Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Lives of Sumter County slaves were circumscribed by Alabama’s state laws. The French Code Noir already was in effect when Mobile was founded. It required slaves be baptized in the Roman Catholic church, [1] and did not allow slaves owned by different men to meet. [2]
When the British took over, they required Negroes carry passes to prove they weren’t runaways. While baptism was permitted, it no longer was encouraged. [3]
The informal prohibitions against slave mobility were codified in the Slave Code of 1833. It was illegal for "more than five male slaves, either with or without passes, to assemble together at any place off the proper plantation to which they belong." [4] Patrols were authorized to hunt for runaways, and a bounty was paid to any white who found a Black hiding in wild lands. [5]
The Alabama law was passed two years after Nat Turner’s rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Teaching Negroes to read became illegal, [6] and no Black was allowed to preach unless "five respectable slave-holders" were present. [7]
The 1852 code made it mandatory for all able-bodied white men to participate in slave patrols at least once a week. [8] The patrols had the right to enter any plantation to look for slaves visiting without passes. [9]
The consequences of these laws were remembered by former slaves interviewed by Ruby Pickens Tartt in 1937 and 1938. Bettie Tolbert was born in Virginia and a slave on Abner Scarborough’s plantation. [10] She told Tartt:
"No’m, us didn’t go to school none no time, nor learn nothin [11]
. . .
"No’m, us never had no corn shuckins, ’cause Marse Abner was a precher and didn’t alow nothin sinful goin on." [12]
Only a few suggested their masters believed slaves should be exposed to Christianity. Amy Chapman was born in Virginia and a slave on Reuben Chapman’s plantation. [13] She told Tartt:
"Us warn’t learned to read and write, but Mr. Jerry Brown’s slaves were. [14] He owned a big plantation. Us didn’t go to no nigger church, ’cause there warn’t none. I was baptized in Jones Creek, and Dr. Edmonds, a white preacher, joined me to the Jones Baptist Church long before the war." [15]
Few plantation owners allowed slaves to congregate. As a consequence, slaves had to be discrete and practice what they called "praying easy." They all mentioned using iron wash pots to muffle the sounds. For instance, George Young, who was born on the same Chapman plantation, said:
"They didn’t learn us nothin and didn’t allow us to learn nothin. If they catch us learning to read and write, they cut us hand off. They didn’t allow us to go to church, neither. Sometimes us slip off and have a little prayer meetin by usselves in a old house with a dirt floor. They’d get happy and shout and couldn’t nobody hear ’em, ’cause they didn’t make no fuss on the dirt floor, and one stand in the door and watch. Some folks put their head in the washpot to pray, and pray easy, and somebody be watchin for the overseer." [16]
Oliver Bell was born in 1860 [17] on Trezevant DeGraffenried’s plantation, [18] "nine miles west of Livingston." [19] Before the Civil War,
"when they had the prayer meetins they shut the door so won’t let the voice out, and they turn the washpot down at the door—some say to keep it in." [20]
Angie Garrett was born in DeKalb, Mississippi, and was owned by Johnny Mooring. [21] She remembered:
"Us warn’t allowed to learn nothin; sometimes us sing and have a little prayer mettin, but twas mighty easy and quiet-like." [22]
A few people mentioned religious practices that weren’t conducted under fear of discovery. Josh Horn made the difference clear.
"Me and her [his wife Alice] didn’t neither one have no book learnin ’cause us come along in slavery time and warn’t ’lowed to have no school then. But us was all ’lowed to pray, and didn’t never have to stick us heads in the washpot and pray easy, like plenty black folks did. Marse Ike [23] was good ’bout that; twas an old house with a dirt floor in the quarters where us could go and wouldn’t disturb nobody when us got happy and shouted." [24]
Maria White didn’t mention slavery practices because she was too young to remember. She described what her mother sang after emancipation with the term "jumpy up" that suggested something about their use.
"That’s just a jumpy-up song, Miss, one that ain’t in the book, but it’s a cute one, and there’s a heap more of them verses but I’m busy as a cat and I can’t recollect them right now. But here’s a old-time Negro song my mammy used to sing when I was a child after surrender." [25]
. . .
"That’s a pretty one, Miss; Mammy used to get happy when they sang that one." [26]
["Dat’s jes’ a jumpy-up song, Miss, one dat ain’t in de book, but hit’s a cute one, en dey’s a heap mo’ dem verses but I’m busy as er cat and I can’t recollect ’em right now. But here’s a ole-time nigger song my mammy useter sing when I was a chile atter S’rrender.]
. . .
["Dat’s a pretty one, Miss; Mammy use ter git happy when dey sung dat one."]
White lived "’bout ten miles dis here side of Cuba Station on Mr. John Matthew’s place" [27] along a creek southwest of Livingston. Her examples of jumpy-up songs were religious ones that resembled spirituals.
End Notes
Ruby Pickens Tartt’s slave narratives from 1937 and 1938 have been republished in the following collections:
Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.
Alan Brown and David Taylor. Gabr’l Blow Sof’. Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997.
Key words in quotations that relate to ring shouts and other common religious practices are in boldface.
1. Wikipedia. "Code Noir." Article 2.
2. Code Noir. Article 16.
3. Clayton E. Jewett, John O. Allen, and Jon L. Wakelyn. Slavery in the South. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004. 3–4.
4. Ron. "Alabama’s Slave Laws Relating to Speech and Assembly." US Slave website. 12 June 2012. None of the official Alabama links to the code were functioning when I tried them.
5. "Selections from Alabama’s Laws Governing Slaves." City University of New York. American Social History Project website.
6. James Benson Sellers. Slavery in Alabama. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1950; reprinted in 1990. 117.
7. Ron.
8. "Alabama Slave Code of 1852." Constitution Reader website. Item 990.
9. Alabama Slave Code, 1852. Item 992.
10. Abner Rasberry Scarborough was a Baptist minister who moved to Sumter County from Edgecombe County, North Carolina. [28] Tom Blake did not include him in his list of men who owned many slaves in 1860. [29]
11. Bettie Tolbert. "Lost to the Refugee Wagons." 127–139 in Brown and Owens. 137.
12. Tolbert. 138.
13. Reuben Chapman was discussed in the posts for 1 September 2019 and 15 September 2019.
14. Jeremiah H. Brown’s father was born in England, and served as a Baptist minister in Darlington, South Carolina. As mentioned in the post for 15 September 2019, Jeremiah was the largest slave holder in Sumter County in 1860. He supported Baptist institutions in Alabama and provided his slaves "with good churches and white preachers on Sunday, and saw that they had a reasonable amount of instruction and religious training." [30]
15. Amy Chapman. "The Masters Good but Overseers Mean. 128–129 in Brown and Owens. 128–129.
16. George Young. "Peter Had No Keys ’ceptin His." 120–122 in Brown and Owens. 121.
17. The 1870 Census for his father said he was ten-years-old. [31]
18. Trezevant’s immigrant ancestor, Christoph von Graffenried, founded the Swiss colony of New Bern, North Carolina, in 1709. [32] The Tuscarora took him captive, and released him only when he agreed to make no settlements without their permission. He returned to Switzerland, [33] and Trezevant’s great-grandfather moved to Virginia. [34] Trezevant’s father moved to Union County, South Carolina. [35] Trezevant, himself, was a doctor who left Sumter County for Mississippi sometime after the war. [36] Blake did not include him in his list of men who owned many slaves in 1860. [29]
19. Oliver Bell. "That Tree Was My Nurse." 134–137 in Brown and Owens. 134.
20. Bell. 134.
21. Johnny Mooring may have been the John Mooring who was living with his son, James Ashley Mooring, in northern Sumter County near Gainesville in 1860. [37] They moved there from Edgecombe County, North Carolina. [38] Their immigrant ancestor, John Mooring, was a tanner transported from England to the Virginia colony before 1652. [39] Blake did not include either in his list of men who owned many slaves in 1860. [29]
22. Angie Garrett. "Turned Lose without Nothin." 140–142 in Brown and Owens. 141.
23. Isaac Wood Horn moved to Sumter County from North Carolina and settled in Brewersville, south east of Livingston. [40] His family had been in Edgecombe County since the late 1600s. [41] Blake did not include him in his list of men who owned many slaves in 1860. [29]
24. Ruby Pickens Tartt. "Alice." Southwest Review 34:192–195:1949. Reprinted by Brown and Owens. 103. Bracketed comment added.
25. Maria White. "Jumpy-up Songs and Songs in de Book." 103–105 in Brown and Taylor. 104.
26. White. 105.
27. White. 103. Jonathan Matthews owned 152 slaves in 1860. [29] I found nothing more about him.
28. Edgecombe County was mentioned in the post for 2 February 2020.
29. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website.
30. T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith. From Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical. Birmingham: Smith and Deland, 1888. 219.
