beer Bust Songbook. San Francisco: Fearon Publishers, 1963. [42]

Kingston Trio. "Three Jolly Coachmen." The Kingston Trio. Capitol Records T-996. 1958.

9. "Tom Dooley," 167 in Housemothers; and 43 in Beer Bust.

Kingston Trio. "Tom Dooley." The Kingston Trio.

10. "Worried Man Blues," 243 in Housemothers; and 43 in Beer Bust.

Kingston Trio. "A Worried Man." Here We Go.

11. "Banana Boat Loader’s Song." 259 in Housemothers.

Harry Belafonte. "The Banana Boat Song." RCA 447-0324. Recorded 20 October 1955, released 1956.

12. See post for 13 October 2019 for discussion of World War II and the Kingston Trio.

13. Amazon advertisement for Highland Park High School [Dallas, Texas] yearbook for 1944 edited by senior James Leisy.

14. "James Franklin Leisy." Prabook website.

15. The United States Copyright Office’s Catalog of Copyright Entries: Musical compositions, Part 3. Unpublished music listed ten songs by James Franklin Leisy of Dallas in 1946. The titles included: "I’ll Take a Raincheck on Love" and "In the Hills of Old Tennessee."

16. "Leisy, Ernest E. (1888-1968)." Mennonite Weekly Review 3:14 March 1968.
17. James Leisy, Prabook.

18. Leisy also had songs recorded by country artists whose names weren’t as recognizable. My list came from WorldCat, which had entries from the John Edwards Memorial Foundation collection of country music records, and Discogs, which connected Jim Leisy with James F. Leisy.

19. Hawkshaw Hawkins. "Rebound." Written by Jim Leisy and Ray Male. RCA Victor. 1954. Hawkins had just joined the Ozark Jubilee television program when this was recorded; his more famous records were made later. [43]

20. Hank Locklin. "Pinball Millionaire." Written by James F. Leisy, Hank Locklin, and Slim Willet. 4 Star Records 1466. 1950. Locklin’s biggest hit, "Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On," had been released in 1949. [44]

21. The Davis Sisters. "Fiddle Diddle Boogie." Written by Charles Grean and Jim Leisy. RCA Victor 47-6086. 1955. At this time the group consisted of Skeeter Davis and Georgia Davis. The original member, Billy Jack Davis, was killed in 1954. Skeeter had adopted the Davis name to perform, and recorded "The End of the World" as a soloist in 1962. [45]

22. "James F. Leisy; Leading Textbook Publisher." Los Angeles Times. 15 July 1989. The satellite was Sputnik. [46]

23. James F. Leisy. Abingdon Song Kit. New York: Abingdon Press, 1957.

James F. Leisy. Let’s All Sing. New York: Abingdon Press, 1959.

24. Wikipedia. "Fawcett Publications."

25. James F. Leisy. Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1962.

26. Roy Acuff. "The Great Speckled Bird." Vocalion 04252, OKeh 04252, and Conqueror 8740. 1936. [47]

27. Joan Baez’s concert album appeared later in 1962. See the post for 9 October 2017 for details.

28. The Weavers’ version was discussed in the post for 3 October 2017.
29. The Weavers treated "Kumbaya" as a lullaby.
30. Leisy, Hootenanny Tonight!.

31. AZ. Comment posted 10 October 2016. Amazon website for Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’.

32. Stuart E. Wunsh. Comment posted 13 March 2016. Amazon website for 1963 edition of Songs for Singin’ Housemothers.

33. Jeannie C. Comment posted 5 September 2013. Amazon website for Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’.

34. Badluck Bob. Comment posted 9 August 2015. Amazon website for 1961 edition of Songs for Singin’ Housemothers.

35. Barbara HARMS Craig. "Johannes ‘John’ Krehbiel." Find a Grave website. 13 March 2010. Leisy’s great-great-grandfather.

36. Barb. "Rev Christian Krehbiel." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2008. Leisy’s great-grandfather.

37. Tom Crago. "Elva Agnes Krehbiel Leisy." Find a Grave website. 12 January 2009. Leisy’s mother. Her father, Leisy’s grandfather, was Henry Peter Krehbiel.

38. "Margaret Leisy Steineger." The Kansas City Star. 25 May 2014. Leisy’s sister.
39. Ernest E. Leisy.
40. Wikipedia. "Lady Chatterley’s Lover."
41. Wikipedia. "Gershon Legman."

42. Beer Bust was published two years after Housemothers and Singin’, and included both new and previously published material. The refinements may have reflected comments he received about his first two books.

