Minnie Lee’s Logging Songs

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
What little history of African Americans who settled in Pamlico County, North Carolina, can be gleamed from genealogies and notes on early burials suggests those who moved to the county to work after the Civil War came from nearby communities or from coastal ones a bit farther north like Hyde County.

That’s consistent with the general migration premise that people don’t marry or move far from home, unless there’s a strong reason like the push of Jim Crow or the pull of jobs in Northern cities during and after World War I.

What’s unknown is the origins of the more migratory workers who came and went with railroad construction, logging camps, and saw mills. They left no kin, and only some would have left a trace in the Census for 1910. Then, since they left no descendants, [1] no one has looked for them, and Pamlico County is hardly the candidate for a major review of the demographic data by an ambitious graduate student.

Minnie Lee’s logging songs suggest non-local sources, but not transmission links. One she "heard in a logging camp" probably originated on the popular stage. The six-line verse described a man who asked another for a loan and was told his friend had no money because he’d lent it to others. The three-line chorus began "if I had it you could get it." [2]

The verse was heard from African Americans in Lowndes County, Alabama, around 1915 by A. H. Williamson. [3] The key line in the chorus was used in work songs heard by Howard Odum around Tupelo, Mississippi, [4] in 1905 and 1906. [5] He heard the phrase "If I had it you could git it, Baby mine" in one, [6] and "if I make it/you shall have it" [7] in another "free labor gang song."

The one Lee called "A Woodman’s Song" was actually the ubiquitous "Frog Went a Courting." [8] The last verse was described as "an intruder from the body of floating bird and animal jingles." [9] Its lines

"Jay bird died with the whoopingcough.
’Long come de bird with his tail bobbed off." [10]

appeared in another of her songs as:

"Jay bird died with the whoopingcough.
Black bird died with the colic;
’Long came a toad-frog with his tail bobbed off
And that broke up the frolic." [11]

The jaybird line was introduced in 1838 in "Jim Along Josey." Black-face artist Ned Harper sang it in a New York show, [12] then published sheet music in 1840. [13] The song entered popular tradition, [14] including in children’s summer camps, [15] and became almost as well known as "Frog."

The colic/frolic end rhyme was heard by Eber Perrow from "country whites" in Mississippi in 1908 [16] and in Pickens County, Alabama, from "a white man imitating a ‘Negro song’" by Ray Browne. [17] The rhyme with the phrase "end of the frolic" was reported from African Americans living in Marion County, South Carolina, by Robert Bass. [18]

In 1931, Bass noted:

"About twenty-five years ago Negro men from this section frequently went to Georgia to work in the turpentine woods, or to Virginia to work in the coal mines, or followed railroad construction camps and lumber camps all over this state." [19]

The historian also noted that during the Depression men were going, instead, to "large industrial centers like Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York, returning after a few years to live with their parents and families. This contact with other laborers teaches them more songs which they introduce into their home communities, varying them as they please." [20]

This comment suggested the presence of songs in Lee’s repertoire from Mississippi and Alabama did not mean men from those states worked in North Carolina. More likely, a series of overlapping economic spheres existed so men from the Deep South might meet men from someplace like Florida, who in turn might teach songs to friends who then went to Georgia where the process was repeated until someone from Pamlico County went south or met someone coming north.

End Notes
1. None appeared in the African-American genealogies compiled by Ray Credle [21] and Bill Smith. [22] Before 1920, they only mentioned Pamlico, Craven, and Hyde counties. Whether this was a class distinction — stable families didn’t mix with transients — or if the people who remained, who often were illiterate, simply lost touch with individuals who left is unknown.

Mark Wetherington found evidence of such bias among whites in Georgia who feared "life in company camps—marked as it was by violence, gambling, and drinking—would erode traditional values." He quoted letters received by a commissary clerk from a sister and a girl friend warning him associating with the impure. [23]

2. Minnie Lee. "Logging Song." Collected by Julian P. Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in 1926. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952. 3:556–557.

3. A. H. Williamson manuscript. Reprinted by Newman I. White. American Negro Folk Songs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928. 309.

4. Lynn Moss Sanders. Howard W. Odum’s Folklore Odyssey. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003. 9.

5. Rupert B. Vance. "Odum, Howard Washington." NC Pedia website. 1991.

6. "Baby Mine." 385 in Howard W. Odum. "Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes (Concluded)." The Journal of American Folklore 24:351–396:1911.

7. "O Lawd, Minnie." 91–92 in Howard W. Odum and Guy B. Johnson. Negro Workday Songs. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1926. 91.

8. Minnie Lee. "Woodman’s Song." Collected by Julian P. Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in 1926. Brown 3:161.

9. Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. Headnote to Lee, "Woodman’s Song." Brown 3:161.

10. Lee, "Woodman’s Song."

11. Minnie Lee. "Jay Bird Died with the Whoopingcough." Collected by Julian P. Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in 1926. Brown 3:201.

12. Edward Le Roy Rice. Monarchs of Minstrelsy. New York City: Kenny Publishing Company 1911. 24. The play was The Free Nigger of New York.

13. Edward Harper and John N. Smith. "Jim Along Josey." New York: Firth and Hall, 1840. Available on Connecticut College website. The original line was: "A Bullfrog died wid de hooping cough."

14. White [24] found it was reprinted in the Negro Singer’s Own Book in 1846 [25] and in a Christy Minstrels songbook the next year. [26]

15. A version with patterned gestures was discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

16. Dr. Herrington manuscript. 1909. Reprinted by as "The Jaybird Died." 133 in E. C. Perrow. "Songs and Rhymes from the South." The Journal of American Folklore 26:123–173:1915.

17. "Jaybird Died With the Whooping Cough." 45 in Ray B. Browne. The Alabama Folk Lyric. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Press, 1979.

18. Robert Duncan Bass. "Negro Songs from the Pedee Country." The Journal of American Folklore 44:418–436:1931. 425. He also noted African Americans in Marion County, where he graduated from high school, [27] did not speak Gullah.

19. Bass. 418. Labor recruiters for West Virginia coal mines were mentioned in the post for 4 August 2019.

20. Bass. 419.
21. Ray Credle. "From Hyde County To Pamlico County." Ancestry website.

22. Sonny William Smith. "In Search Of Rodger 1710-2004." Genealogy website. 28 July 2004. Smith was mentioned in the posts for 8 December 2019 and 24 May 2020.

23. Mark V. Wetherington. The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860-1910. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1994. 131–132.

24. White. 242–243.
25. The Negro Singer’s Own Book. Philadelphia: Turner and Fisher, 1846.
26. Christy’s Nigga Songster. New York: T. W. Strong, 1847.

27. W. Eric Emerson. "Bass, Robert Duncan." South Carolina Encyclopedia website. 2 August 2016.