31. Amy Caddell. "Edmund DeGraffenreid Bell." Find a Grave website. 15 September 2017.
32. The New Bern colony was discussed in the post for 19 January 2020.
33. David Reese. "Christoph DeGraffenried." Find a Grave website. 2 October 2010.
34. David Reese. "Christopher DeGraffenried." Find a Grave website. 2 October 2010.
35. David Reese. "Christopher Kit DeGraffenried." Find a Grave website. 11 August 2012.
36. meet Virginia. "Dr Trezevant DeGraffenried." Find a Grave website. 22 Feb 2009. Updated by David Reese. Tartt spelled it Tresvant DeGraffenreid. [134]
37. Fran. "James A. Mooring." Find a Grave website. 18 July 2009.
38. Charles Avis. "James Ashley Mooring (abt. 1820 - 1874)." Wikitree website. 31 October 2018; last updated 19 November 2018.
39. Charles Avis. "John Mooring (bef. 1652 - aft. 1703)." Wikitree website. 14 November 2018; last updated 16 November 2018.
40. Fran. "Isaac Wood Horn." Find a Grave website. 17 July 2009. Updated by Elizabeth Hughes Hagwood. Confirmed by Robert Gordon Horn. "Descendants of William Horn." Genealogy website. Last updated 13 April 2003. 33
41. Robert Gordon Horn. 17.
Showing posts with label Tartt Ruby Pickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tartt Ruby Pickens. Show all posts
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Antebellum Sumter County
Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Ruby Pickens Tartt did not identify the sources for her version of "Come by Here." He or she may have been one of the people born before the Civil War whom she interviewed for the Federal Writers’ Project in 1937 and 1938. [1]
Most often the people who talked with Tartt referred to their former owners by their first names, like Marse Abner. [2] Occasionally they used a last name as a place name in a way that indicated it was familiar to all: Oliver Bell said he was "born on the DeGraffenreid place." [3]
About half the last names they mentioned did not appear in Tom Blake’s list of plantation owners who reported at least forty slaves in the 1860 census. [4] That means they were possessed by men like Tartt’s mother’s ancestor, Hiram Chiles, who had smaller holdings. [5]
Some lived on plantations with middling-sized quarters. Charlie Johnson said he was "born ere on Whitefield place." [6] R. H. Whitefield claimed 51 bondsmen in 1860. [7] Laura Clark said "Mr. Garrett" was the one who brought her from North Carolina. [8] In 1860, the estate of R. W. Garrett reported 92 chattel. [9 ] She remembered his overseers as bad. [10]
The only ones who lived on a larger plantation were Amy Chapman [11] and George Young. [12] They indicated they were owned by the former governor, Reuben Chapman. [13] His overseers were remembered as particularly brutal; one raped Amy. [14]
Before the war, cotton was sent down the Tombigbee river where commission agents like Tartt, Stewart [15] handled the sale. [16] They filled much the same role as Henry Laurens had in Charleston before the American Revolution. [17]
Tartt was told other, more ruthless men also brought people to Sumter County. Adelle Lemon said her grandmother was a free-born mulatto in North Carolina who was kidnapped and sold in Alabama. [18] Carrie Pollard said her aunt likewise was born free in North Carolina, snatched, and sold in Sumter County. [19]
Some local plantation owners went east themselves to find slaves. Laura Clark said Mr. Garrett bought ten children, including herself, in North Carolina. [20] Amy Chapman remembered Reuben Chapman returned to his native Virginia to buy her mother in Petersburg and her father in Richmond. "They was drove down to Alabama like cattle." [21]
Others who told Tartt about their origins mentioned locations, but didn’t elaborate. Ank Bishop said his mother was "brought out from South Carolina in a speculator drove" and sold to Liza Larkin. [22] Oliver Bell only talked about his family born "on the DeGraffenreid place," [23] but his daughter said his mother, her grandmother, was sold from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when she was a teenager. [24]
There also was local traffic between Sumter and neighboring counties in Mississippi. Carrie Pollard said her mulatto aunt’s husband and children were sold in DeKalb while she was midwifing a white birth. [25] Angie Garrett reversed the path: he was born in DeKalb and sold to someone with a steamboat on the Tombigbee "’cause the property was in debt." [26]
Nettie Henry and her mother were sent to Meridian, but her father was owned by someone else. She remembered:
"Then his folks just kinda went to Texas, I don’t know exactly except maybe it wasn’t so healthy for them around Livingston. They didn’t go to the War or nothing." [27]
["den his folks jus’ kinda went to Texas, I don’ know why zactly ’cep’ maybe it warn’t so healthy for ’em ’roun’ Livingston. Dey didn’ go to de War or nothin’."]
Henry gave more details about her mother:
"The Chile’s place was at Livingston, Alabama, on Alamucha Creek. That’s where I was born, but I just did get borned good when Miss Lizzie—she was Marse Chile’s girl—married John C. Higgens and moved to Meridian. Me an my mother and my two sisters, Liza and Temp, was give to Miss Lizzie." [28]
["De Chil’s place was at Livingston, Alabama, on Alamucha Creek. Dat’s where I was born, but I jus’ did get borned good when Miss Lizzie—she was Marse Chil’s girl—married Marse John C. Higgins an’ moved to Mer-ree-dian. Me an’ my mammy an’ my two sisters, Liza an’ Tempe, was give to Miss Lizzie."]
This Chiles may have been a distant cousin of Hiram’s. Hiram’s grandfather had a number of children, as well as several brothers. Elizabeth Chiles Higgens [29] had a daughter [30] who married Nathaniel Abney Chiles. At one time, his father, Henry Chiles, lived in the county north of Sumter and west of Maregno. His mother, Elizabeth Fluker, spent time in Livingston. [31]
End Notes
1. Her work for the Federal Writers’ Project was discussed in the post for 23 January 2019. Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens republished some of her slave narratives with a biographies of Tartt and some of the individuals she interviewed. Alan Brown and David Taylor also reprinted some of the interviews, along with biographical details on the individuals interviewed.
Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.
Alan Brown and David Taylor. Gabr’l Blow Sof’. Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997.
2. Bettie Tolbert. "Lost to the Refugee Wagons." 127–139 in Brown and Owens. 137.
3. Oliver Bell. "That Tree Was My Nurse." 134–137 in Brown and Owens. 134.
4. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website.
5. Hiram Chiles was discussed in the posts for 23 January 2019 and 1 September 2019.
6. Charlie Johnson. "Reckon You Might Say I’s Just Faithful." 130–132 in Brown and Owens. 130.
7. R. H. Whitefield claimed 51 slaves in 1860 according to Blake. [4]
8. Laura Clark. "Children in Every Graveyard." 123–126 in Brown and Owens. 123.
9. The estate of R. W. Garrett reported 92 slaves in 1860 according to Blake. [4]
10. Clark. 123.
11. Amy Chapman. "The Masters Good but Overseers Mean. 128–129 in Brown and Owens. 128.
12. George Young. "Peter Had No Keys ’ceptin His." 120–122 in Brown and Owens. 120.
13. Reuben Chapman was mentioned in the post for 1 September 2019.
14. Ruby Pickens Tartt. "Amy Chapman’s Funeral." 79–83 in Brown and Owens. 80.
15. John Paul Campbell. The Southern Business Directory and General Commercial Advertiser. Charleston: Press of Walker and James, 1854. Advertisement for Tartt, Stewart, and Company, 37. Tartt’s husband’s father, Thomas Morrison Tartt, worked in his uncle’s commission house in Mobile before the war. [32]
16. Wikipedia. "Cotton Factor."
17. Henry Laurens was discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.
18. Adelle Lemon. "My Grandmammy Fancied Her Butler." 139–140 in Brown and Owens. 139.
19. Carrie Pollard. "A Husband Couldn’t Be Bought." 132–133 in Brown and Owens. 132.
20. Clark. 123.
21. Amy Chapman. 128.
22. Ank Bishop. "Gabriel Blow Soft! Gabriel Blow Loud!" 126–128 in Brown and Owens. 126.
23. Bell. 134.
24. Daughter of Oliver Bell, Bernice Johnson. Quoted in Brown and Taylor. 8.
25. Pollard. 132.
26. Angie Garrett. "Turned Lose without Nothin." 140–142 in Brown and Owens. 140–141.
27. Netty Henry. "Meridian, Mississippi." 55–59 in Brown and Taylor. 55.
28. Henry. 55.
29. Mary Taylor. "Elizabeth Chiles Higgins." Find a Grave. 31 May 2017.
30. Mary Taylor. "Annie Elizabeth Higgins Chiles." Find a Grave. 20 April 2016.
31. "Nathaniel Abney Chiles, 1853 - Circa 1924." My Heritage website. This website agglomerates information and seems less reliable than most. The birth dates given for Nathaniel’s parents were before there was settlement in the areas where it indicated they were born.
32. T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith. "Thomas Morrison Tartt." From Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical. Birmingham: Smith and Deland, 1888. 233.