43. Wikipedia. "Hawkshaw Hawkins."
44. Wikipedia. "Hank Locklin."
45. Wikipedia. "Skeeter Davis."
46. Wikipedia. "Sputnik 1"

47. "Great Speckled Bird, The." The Traditional Ballad Index. California State University-Fresno website.

Minnie Lee

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Minnie Lee was the most important performer in Alliance, North Carolina, and not just because she knew a variant of "Come By Here."

Her repertoire included more genres than Julian Boyd collected from his students in the local high school. She gave him lyrics for play parties and lullabies, as well as a folk tale. She later recorded three of the songs attributed to her by Boyd, while Alexander Price performed another two of her lyrics for Frank Brown. Two more of her songs were included in the Brown tune collection. [1]

Boyd identified her as Minnie Lee, [2] while Brown identified her as Mrs. Minnie Lee. [3] The most likely person buried in Pamlico County was born Minnie Parsons in 1898. [4] She married Timothy Lee in 1915. [5]

The 1920 census reported Minnie Lee was a widow with two children living next to Ludie Parsons. Ten years later her sons, Leston and Duval, were living with Ludie in Arapahoe. Their ages indicated they were born in 1917 and 1919. [6]

How Timothy died so young is guess work. If he’d been killed in World War I, his name probably would have appeared in some list of casualties on the internet. He may have died in the flu epidemic that swept the country in 1918, [7] or died on the job, or from any of the other causes that affected young men.

By 1940 Minnie had married Herbert Dixon and was living in Grantsboro with his children, Duval, and Bernice Broughton. [8] Dixon died in 1955, [9] and sometime after that she married Hymric Brown. He died in 1974, [10] and she was buried next to Dixon in 1974. [11]

Minnie’s parentage is unclear. John James Parsons married Ludie Price in 1905, seven years after Minnie was born. In 1900, he was listed as a farm laborer boarding with John M. Ipock in Vanceboro, more than twenty miles north of New Bern in Craven County. Minnie was not listed as a resident in their household in 1910. [12]

John’s brother Lenard and his two sons were living with the family in Vanceboro in 1910. After John died that year, Ludie married Lenard in 1914. [13] Minnie may have been a daughter of Lenard who was sent to live with another relative when his wife died, or she may have been the daughter of another family member. The Lee Minnie married probably was from that part of Craven County. [14]

Ludie and one of her husbands moved to Pamlico County after the railroad was completed in 1906. [15] The sawmills may have needed more men.

Grantsboro did not exist in 1900. It was then a settlement at the intersection of the road from New Bern and Scott’s Store Road that went south through Arapahoe. A peddler from New York passed through around 1900 and saw possibilities. William Grant married a local woman and opened a store. [16]

There were few places where the young, unmarried Boyd could have collected songs from a comparatively young widow in the small community of Alliance without exciting gossip in 1926. He would have been expected to go to church, and, since his grandfather was a Methodist minister, [17] he probably went to the local Methodist one. Lee was buried in a Free Will Baptist cemetery in Grantsboro.

More than likely Boyd boarded with some family. If that family hired someone to help with the cooking, cleaning, or laundry, Boyd could have talked with an outside woman inside the house. One would guess this was how he met Lee.

Almost nothing can be deduced about her cultural heritage, beyond membership in the Free Baptist Church. The Ipock with whom her father boarded in 1900 was the descendant of one of the first Anabaptist settlers in New Bern, [18] but Parsons, Price, Dixon, Brown, and Lee were all English names that appeared without antecedents.

They appeared where land was available, and were invisible in areas where it was not. They intermarried, but the kinship connections were not recorded in online genealogies.

Few left any paper trails. Jonathan Butcher tried to trace Leven Lee, the progenitor of the Pamlico County Lees. He found more than one person with that name at the time, and none appeared in wills or other legal records. The one time Leven’s name did appear, it was related to a fence that probably was on land he was renting in 1823. Butcher concluded this Lee was a "rather poor man, at least in terms of landholding, the sort who is difficult to trace in early 19th century records." [19]

Not many even left material remains. Few headstones existed anywhere in Pamlico County before 1900, and most of those probably were erected years later by descendants. The area lacked the necessary raw materials. Any tombstone would have had to have been brought by small boat, and then hauled overland in a cart or wagon. The wooden crosses and piles of stone that sufficed would have decayed or been disturbed by animals or farmers.

For instance, the earliest known burial in the Ganus Cemetery south of Arapahoe was 1903. However, "there are two graves marked with wood stakes. There are several graves with cement slabs but no inscriptions. One probable grave marked with flowers. There may be other unmarked graves." [20]

Map
United States Department of the Interior. Geological Survey. Selection from "Bayboro Quadrangle North Carolina 7.5 Minute Series." 1968.

End Notes
1. Frank Brown’s recording session in Alliance was discussed in the post for 1 December 2019. Julian Boyd’s work was discussed in the post for 6 February 2019. Minnie Lee’s contributions were included in the following volumes of Brown’s collection.

The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press. Volume 1. Section on Folk Tales and Legends edited by Stith Thompson. 1952.

___. Volume 2. Folk Ballads from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.

___. Volume 3. Folk Songs from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.

___. Volume 4. The Music of the Ballads. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1957.

___. Volume 5. The Music of the Folk Songs. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1962.

2. Brown. Volumes 1–3.
3. Brown. Volumes 4–5.
4. John47. "Minnie Parsons Lee Dixon Brown." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
5. "Minnie Parsons." Ancestors website.

6. J.D. Larimore. "Ira Nelson Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013. He was the son of Ludie Price and John James Parsons.

7. The influenza epidemic reached Wilmington, North Carolina, in September 1919 and spread west along the railroads. It affected urban areas more than isolated rural ones. [21] The worst was past by the end of the year, but a mild resurgence occurred in the spring. [22] This was when at least two African-American children died in Pamlico County. [23]

8. "Herbert Dixon in the 1940 Census." Archives website.
9. John47. "L Herbert Dixon." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
10. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
11. John47, Minnie Lee.
12. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
13. Larimore, Ira Parsons.

14. Lees have lived in Pamlico County since Leven Lee moved there from Bath, North Carolina, before the Revolution, [24] but Timothy was not mentioned among his descendants. One son, Asa, was buried in a cemetery now on the grounds of Camp Don Lee. [25] Joseph Bryan Lee, the son of another of Asa’s sons, Robert, [26] was buried in the Lee Family cemetery. [27] Bernice Broughton, who was described as someone’s niece in the Dixon household in 1940, was descended from Asa’s son John Riley Lee. [28] Ludie’s son Ira later married Bessie Lee. [29] She was descended from Robert [30] and a Free Will Baptist. [31]

15. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 78–79.

16. "Welcome to beautiful Grantsboro, North Carolina!" Grantsboro website.
17. For more about Boyd’s family, see the post for 6 February 2019.
18. Donald E. Collins. "Swiss and Palatine Settlers." NC Pedia website. 2006.

19. Jonathan B. Butcher. "Levin Leigh Ancestry and the James Leigh Family." May 1988. Copy available from "Judge James Leigh of Bath Precinct, North Carolina." Roots Web website.

20. "Ganus Cemetery." Find a Grave website.

21. David L. Cockrell. "‘A Blessing in Disguise’: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and North Carolina’s Medical and Public Health Communities." The North Carolina Historical Review 73:309–327:1996. 311.

22. Cockrell. 320.

23. Grace Smith, the daughter of John Smith and Fanny Kenyan, died in 1919. [32] Sadie Ollison McGlone’s sister died in Mesic while their father was in the military in Kentucky. [33]

24. Suzy Dixon Bennett. "Re: Lee,Leven 1755 Va." Genealogy website. 26 March 2001.

Floyd Bryan Mack. "Leven Lee." Geni website. 9 November 92014.

25. Floyd Bryan Mack. "Asa Lee." Geni website. 9 November 2014.
26. Bennett identified all, or at least many, of Leven’s children.

27. Christina Carlton. "Joseph Bryan Lee." Find a Grave website. 16 April 2009. Last updated by J.D. Larimore.

28. Her father was Golden Cephas Broughton. [34] His mother, her grandmother, was Rhoda Lee Belangia. [35] She was the daughter of Riley Lee, [36] who then was Bernice’s great-grandfather.

29. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
30. Her father was Eric Lee, [37] the son of Joseph Bryan Lee. [38]
31. J.D. Larimore. "Bessie Lee Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.

32. Sonny William Smith. "In Search Of Rodger 1710-2004." Genealogy website. 28 July 2004. Page 6.

33. Sadie Ollison McGlone. Interview, 23 April 2007. University of North Carolina. Southern Oral History Project website.