Ruby Pickens Tartt did not identify the sources for her version of "Come by Here." He or she may have been one of the people born before the Civil War whom she interviewed for the Federal Writers’ Project in 1937 and 1938. [1]
Most often the people who talked with Tartt referred to their former owners by their first names, like Marse Abner. [2] Occasionally they used a last name as a place name in a way that indicated it was familiar to all: Oliver Bell said he was "born on the DeGraffenreid place." [3]
About half the last names they mentioned did not appear in Tom Blake’s list of plantation owners who reported at least forty slaves in the 1860 census. [4] That means they were possessed by men like Tartt’s mother’s ancestor, Hiram Chiles, who had smaller holdings. [5]
Some lived on plantations with middling-sized quarters. Charlie Johnson said he was "born ere on Whitefield place." [6] R. H. Whitefield claimed 51 bondsmen in 1860. [7] Laura Clark said "Mr. Garrett" was the one who brought her from North Carolina. [8] In 1860, the estate of R. W. Garrett reported 92 chattel. [9 ] She remembered his overseers as bad. [10]
The only ones who lived on a larger plantation were Amy Chapman [11] and George Young. [12] They indicated they were owned by the former governor, Reuben Chapman. [13] His overseers were remembered as particularly brutal; one raped Amy. [14]
Before the war, cotton was sent down the Tombigbee river where commission agents like Tartt, Stewart [15] handled the sale. [16] They filled much the same role as Henry Laurens had in Charleston before the American Revolution. [17]
Tartt was told other, more ruthless men also brought people to Sumter County. Adelle Lemon said her grandmother was a free-born mulatto in North Carolina who was kidnapped and sold in Alabama. [18] Carrie Pollard said her aunt likewise was born free in North Carolina, snatched, and sold in Sumter County. [19]
Some local plantation owners went east themselves to find slaves. Laura Clark said Mr. Garrett bought ten children, including herself, in North Carolina. [20] Amy Chapman remembered Reuben Chapman returned to his native Virginia to buy her mother in Petersburg and her father in Richmond. "They was drove down to Alabama like cattle." [21]
Others who told Tartt about their origins mentioned locations, but didn’t elaborate. Ank Bishop said his mother was "brought out from South Carolina in a speculator drove" and sold to Liza Larkin. [22] Oliver Bell only talked about his family born "on the DeGraffenreid place," [23] but his daughter said his mother, her grandmother, was sold from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when she was a teenager. [24]
There also was local traffic between Sumter and neighboring counties in Mississippi. Carrie Pollard said her mulatto aunt’s husband and children were sold in DeKalb while she was midwifing a white birth. [25] Angie Garrett reversed the path: he was born in DeKalb and sold to someone with a steamboat on the Tombigbee "’cause the property was in debt." [26]
Nettie Henry and her mother were sent to Meridian, but her father was owned by someone else. She remembered:
"Then his folks just kinda went to Texas, I don’t know exactly except maybe it wasn’t so healthy for them around Livingston. They didn’t go to the War or nothing." [27]
["den his folks jus’ kinda went to Texas, I don’ know why zactly ’cep’ maybe it warn’t so healthy for ’em ’roun’ Livingston. Dey didn’ go to de War or nothin’."]
Henry gave more details about her mother:
"The Chile’s place was at Livingston, Alabama, on Alamucha Creek. That’s where I was born, but I just did get borned good when Miss Lizzie—she was Marse Chile’s girl—married John C. Higgens and moved to Meridian. Me an my mother and my two sisters, Liza and Temp, was give to Miss Lizzie." [28]
["De Chil’s place was at Livingston, Alabama, on Alamucha Creek. Dat’s where I was born, but I jus’ did get borned good when Miss Lizzie—she was Marse Chil’s girl—married Marse John C. Higgins an’ moved to Mer-ree-dian. Me an’ my mammy an’ my two sisters, Liza an’ Tempe, was give to Miss Lizzie."]
This Chiles may have been a distant cousin of Hiram’s. Hiram’s grandfather had a number of children, as well as several brothers. Elizabeth Chiles Higgens [29] had a daughter [30] who married Nathaniel Abney Chiles. At one time, his father, Henry Chiles, lived in the county north of Sumter and west of Maregno. His mother, Elizabeth Fluker, spent time in Livingston. [31]
End Notes
1. Her work for the Federal Writers’ Project was discussed in the post for 23 January 2019. Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens republished some of her slave narratives with a biographies of Tartt and some of the individuals she interviewed. Alan Brown and David Taylor also reprinted some of the interviews, along with biographical details on the individuals interviewed.
Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.
Alan Brown and David Taylor. Gabr’l Blow Sof’. Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997.
2. Bettie Tolbert. "Lost to the Refugee Wagons." 127–139 in Brown and Owens. 137.
3. Oliver Bell. "That Tree Was My Nurse." 134–137 in Brown and Owens. 134.
4. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website.
5. Hiram Chiles was discussed in the posts for 23 January 2019 and 1 September 2019.
6. Charlie Johnson. "Reckon You Might Say I’s Just Faithful." 130–132 in Brown and Owens. 130.
7. R. H. Whitefield claimed 51 slaves in 1860 according to Blake. [4]
8. Laura Clark. "Children in Every Graveyard." 123–126 in Brown and Owens. 123.
9. The estate of R. W. Garrett reported 92 slaves in 1860 according to Blake. [4]
10. Clark. 123.
11. Amy Chapman. "The Masters Good but Overseers Mean. 128–129 in Brown and Owens. 128.
12. George Young. "Peter Had No Keys ’ceptin His." 120–122 in Brown and Owens. 120.
13. Reuben Chapman was mentioned in the post for 1 September 2019.
14. Ruby Pickens Tartt. "Amy Chapman’s Funeral." 79–83 in Brown and Owens. 80.
15. John Paul Campbell. The Southern Business Directory and General Commercial Advertiser. Charleston: Press of Walker and James, 1854. Advertisement for Tartt, Stewart, and Company, 37. Tartt’s husband’s father, Thomas Morrison Tartt, worked in his uncle’s commission house in Mobile before the war. [32]
16. Wikipedia. "Cotton Factor."
17. Henry Laurens was discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.
18. Adelle Lemon. "My Grandmammy Fancied Her Butler." 139–140 in Brown and Owens. 139.
19. Carrie Pollard. "A Husband Couldn’t Be Bought." 132–133 in Brown and Owens. 132.
20. Clark. 123.
21. Amy Chapman. 128.
22. Ank Bishop. "Gabriel Blow Soft! Gabriel Blow Loud!" 126–128 in Brown and Owens. 126.
23. Bell. 134.
24. Daughter of Oliver Bell, Bernice Johnson. Quoted in Brown and Taylor. 8.
25. Pollard. 132.
26. Angie Garrett. "Turned Lose without Nothin." 140–142 in Brown and Owens. 140–141.
27. Netty Henry. "Meridian, Mississippi." 55–59 in Brown and Taylor. 55.
28. Henry. 55.
29. Mary Taylor. "Elizabeth Chiles Higgins." Find a Grave. 31 May 2017.
30. Mary Taylor. "Annie Elizabeth Higgins Chiles." Find a Grave. 20 April 2016.
31. "Nathaniel Abney Chiles, 1853 - Circa 1924." My Heritage website. This website agglomerates information and seems less reliable than most. The birth dates given for Nathaniel’s parents were before there was settlement in the areas where it indicated they were born.
32. T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith. "Thomas Morrison Tartt." From Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical. Birmingham: Smith and Deland, 1888. 233.
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Alabama Cotton
Topic: Early Versions - Performers
When arable land grew scarce in Georgia and South Carolina men looked beyond the Appalachians, but were inhibited by conflicting state, federal, and international land claims. After Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana from France in 1803, he proposed building a postal road to connect Georgia with New Orleans. Work began in 1810, and the route was redesigned by the army in 1822. [1]
In the first four months, while it still was being built, 3,726 moved west over it. [2] Lydia Parrish reported one traveler on the Federal Road remembered "he was never out of sight of a long line of immigrants" when he was traveling east. [3]
The first lands settled in Alabama were the familiar red clays in the northern part of the state around Huntsville in Madison County. Many of the earliest settlers came south from Tennessee. [4] They soon were joined by families and single men from east of the mountains. [5]
Ruby Pickens Tartt’s father’s family was typical of this wave of settlers. [6] William Henry Pickens was a Huguenot who moved from France to Ireland to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. [7] His grandson Joseph, moved from Pennsylvania to the Ninety-six district in South Carolina. [8] Tartt’s great-grandfather, Joseph William Pickens, relocated to Madison County. [9]
The Black Belt opened in 1816 [10] after the Choctaw ceded lands in the Treaty of Fort Stephens. [11] Cotton was grown for the first time around Montgomery in 1818, although the acreage was limited until 1825. [12] Wilcox County, mentioned in the post on the Oak Grove Church, [13] reported its first crop in 1820. [14]
Speculators became involved as soon as lands were opened because they had resources to buy large tracts to resell. The elimination of the National Bank in 1811 and the use of paper currency to finance the War of 1812 encouraged them. [15] A group who had migrated to Georgia after the Revolution became particularly active in the Black Belt. A class division developed with wealthy men owning better land, and poorer men relegated to the red clays. [16]
The western most part of the Black Belt containing Sumter County was still in Choctaw hands when Andrew Jackson was elected in 1828. The state immediately asserted ownership, and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 reified their actions. The Choctaw were forced to vacate by the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. [17] Cotton was grown in the county that summer, [18] even before the Choctaw left in the winter. [19]
The Tombigbee river marked the eastern border of the county. It not only provided a way to move goods to and from Mobile, but the most desirable soils were the first and second bottoms along the rivers, code 4 on the map below. They were like the bend in the Alabama river mentioned in the post for 10 February 2019.
The next best land abutted the bottoms and smaller streams. It mostly was "undulating to rolling uplands." The acreage, marked 2 on the map, had fertile soils good for general crops. That was where Tartt’s mother’s family moved after the Choctaw were removed. [20]
Hiram Chiles came from Caroline County in Virginia to settle around Livingston. [21] Reuben Chapman was born in the same county a few years later, [22] and moved to Madison County in 1824 where he practiced law. He entered politics in 1832, and spent most of his time in Huntsville, supported by his Sumter County plantation [23] located "five miles north of Livingston." [24]
"Rolling, rough and broken uplands," code 1, divided the river drainages. The other areas, code 3, were "gently undulating to gently sloping uplands."
The Panic of 1837 lead to an economic depression that lasted from 1839 to 1844. [25] Land ownership must have been consolidated as the poor lost their lands or left. The white population fell from 13,901 in 1840 to 7,369 in 1850, while the number of slaves increased from 6,036 to 14,881. [26]
Exacerbating farmers’ problems was the cotton worm, which first appeared in 1846 and became a menace between 1849 and 1855. [27] The moths could go through three generations in a single season. [28] The females began laying their eggs on plants in the black lands, then moved outward. [29] The earliest moths destroyed foliage, but the later ones, which coincided with the flowering of the cotton plants, decimated crops. [30]
The moths flew north from Brazil when conditions were right, [31] and there was little cotton growers could do. [32] Those with money may have purchased new seed varieties that had been bred to resist a soil fungus common in Mississippi. [33] By the 1830s, a seed industry had developed in the South that advertized its products in local newspapers and specialist publications like the American Cotton Planter. [34]
Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode suggested these hybrids solved another problem confronting growers, the fact they could grow more than they could pick. The selections had bolls that were easier to remove on stems that often were taller. As a result the productivity of laborers, slave and free, quadrupled. [35]
The white population in Sumter County fell again before the Civil War to 5,919 whites in 1860 while the number of slaves rose to 18,116. [36] The largest owner, Jeremiah Brown, moved from Darlington, South Carolina, in 1834 with at least 60 slaves. [37] He settled in Sumterville, between Emelle and Boyd, where he grew corn, oats, and cotton on 4,600 of his 8,966 acres [38] with 540 slaves in 1860. [39]
The men with the next largest numbers of chattel in the 1860 census were John E. Brown [40] with 180 and William Jones with 176. [41] Chapman reported 106 in the county. Chiles and Pickens had too few to be listed among the patroons. [42]
Maps
1. Flondin. "Alabama Counties Map." Wikipedia Commons. 13 December 2006.
2. G. A. Swenson, et alia. "Sketch map showing topographic divisions of Sumter County." Soil Survey of Sumter County, Alabama. Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, May 1941. 3. The Livingston soil was classed as Cahaba Fine Sandy Loam and described as an "excellent agricultural soil" on page 25.
End Notes
1. Kevin Harrell. "Federal Road in Alabama." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 22 December 2010; last updated 7 July 2014.
2. Harrell.
3. Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. 94.
4. J. Mills Thornton. "Broad River Group." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 26 March 2007; last updated, 29 August 2016.
5. Wikipedia. "Alabama Fever."
6. Tartt was introduced in the post for 23 January 2019.
7. "William Henry Pickens." Wikitree website. 10 March 2011.
8. "Joseph Pickens." Ancestry website.
9. Liz Nelan. "Joseph William Pickens + Salina Brazelton." Nelan/Pickens website.
10. Thornton.
11. Greg O’Brien. "Choctaws in Alabama." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 18 June 2007; last updated 23 January 2017.
12. John Henry Comstock. Report Upon Cotton Insects. Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, 1879. 380.
13. Oak Grove was discussed in the post for 10 February 2019.
14. Comstock. 380.
15. Wikipedia. "Panic of 1819."
16. Thomas Chase Hagood. "Territorial Period and Early Statehood." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 23 May 2008; last updated, 13 February 2017.
17. Greg O’Brien. "Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830)." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 2 April 2013; last updated 28 May 2014.
18. Comstock. 381.
19. O’Brien, Treaty.
20. The post for 23 January 2019 had more on Chiles.
21. Hiram Chiles was born in Caroline County, Virginia in 1794. [43]
22. Reuben Chapman was born in Caroline County, Virginia, in 1799. [44]
23. John Mayfield. "Reuben Chapman (1847-49)." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 13 May 2008; last updated 30 September 2014.
24. Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 157.
25. Wikipedia. "Panic of 1837."
26. Willis Brewer. Alabama. Montgomery: Barrett and Brown, 1872. 626.
27. Comstock. 51.
28. Comstock. 442.
29. Comstock. 429.
30. Comstock. 442.
31. "Alabama argillacea." Bayer Crop Science website.
32. The pest was controlled in the 1870s when the USDA began recommending "the use of Paris green or other arsenical compounds" in the 1870s. [45]
33. The Rot first appeared in Mississippi in 1811. [46] The Phymatotrichopsis omnivora (Duggar) Hennebert fungus lives in the soil where it can survive for years. [47]
34. Paul W. Rhode. "Biological Innovation without IPRs: Cotton Breeding in the Antebellum American South." Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, annual conference, July 2012.
35. Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode. "‘Wait a Cotton Pickin’ Minute!’ A New View of Slave Productivity." University of California, Davis, website. April 2007.
36. Brewer. 626.
37. T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith. Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical. Birmingham: Smith and Deland, 1888. 219. Brown owned "more than sixty field hands and a very large tract of land" when he graduated from South Carolina College in 1823.
38. James Benson Sellers. Slavery in Alabama. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1950. 34.
39. Sellers. 33. He was identified as Jeremiah H. Brown in official publications. The census taker make have abbreviated his first name. Tom Blake listed him as Jerrett Brown. [48]
40. John E. Brown’s name appeared in documents from the period, but none gave any information about him.
41. The entry read: "JONES, Wm. Jr., J. J. Wendham agent for." This suggests he was an absentee owner. [49]
42. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website.
43. "Hiram Chiles." Ancestry website.
44. "Chapman, Reuben, (1799 - 1882)." Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress website.
45. W. D. Hunter. The Cotton Worm or Cotton Caterpillar. (Alabama argillacea Hubn.) Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology, 18 May 1912. 2.
46. J. F. H. Claiborne. Mississippi, as a Province, Territory, and State. Jackson: Power and Barksdale, 1880. 41.
47. S. R. Uppalapati, C. A. Young, S. M. Marek, and K. S. Mysore. "Phymatotrichum (Cotton) Root Rot Caused by Phymatotrichopsis omnivora: Retrospects and Prospects." Molecular Plant Pathology 11:325–334:2010. Abstract.
48. Blake.
49. Blake.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Ruby Pickens Tartt - Lord, Won’t You Come by Here
Topic: Early Versions - Collectors
Ruby Pickens Tartt collected a version of "Lord, Won’t You Come by Here" in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1936 or 1937. [1] She was a participant collector like the members of the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals. Her mother’s family was one of the first settlers in the county and Tartt maintained that pioneer social position in Livingston, Alabama, even after she applied for relief from the WPA when her husband couldn’t work in the Depression.
Her mother’s immigrant ancestor, Walter Chiles, moved to Jamestown around 1636 [2] with his adult son, also named Walter. The son was listed as a "cloth worker" in Bristol. [3] Their descendants stayed in Virginia until Tartt’s great-grandfather, Hiram Chiles, moved to Alabama when the Choctaw were removed. [4]
Sumter County’s social structure may have been fluid in the early years, when settlers were growing general crops to feed themselves. However, it probably had stratified by 1840 when cotton was the primary commercial crop and settlers who’d claimed the best land for that crop were likely to be the wealthiest.
The census that year indicated Hiram Chiles owned eight male and three female slaves. This was at the time when the county had 22,000 Blacks and 8,000 whites, or 2.75 Blacks for every white. [5] Sumter then was one of the wealthiest and most densely populated counties in the state. Chiles also was not listed as one of the county’s major slave owners in 1860. [6]
His daughter, Mary Champ Chiles, married Jordan Short before the Civil War. He died in 1861, and she opened a private school. Later she taught at the Livingston Female Academy. Her daughter, Fannie West Short, and her husband moved in with her in 1874. [7] William King Pickens apparently rented his land, rather than selling it or supervising sharecroppers. [8]
Tartt was born in 1880 and developed a "terrible temper" that was more than her mother could handle. She spent time with her grandmother who taught her to draw and paint. After attendeding the local girls’ school, [9] she went to Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans. [10] Then, in 1901, Tartt moved to New York to study art with William Merritt Chase. [11]
She returned to Livingston where she married William Pratt Tartt. [12] His father, Thomas Morrison Tartt, had worked for his uncle’s commission house in Mobile. After the Civil War, he moved to Livingston where he became a merchant. [13] His namesake son, Ruby’s brother-in-law, was president of the local bank, McMillan and Company. [14] No one has been specific about her husband’s education or employment. [15]
During the 1920s, the Tartts were sufficiently well off to send their daughter Fannie to the University of Alabama where she pledged Kappa Delta. [16] She was responsible for Carl Carmer staying with her parents when a college drama group was visiting Livingston in 1926. [17]
The English instructor had earned a masters degree from Harvard in 1915, [18] where George Kittredge had taken over the folklore work of Francis James Child. [19] According to Howell Raines, Carmer used his students as guides, who took him to events like fiddlers’ contests and sacred harp sings. [20] At the time he met Tartt, he said he was collecting notes for an article, but she recommended he write a book. [21]
He left Tuscaloosa amidst a romantic scandal involving a student in 1927. During the Depression he lost his job as an editor in New York, and began work on his Alabama book. He returned to Livingston to stay with Tartt and her husband. [22]
By then, the Tartts’ situation had deteriorated. Her father had died in 1923. [23] No one has commented on the condition of his estate or how it was divided, but Ruby had an older brother. In 1931, her mother was living with them in Tuscaloosa when she died. [24] The family house was sold and the Tartts rented a bungalow when they returned to Livingston. [25] It was there Carmer stayed.