34. J.D. Larimore. "Bernice Broughton Murray." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
35. J.D. Larimore. "Golden Cephas Broughton." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
36. J.D. Larimore. "Rhoda Lee Belangia." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
37. Larimore, Bessie Parsons.
38. J.D. Larimore. "Eric Lee." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.

Alliance, North Carolina, Melodies

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Julian Boyd’s collection of folk songs from Pamlico County, North Carolina, went through several filters before selections were published in the 1952 compendium of North Carolina folklore amassed by Frank C. Brown. [1]

Boyd sent a copy of his compilation to John Winslow Gordon in February 1927. Drawing on Boyd’s cover letter, Stephen Winick concluded: "he was apparently quite selective, keeping only those songs he deemed true folksongs and discarding the rest." [2]

When Brown received his copy of Boyd’s manuscript, he or some of his students went to Alliance to record some of the performers. Jan Philip Schinhan selected material from eight individuals when he transcribed the melodies in Brown’s collection in 1962.

It’s not known when Brown went to Alliance, but it was while Boyd was still there. A version by Minnie Lee was "recorded with the co-operation of Julian P. Boyd." [3]

This must have been a major event in Alliance. The settlement did not have electricity. [4] The recordings were done on wax cylinders, [5] with a machine run by a mechanical spring motor. Artists had to sing into a large bell. [6] Boyd may have provided a room in the school.

The session may have occurred soon after Brown received Boyd’s manuscript and may have contributed to the criticisms mentioned in the post for 6 February 2019 that led Boyd to leave the town at the end of the school year. He described his problems to Gordon in a March letter. [7]

The largest numbers of texts included in the Brown collection came from Lee (18), Catherine Bennett (14), and Jeannette Tingle (10). Only Lee and Tingle were recorded, and Lee provided 5 of the 19 published tunes.

Tingle was not in Boyd’s high school class, but the first cousin of one of his students, James Tingle. She was two years younger. [8] When she heard about the project, she may have volunteered her own material. There is evidence she was interested in music. Her daughter acted in amateur theater productions and taught drama at East Carolina University. [9]

Tingle’s son was a professional actor and antiques dealer in Chicago. When he died, a friend remembered "he could write a song and sit down at the piano and sing it." [10] Another recalled he was "a wonderful storyteller with a talent for the dramatic." [11]

Two songs were recorded by Claude James. One had been provided by Ruby Casey. Another came from Mr. T. Barnes. He may have been a Tingle relative. Jeannette’s mother was Clara Missouria Barnes. [12]

Boyd apparently also was collecting songs. Twenty-four of the texts were from unnamed sources or archives, including songs recorded by Mrs. L. F. Banks. Bryan Banks was one of his students. Boyd also was credited by Schinhan as providing a melody by Alfonso Coleman. [13]

Minnie Lee appeared as both a singer and a collector. The texts of two of the three songs recorded by Alexander Price were attributed to Lee.

Mary Price was one of the people included in Boyd’s collection who could not be identified. Alexander’s name was common in the county, and several married women named Mary. If she were not a student, she could have been the Mary Jane Ipock who married the son of Alex Price in 1901. [14] Or, she could have been Mary Holland Thomas who married Alexander Price. His father also was Alexander Price. [15]

End Notes
1. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952.

2. Stephen Winick. "The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song." Folklife Center News 34(3–4):3–10:2010. 4.

3. Brown. The Music of the Folk Songs. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1962. 5:446.

4. In 1940, only 24% of the houses in the Pamlico County had electricity, [16] and 39% had radios powered by batteries. [17]

5. Brown. The Music of the Ballads. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1957. 4:xv, xvi.

6. Andrew Boyd. "Recording Without Electricity." University of Houston. Engines of Our Ingenuity website. 8 May 2014.

7. Winick. 4.

8. J.D. Larimore. "Doris Jeanette Tingle Curtis." Find a Grave. 9 May 2014. Jeannette and James’ fathers were sons of Burney Sylvester Tingle. [18]

9. Joan Williams Bowen. Obituary. [New Bern, North Carolina] Sun Journal. 1 February 2004. 32.

10. Diana Bittel. Quoted by "Taylor B. Williams, 71, Chicago Dealer." Antiques and The Arts Weekly. 4 April 2006.

11. Pam Guthman Kissock. Quoted by Antiques.
12. Larimore, Jeanette Tingle.
13. Brown. 5:345.
Find a Grave website. 15 Aug 2017.

15. Doug Williams. "Laverta Belle Price." Find a Grave website. 22 May 2017. Updated by J.D. Larimore.

16. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 118.

17. Mobley. 119.
Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.