Stars Fell on Alabama was published in 1934. [26] Anyone interested in the state’s folklore might have recognized one of his central characters, Mary Louise, was based on Ruby. [27] One who did was Julia Peterkin, who wrote about the Gullah culture in South Carolina. [28]
The Tartts were in straitened circumstances when she was assigned to a sewing project by the WPA in 1935. [29] She was the only white, and thus, the defacto leader. She suggested she and her coworkers sing while they worked. [30]
The project quickly found something more suitable for a lady of the community. She was appointed chair of the Federal Writer’s Project for the county, and told to submit eight spirituals within a week. [31] John Lomax was advising the Writer’s Project on folklore at the time. [32] He was so impressed with her collection, he and his wife stopped to visit her in 1937. [33] His subsequent visits reinforced her appreciation of African-American music and spurred her to locate singers for him.
Her work for the Federal Writers Project became part of its collection of slave narratives. Historians have been wary about using the narratives as primary sources, [34] because people who were at least ten-years-old when war was declared were at least 77 when the collection project began. They had potential problems of both being too young to remember and so old their memories were unreliable.
The ones who survived were often house slaves who had better treatment when they were children. They also were more likely to be the ones who maintained contact with whites. Since the collectors were white, and usually from the local community, all the nuances of race relations in the South affected what Blacks were willing to reveal.
Tartt’s narratives were considered superior to most, not only because of "her respect for the actual words spoken, but also to the candor of the interviewees–a measure of the mutual trust enjoyed between herself and these subjects." [35]
After the Writers’ Project ended in 1938, the Tartts had to rent rooms in their house. [36] Their situation improved in 1940 when Tart was hired as a librarian by Sumter County. [37] She joined the county’s board of registrars in 1952. In 1961, Justice Department attorneys concluded she uniformly helped whites to register to vote, but was selective in which Blacks she assisted. [38]
The juxtaposition of reviews of her work for the Writers’ Project and the elections board underscores the complexity of race relations in a state where Carmer watched a lynching while he was visiting the Tartts. [39] Her rapport with singers and her appreciation of their music was inherited from her father in the Jim Crow South. She remembered:
"In the horse and buggy days, I spent many Sunday afternoons with him sitting out near one of their country churches and listening to them sing. When he particularly liked a song he would make a generous contribution to the preacher and it was repeated as many times as he liked. I’ve kept this up through the years." [40]
His encouragement of older music occurred at a time when a radical form of Holiness and new types of music were spreading among poor whites and Blacks. After the Panic of 1893, they became entwined with Populist political movements. I wonder if the same suspicion of African-American churches that underlay the treatment of Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822 [41] wasn’t behind Pickens’ monitoring music in the local churches.
Tartt retired from the county library in 1964, [42] and her husband died in July of that year. [43] She was living in a nursing home when she passed away in 1974. [44]
End Notes
1. Tartt was working for the WPA collecting slave narratives. Tina Naremore Jones provided her start date in "Ruby Pickens Tartt," Encyclopedia of Alabama website, March 21, 2007, last updated September 16, 2010. Olivia and Jack Solomon determined her end date. ("Preface," "Honey in the Rock," Macon: Mercer University Press, 1991, ix).
2. Josh Varnado, Heath Vogel, and Mari Burk. "Walter Chiles (1572 - abt. 1651)." Wikitree website. 3 July 2011. Last updated 15 December 2015. He was the son of John Childe.
3. Mary Elizabeth Stewart, Jennifer Perez, and Mari Burk. "Walter Chiles I (abt. 1608 - 1653)." Wikitree website. 9 February 2911. Last updated 11 November 2015. Son of Walter.
4. Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 3.
5. Joseph F. Stegall. Extract from " 1840 Federal Census Sumter County, Alabama." Edited and formatted by Maggie Stewart. US Gen Archives website. 2 June 2001.
6. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website. October 2001.
7. Brown and Owens. 5. The Livingston Female Academy became The University of West Alabama.
8. Brown and Owens. 9.
9. Brown and Owens. 5.
10. Brown and Owens. 7.
11. Brown and Owens. 9.
12. Brown and Owens. 9.
13. T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith. "Thomas Morrison Tartt." In From Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical. Birmingham: Smith and Deland, 1888. 233. Mary Hoit Abbe brought this to my attention. "Thomas Morrison Tartt Biography." AI Gen Web website.
14. Thomas William Herringshaw. "Thomas Morrison Tartt." In Herringshaw’s American Blue-book of Biography: Prominent Americans of 1912. Chicago: American Publishers Association, 1913. 585.
15. Stephen Wade though Tartt had lost his job as postmaster. (The Beautiful Music All Around Us. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 165.) Alan Brown said he worked at the family bank. (Alan Brown. Sumter County. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2015. 63.) Brown and Owens only quoted her statement: "I discovered overnight that not only had we no jobs and no money, but we were in debt." (Brown and Owens. 12.)
16. Obituary for Fannie Pickens Tartt Inglis. The Florida-Times Union [Jacksonville, Florida]. 3 May 1999. Comments made at the Greek Rank website on Kappa Delta at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, KD traditionally was seen as "top tier" at the school.
17. Brown and Owens. 11.
18. "Carl Carmer." Alabama Literary Map website.
19. Wikipedia. "George Lyman Kittredge." I didn’t find anyone who discussed Carmer’s time at Harvard.
20. Howell Raines. "Introduction: The "Strange Country." xi-xxii in Stars Fell on Alabama. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2000 edition. xiv-xv.
21. Brown and Owens. 11.
22. Raines. xv.
23. "William King Pickens - 1846-1923." Find a Grave website. 29 April 2008.
24. "Prominent Livingston Woman Dies at 82." Included on "Fannie Short Pickens." Find a Grave. 29 April 2008. 1931 Obituary of Pickens uploaded by John Smolarek.
25. Brown and Owens. 12.
26. Carl Carmer. Stars Fell on Alabama. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1934.
27. Brown and Owens. 11. Tartt agreed she was the source for the character. (Raines. xix).
28. Brown and Owens. 12.
29. Wade. 165-166.
30. Brown and Owens. 13.
31. Tartt’s reaction to this demand was described in the post for 21 August 2017.
32. Brown and Owens. 16.
33. John Lomax is discussed in the post for 27 January 2019.
34. Alan Brown and David Taylor. Gabr’l Blow Sof’. Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997. The introduction included comments on the reservations of historians, i-v. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips rejected them out-of-hand. Eugene Genovese revolutionize the historiography of slavery when he used them in his Roll, Jordan Roll. New York: Pantheon Press, 1974.
35. Wade. 166.
36. Brown and Owens. 24. She described them as "disagreeable renters, with their life-saving, soul-destroying checks" in a letter to Lomax. (page 25).
37. Brown and Owens. 53.
38. J. Harold Flannery and Carl Gabel. Memorandum. "R. P. Tartt and Registration Statistics." 20 July 1962. Cited by Brian K. Landsberg. "Sumter County, Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act." Alabama Law Review 54:877-958:2003. 909.
39. Raines. xv.
40. Wade. 165.
41. Vesey was mentioned in the post for 20 January 2019. William Seymour and the rise of pentecostalism was discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
42. Brown and Owens. 53.
43. Fran. "William Pratt Tartt." Find a Grave website. 21 July 2009.
44. Brown and Owens. 55.
Ruby Pickens Tartt collected a version of "Lord, Won’t You Come by Here" in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1936 or 1937. [1] She was a participant collector like the members of the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals. Her mother’s family was one of the first settlers in the county and Tartt maintained that pioneer social position in Livingston, Alabama, even after she applied for relief from the WPA when her husband couldn’t work in the Depression.
Her mother’s immigrant ancestor, Walter Chiles, moved to Jamestown around 1636 [2] with his adult son, also named Walter. The son was listed as a "cloth worker" in Bristol. [3] Their descendants stayed in Virginia until Tartt’s great-grandfather, Hiram Chiles, moved to Alabama when the Choctaw were removed. [4]
Sumter County’s social structure may have been fluid in the early years, when settlers were growing general crops to feed themselves. However, it probably had stratified by 1840 when cotton was the primary commercial crop and settlers who’d claimed the best land for that crop were likely to be the wealthiest.
The census that year indicated Hiram Chiles owned eight male and three female slaves. This was at the time when the county had 22,000 Blacks and 8,000 whites, or 2.75 Blacks for every white. [5] Sumter then was one of the wealthiest and most densely populated counties in the state. Chiles also was not listed as one of the county’s major slave owners in 1860. [6]
His daughter, Mary Champ Chiles, married Jordan Short before the Civil War. He died in 1861, and she opened a private school. Later she taught at the Livingston Female Academy. Her daughter, Fannie West Short, and her husband moved in with her in 1874. [7] William King Pickens apparently rented his land, rather than selling it or supervising sharecroppers. [8]
Tartt was born in 1880 and developed a "terrible temper" that was more than her mother could handle. She spent time with her grandmother who taught her to draw and paint. After attendeding the local girls’ school, [9] she went to Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans. [10] Then, in 1901, Tartt moved to New York to study art with William Merritt Chase. [11]
She returned to Livingston where she married William Pratt Tartt. [12] His father, Thomas Morrison Tartt, had worked for his uncle’s commission house in Mobile. After the Civil War, he moved to Livingston where he became a merchant. [13] His namesake son, Ruby’s brother-in-law, was president of the local bank, McMillan and Company. [14] No one has been specific about her husband’s education or employment. [15]
During the 1920s, the Tartts were sufficiently well off to send their daughter Fannie to the University of Alabama where she pledged Kappa Delta. [16] She was responsible for Carl Carmer staying with her parents when a college drama group was visiting Livingston in 1926. [17]
The English instructor had earned a masters degree from Harvard in 1915, [18] where George Kittredge had taken over the folklore work of Francis James Child. [19] According to Howell Raines, Carmer used his students as guides, who took him to events like fiddlers’ contests and sacred harp sings. [20] At the time he met Tartt, he said he was collecting notes for an article, but she recommended he write a book. [21]
He left Tuscaloosa amidst a romantic scandal involving a student in 1927. During the Depression he lost his job as an editor in New York, and began work on his Alabama book. He returned to Livingston to stay with Tartt and her husband. [22]
By then, the Tartts’ situation had deteriorated. Her father had died in 1923. [23] No one has commented on the condition of his estate or how it was divided, but Ruby had an older brother. In 1931, her mother was living with them in Tuscaloosa when she died. [24] The family house was sold and the Tartts rented a bungalow when they returned to Livingston. [25] It was there Carmer stayed.
Stars Fell on Alabama was published in 1934. [26] Anyone interested in the state’s folklore might have recognized one of his central characters, Mary Louise, was based on Ruby. [27] One who did was Julia Peterkin, who wrote about the Gullah culture in South Carolina. [28]
The Tartts were in straitened circumstances when she was assigned to a sewing project by the WPA in 1935. [29] She was the only white, and thus, the defacto leader. She suggested she and her coworkers sing while they worked. [30]
The project quickly found something more suitable for a lady of the community. She was appointed chair of the Federal Writer’s Project for the county, and told to submit eight spirituals within a week. [31] John Lomax was advising the Writer’s Project on folklore at the time. [32] He was so impressed with her collection, he and his wife stopped to visit her in 1937. [33] His subsequent visits reinforced her appreciation of African-American music and spurred her to locate singers for him.
Her work for the Federal Writers Project became part of its collection of slave narratives. Historians have been wary about using the narratives as primary sources, [34] because people who were at least ten-years-old when war was declared were at least 77 when the collection project began. They had potential problems of both being too young to remember and so old their memories were unreliable.
The ones who survived were often house slaves who had better treatment when they were children. They also were more likely to be the ones who maintained contact with whites. Since the collectors were white, and usually from the local community, all the nuances of race relations in the South affected what Blacks were willing to reveal.
Tartt’s narratives were considered superior to most, not only because of "her respect for the actual words spoken, but also to the candor of the interviewees–a measure of the mutual trust enjoyed between herself and these subjects." [35]
After the Writers’ Project ended in 1938, the Tartts had to rent rooms in their house. [36] Their situation improved in 1940 when Tart was hired as a librarian by Sumter County. [37] She joined the county’s board of registrars in 1952. In 1961, Justice Department attorneys concluded she uniformly helped whites to register to vote, but was selective in which Blacks she assisted. [38]
The juxtaposition of reviews of her work for the Writers’ Project and the elections board underscores the complexity of race relations in a state where Carmer watched a lynching while he was visiting the Tartts. [39] Her rapport with singers and her appreciation of their music was inherited from her father in the Jim Crow South. She remembered:
"In the horse and buggy days, I spent many Sunday afternoons with him sitting out near one of their country churches and listening to them sing. When he particularly liked a song he would make a generous contribution to the preacher and it was repeated as many times as he liked. I’ve kept this up through the years." [40]
His encouragement of older music occurred at a time when a radical form of Holiness and new types of music were spreading among poor whites and Blacks. After the Panic of 1893, they became entwined with Populist political movements. I wonder if the same suspicion of African-American churches that underlay the treatment of Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822 [41] wasn’t behind Pickens’ monitoring music in the local churches.
Tartt retired from the county library in 1964, [42] and her husband died in July of that year. [43] She was living in a nursing home when she passed away in 1974. [44]
End Notes
1. Tartt was working for the WPA collecting slave narratives. Tina Naremore Jones provided her start date in "Ruby Pickens Tartt," Encyclopedia of Alabama website, March 21, 2007, last updated September 16, 2010. Olivia and Jack Solomon determined her end date. ("Preface," "Honey in the Rock," Macon: Mercer University Press, 1991, ix).
2. Josh Varnado, Heath Vogel, and Mari Burk. "Walter Chiles (1572 - abt. 1651)." Wikitree website. 3 July 2011. Last updated 15 December 2015. He was the son of John Childe.
3. Mary Elizabeth Stewart, Jennifer Perez, and Mari Burk. "Walter Chiles I (abt. 1608 - 1653)." Wikitree website. 9 February 2911. Last updated 11 November 2015. Son of Walter.
4. Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 3.
5. Joseph F. Stegall. Extract from " 1840 Federal Census Sumter County, Alabama." Edited and formatted by Maggie Stewart. US Gen Archives website. 2 June 2001.
6. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website. October 2001.
7. Brown and Owens. 5. The Livingston Female Academy became The University of West Alabama.
8. Brown and Owens. 9.
9. Brown and Owens. 5.
10. Brown and Owens. 7.
11. Brown and Owens. 9.
12. Brown and Owens. 9.
13. T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith. "Thomas Morrison Tartt." In From Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical. Birmingham: Smith and Deland, 1888. 233. Mary Hoit Abbe brought this to my attention. "Thomas Morrison Tartt Biography." AI Gen Web website.
14. Thomas William Herringshaw. "Thomas Morrison Tartt." In Herringshaw’s American Blue-book of Biography: Prominent Americans of 1912. Chicago: American Publishers Association, 1913. 585.
15. Stephen Wade though Tartt had lost his job as postmaster. (The Beautiful Music All Around Us. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 165.) Alan Brown said he worked at the family bank. (Alan Brown. Sumter County. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2015. 63.) Brown and Owens only quoted her statement: "I discovered overnight that not only had we no jobs and no money, but we were in debt." (Brown and Owens. 12.)
16. Obituary for Fannie Pickens Tartt Inglis. The Florida-Times Union [Jacksonville, Florida]. 3 May 1999. Comments made at the Greek Rank website on Kappa Delta at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, KD traditionally was seen as "top tier" at the school.
17. Brown and Owens. 11.
18. "Carl Carmer." Alabama Literary Map website.
19. Wikipedia. "George Lyman Kittredge." I didn’t find anyone who discussed Carmer’s time at Harvard.
20. Howell Raines. "Introduction: The "Strange Country." xi-xxii in Stars Fell on Alabama. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2000 edition. xiv-xv.
21. Brown and Owens. 11.
22. Raines. xv.
23. "William King Pickens - 1846-1923." Find a Grave website. 29 April 2008.
24. "Prominent Livingston Woman Dies at 82." Included on "Fannie Short Pickens." Find a Grave. 29 April 2008. 1931 Obituary of Pickens uploaded by John Smolarek.
25. Brown and Owens. 12.
26. Carl Carmer. Stars Fell on Alabama. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1934.
27. Brown and Owens. 11. Tartt agreed she was the source for the character. (Raines. xix).
28. Brown and Owens. 12.
29. Wade. 165-166.
30. Brown and Owens. 13.
31. Tartt’s reaction to this demand was described in the post for 21 August 2017.
32. Brown and Owens. 16.
33. John Lomax is discussed in the post for 27 January 2019.
34. Alan Brown and David Taylor. Gabr’l Blow Sof’. Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997. The introduction included comments on the reservations of historians, i-v. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips rejected them out-of-hand. Eugene Genovese revolutionize the historiography of slavery when he used them in his Roll, Jordan Roll. New York: Pantheon Press, 1974.
35. Wade. 166.
36. Brown and Owens. 24. She described them as "disagreeable renters, with their life-saving, soul-destroying checks" in a letter to Lomax. (page 25).
37. Brown and Owens. 53.
38. J. Harold Flannery and Carl Gabel. Memorandum. "R. P. Tartt and Registration Statistics." 20 July 1962. Cited by Brian K. Landsberg. "Sumter County, Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act." Alabama Law Review 54:877-958:2003. 909.
39. Raines. xv.
40. Wade. 165.
41. Vesey was mentioned in the post for 20 January 2019. William Seymour and the rise of pentecostalism was discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
42. Brown and Owens. 53.
43. Fran. "William Pratt Tartt." Find a Grave website. 21 July 2009.
44. Brown and Owens. 55.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Six-Line Format - Come by Here
Topic: Early Versions
"Kumbaya" developed as a version within the "Come by Here" song cluster in the 1950s. Chee Hoo Lum [1] and Stephen Winick [2] have established the original song was circulating in coastal Georgia and South Carolina in the 1920s where an African-American creole language called Gullah survived from slavery times.
It then existed in two forms. One repeated a single line six times: AAAAAA. The other repeated a single line three times, with a different fourth line: AAAB. The sestet was the more widely diffused.
Floyd Thorp combined four stanzas describing Daniel in the lion’s den with "Lord, I am worthy now" and "Lordy won’t you come by here." He was recorded in 1926 near Darien, Georgia, by Robert Winslow Gordon. [3]
None of his verses used the statement-refrain format. The inclusion of verses from other songs was characteristic of this improvised form. "Daniel was recorded as a separate song by the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet in 1927. [4]
The six-line verse was then known in Atlanta where Clara Hudman recorded a commercial version in 1930. She began with "needed time" and ended with "won’t you come by here." Another sestet asked the Lord if He would hear her pray. When she began humming, a man in the background sang "won’t you hear my cry" while two women made comments. [5]
It had been recorded earlier in Chicago by Charles Henry Pace who was born in Atlanta and moved to Chicago around 1900. [6] Verses sung in 1927 by the Pace Jubilee Singers included "this is a needed time," "won’t you stop by here," and "oh Lordy, won’t you hear my cry." One verse referred to a gambler. [7]
The next year Daniel Brown recorded a version in Chicago with the verse "Lord won’t you come by here." The others were entreaties to the Lord to hear him pray, groan, and cry, along with a line from "Standing in the Need of Prayer." [8] Nothing more is known about him.
Even less is known about another version recorded in Camden, New Jersey, in 1923 by the Bethel Jubilee Quartet. Victor never released "Now Is the Needy Time." [9] All that survived were the names of the men paid to sing: Thomas H. Wiseman, H. S. Allen, A. C. Brogdon, and J. C. Eubanks. [10] Wiseman was a minister in Chicago when he organized the group. [11]
The six-line form also moved into Alabama where Ruby Pickens Tartt collected a version in Sumpter County that combined three of Pace’s verses with "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "I’m goin’ down in your name." Her unidentified source began the third lines with "Oh Lord." The other five started with just "Lord." [12]
Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded this version in Houston in 1952 as "Needed Time." Like the other sestets it was a loose combination of repeated verses: "come by here," "come if you don’t stay long," "praying," "praying on my knees."
It differed from the others because Hopkins was a blue musician, who was more familiar with the AAB blue format. As mentioned in the post for 21 August 2018, he began singing the AAAAAA form, but then changed to AAABBB. At one point, he adopted the blue form within the sestet. [13]
Hopkins’s recording crystalized into a distinct version like "Kumbaya." Inez Andrews’ "It’s a Needed Time" became a similar node in the cluster. Her 1965 performance was discussed in the post for 27 August 2018.
End Notes
These versions will be discussed in more detail in future posts.
1. Chee Hoo Lum. "A Tale of ‘Kum Ba Yah’." Kodaly Envoy 33(3):5-11:2007. Copy provided by Lum.
2. Stephen Winick. "The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song." Folklife Center News 34(3-4):3-10:2010.
3. Floyd Thorp. "Daniel in the Lion’s Den." Collected by Robert Winslow Gordon near Darien, Georgia, 1926. Archives of American Folk Song.
4. Norfolk Jubilee Quartet. "Daniel In The Lion’s Den." Paramount 12499. New York. February1927.
5. Clara Hudman. "Lordy Won’t You Come by Here." Okeh. Atlanta, Georgia. 12 December 1930.
6. Cassandra Pritts. "Charles Henry Pace Gospel Music Collection." University of Pittsburgh library website. April 2003.
7. Pace Jubilee Singers. "Lawdy Won’t You Come By Here." Brunswick 7009. 1927.
8. Daniel Brown. "Now Is the Needy Time." Paramount 12663. Chicago. May 1928.
9. Bethel Jubilee Quartet. "Now Is the Needy Time." Victor B-28188. Camden, New Jersey, 13 July 1923. Not issued and the masters were destroyed.
10. Craig Martin Gibbs. Black Recording Artists, 1877-1926: An Annotated Discography. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013.
University of California, Santa Barbara, Library. Discography of American Historical Recordings. Library website.
11. Dave Lewis. "Uncle Dave Lewis presents Rainbow 1092: Homer Rodeheaver & and the Wiseman Sextet." YouTube. 2 January 2014
12. "Lord, Won’t You Come by Here." Alabama Department of Archives and History. "Lyrics and some musical scores" folder 3. Unnumbered typescript. 60.
13. See post for 21 August 2018 for recording details.
"Kumbaya" developed as a version within the "Come by Here" song cluster in the 1950s. Chee Hoo Lum [1] and Stephen Winick [2] have established the original song was circulating in coastal Georgia and South Carolina in the 1920s where an African-American creole language called Gullah survived from slavery times.
It then existed in two forms. One repeated a single line six times: AAAAAA. The other repeated a single line three times, with a different fourth line: AAAB. The sestet was the more widely diffused.
Floyd Thorp combined four stanzas describing Daniel in the lion’s den with "Lord, I am worthy now" and "Lordy won’t you come by here." He was recorded in 1926 near Darien, Georgia, by Robert Winslow Gordon. [3]
None of his verses used the statement-refrain format. The inclusion of verses from other songs was characteristic of this improvised form. "Daniel was recorded as a separate song by the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet in 1927. [4]
The six-line verse was then known in Atlanta where Clara Hudman recorded a commercial version in 1930. She began with "needed time" and ended with "won’t you come by here." Another sestet asked the Lord if He would hear her pray. When she began humming, a man in the background sang "won’t you hear my cry" while two women made comments. [5]
It had been recorded earlier in Chicago by Charles Henry Pace who was born in Atlanta and moved to Chicago around 1900. [6] Verses sung in 1927 by the Pace Jubilee Singers included "this is a needed time," "won’t you stop by here," and "oh Lordy, won’t you hear my cry." One verse referred to a gambler. [7]
The next year Daniel Brown recorded a version in Chicago with the verse "Lord won’t you come by here." The others were entreaties to the Lord to hear him pray, groan, and cry, along with a line from "Standing in the Need of Prayer." [8] Nothing more is known about him.
Even less is known about another version recorded in Camden, New Jersey, in 1923 by the Bethel Jubilee Quartet. Victor never released "Now Is the Needy Time." [9] All that survived were the names of the men paid to sing: Thomas H. Wiseman, H. S. Allen, A. C. Brogdon, and J. C. Eubanks. [10] Wiseman was a minister in Chicago when he organized the group. [11]
The six-line form also moved into Alabama where Ruby Pickens Tartt collected a version in Sumpter County that combined three of Pace’s verses with "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "I’m goin’ down in your name." Her unidentified source began the third lines with "Oh Lord." The other five started with just "Lord." [12]
Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded this version in Houston in 1952 as "Needed Time." Like the other sestets it was a loose combination of repeated verses: "come by here," "come if you don’t stay long," "praying," "praying on my knees."
It differed from the others because Hopkins was a blue musician, who was more familiar with the AAB blue format. As mentioned in the post for 21 August 2018, he began singing the AAAAAA form, but then changed to AAABBB. At one point, he adopted the blue form within the sestet. [13]
Hopkins’s recording crystalized into a distinct version like "Kumbaya." Inez Andrews’ "It’s a Needed Time" became a similar node in the cluster. Her 1965 performance was discussed in the post for 27 August 2018.
End Notes
These versions will be discussed in more detail in future posts.
1. Chee Hoo Lum. "A Tale of ‘Kum Ba Yah’." Kodaly Envoy 33(3):5-11:2007. Copy provided by Lum.
2. Stephen Winick. "The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song." Folklife Center News 34(3-4):3-10:2010.
3. Floyd Thorp. "Daniel in the Lion’s Den." Collected by Robert Winslow Gordon near Darien, Georgia, 1926. Archives of American Folk Song.
4. Norfolk Jubilee Quartet. "Daniel In The Lion’s Den." Paramount 12499. New York. February1927.
5. Clara Hudman. "Lordy Won’t You Come by Here." Okeh. Atlanta, Georgia. 12 December 1930.
6. Cassandra Pritts. "Charles Henry Pace Gospel Music Collection." University of Pittsburgh library website. April 2003.
7. Pace Jubilee Singers. "Lawdy Won’t You Come By Here." Brunswick 7009. 1927.
8. Daniel Brown. "Now Is the Needy Time." Paramount 12663. Chicago. May 1928.
9. Bethel Jubilee Quartet. "Now Is the Needy Time." Victor B-28188. Camden, New Jersey, 13 July 1923. Not issued and the masters were destroyed.
10. Craig Martin Gibbs. Black Recording Artists, 1877-1926: An Annotated Discography. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013.
University of California, Santa Barbara, Library. Discography of American Historical Recordings. Library website.
11. Dave Lewis. "Uncle Dave Lewis presents Rainbow 1092: Homer Rodeheaver & and the Wiseman Sextet." YouTube. 2 January 2014
12. "Lord, Won’t You Come by Here." Alabama Department of Archives and History. "Lyrics and some musical scores" folder 3. Unnumbered typescript. 60.
13. See post for 21 August 2018 for recording details.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Nina Simone - Com’ By H’Yere
Topic: Political versions
Nina Simone wrote one of the bluntest protest songs in 1963: "Mississippi Goddam." [1] More than a decade passed between then and her recording of "Come by Here," years in which the demand for civil rights moved from being given equal access to educations to demanding equal time for the African-American experience in history and literature classes.
Academics, both Black and white, began researching the history of slavery: the memoirs collected from ex-slaves during the depression by WPA workers like Ruby Pickens Tartt were consulted and published. Other scholars began more systematic studies of the African past. And, starting in the middle-1960s, American Blacks began making pilgrimages to the ancestral continent. [2]
Spaulding Givens became part of the African revival movement. He played piano for Charles Mingus in 1951, then began experimenting with native instruments and changed his name to Nadi Qamar in the 1960s. [3] By 1971, he was playing oud and thumb piano for Simone at Carnegie Hall. [4] He and her longtime collaborator, Al Schackman, accompanied her on "Come by Here."
She included it on the last commercial album she made, It Is Finished. She had become increasingly disillusioned with life in this country after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, and left for Barbados in 1972. Simone recorded it on a brief visit to the United States in 1974, before she relocated to Liberia.
Her verses were ones popularized by the Civil Rights movement (somebody’s dying, praying), but her musical interludes were duets by the western piano and African thumb piano. Rattles were the primary rhythm instrument. They may have been attached to the mbira, much like the zis on a tambourine.
The textual structure probably came from her childhood experiences in the Colored Methodist Episcopal church [5] in western North Carolina where her mother was a minister. [6] She treated it as an open-ended song in which she sang the "come by here" verse three times, the "dying" verse twice, and the other quatrains once.
The stanzaic sequence was superimposed on a musical pattern that alternated two vocal repetitions with a musical interlude. The intensification of the interludes may also have come from the church. She told a Canadian interviewer "the gospel singing that I heard in church influenced me tremendously, and that’s no one person, that’s a real and a feeling, a rapport that you get in a big audience when you can’t hear anything but rhythm." [7]
Several of the songs on the album wrapped her political commentary in religious imagery, especially "Dambala." One verse of "Come by Here" may have been an allusion to her own problems with the government: "I’m on trial Lord." [8] The mere selection of this song may have been a merger of the religious, the political, and the personal. She had been deeply affected two years earlier by the deaths of her father [9] and the older sister [10] who took care of her while her mother was busy. [11]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Nina Simone
Vocal Accompaniment: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: Nina Simone, piano; Nadi Qamar, thumb piano; Avram Schackman, guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: piano chords and rattle; audience clapped along after the last interlude
The thumb piano or mbira was an African plucked instrument made from tuned bars attached to a sounding board. It usually was placed in or on a resonator like a box or gourd. [12] Traditionally the bars were fashioned from bamboo, but now are metal strips. The tones lingered a brief time, contributing to the unique sound. [13] Some musicians placed shells or pieces of metal on the keys or board. [14]
It developed in southeastern Africa and came to its greatest development among the Shona in what is today Zimbabwe. Around 1900, it was taken to Nigeria. [15] It had many local names. Qamar used the Ugandan term likembe, which appeared in French Congo popular music in the early 1950s. [16]
Credits
Written-By – Trad. [17]
Arranged By – Harold Wheeler, Nina Simone
Public Domain
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, I’m on trial, dying, praying
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: I, somebody
Pronunciation: she emphasized the /s/ in "please come by here," did not pronounce the terminal /g/ of "dying" or ‘praying,’ and pronounced the /d/ in Lord very softly.
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: I’m on trial
Format: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxBxBAA
Line Length: 9 syllables
Special Features: none
Influences: She attended the Allen School while Claire Lovejoy Lennon was superintendent. [18] With a two decades gap between her graduation in 1950 and her recording and, and the intervening popularity of other recordings, it is impossible to know if her version had any connection with the unknown one of Lennon.
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: alternated an instrumental section with two vocal verses four times (IVV-IVV-IVV-IV). Each time the instrumental interludes marked an increase in rhythmic intensity. The guitar played the melody in the introduction. In the second interlude, Simone played the melody in chords against the rhythm of the guitar and thumb piano.
Singing Style: generally one syllable to one note, with the exceptions of Lord in "come by here good Lord come by here." Whenever she sustained a tone, she treated it with vibrato. The number of sustained notes increased in later verses.
Notes on Performance
Applause after the third instrumental section and at the end indicated it was a live performance. She probably made several appearances in 1974, including one in Canada when she was interviewed by the CBC. The only one I have found mentioned on the internet was a solo concert at the Newport Jazz Festival. [19] The liner notes only said it was remixed in New York City.
Audience Perceptions
In its 1974 review, an Ebony writer wrote: "She creates a mood of camp meeting exultation on Com’ By H’Here Good Lord." [20]
Notes on Performers
Both Simone and Odetta were encouraged as young girls by white patrons to aspire to roles in classical music. However, Odetta, as mentioned in the post for 16 October 2017, suspected the dream was a chimera and looked for an alternative career in the folk music revival clubs on the West Coast. Simone believed she could make it as a concert pianist, and was bitterly disappointed when Curtiss Institute did not accept her after she had spent time at Juilliard. Her move into jazz nightclubs on the East Coast was driven by the need to eat. [21]
She was working in New Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1957, when she met Al Schackman. He had grown up playing Yiddish music, and worked "with a band that played Armenian and Turkish music." [22] He noted he was able to compliment her playing without instructions. As the years passed, the rapport deepened. He remembered once in Holland:
"‘Music is all we have now, isn’t it?’ she said to me. I said yeah ... 85 percent. She said ‘95 percent for me’." [23]
Availability
Album: It Is Finished. RCA APL1-0241. 1974.
YouTube: uploaded by TeddyCool23, 11 July 2011.
YouTube: uploaded by Mikael Sjögren, 3 March 2012.
YouTube: uploaded by Jeroen Verdonck, 24 April 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by Sony Music Entertainment, 24 May 2015.
End Notes
1. Nina Simone. "Mississippi Goddam." Nina Simone in Concert. Phillips PHM 200-135. 1964.
For more information on the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.
2. John Darnton. "Nigeria Evoking a Lost Past For U.S. Black Performers." The New York Times. 28 January 1977.
3. German Wikipedia. "Nadi Qamar."
4. Radcliffe Joe. "Nina Simone." Billboard. 22 May 1971. 22. Several biographies and films existed about Simone. Most were interested in her personal life and discussed the texts of her songs. I did not find any that dealt with her development as a musician.
5. The Colored Methodist Episcopal church was organized by freedmen in 1870 when it became clear they would have no role in the Methodist Episcopal Church South. They changed the name to the Christian ME church in 1956. (Encyclopædia Britannica. "Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.")
6. Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon. According to Alan Light, her mother, born Mary Kate Irvin, "came from a family of preachers (fifteen of them in all, according to Simone.)" What Happened, Miss Simone? New York: Crown Archetype, 2016. No page numbers in on-line version.
7. Nina Simone. Interviewed by Martin Bronstein. The Entertainers. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Broadcast 3 November 1974.
8. She had problems with unpaid taxes. Her husband had been her manager until she moved to Barbados and the marriage ended. (Alan Light. "How David Bowie Helped Nina Simone Out of a Slump." Time website. 11 January 2016.)
9. Simone’s father died 23 October 1972 of pancreatic cancer. (Erica Howton. "Johnnie Devan Waymon." Geni website. 10 March 2017.)
10. Her sister Lucille died in 1972. ("Lucille Julia Waddell [Waymon]." Geni website. 6 December 2016.)
11. Light said Lucille took care of Simone when she was a young child. (What Happened.)
12. Virginia Gorlinski. "Mbira." Encyclopædia Britannica. 12 October 2009; last updated 8 November 2013.
13. Wikipedia. "Mbira."
14. Gorlinski.
15. Wikipedia, Mbira.
16. N. Scott Robinson. "Mbira." His website. This was the best source on the instrument.
17. "Nina Simone – It Is Finished." Discogs website.
18. Lennon and the Allen School is discussed in the post for 25 October 2020.
19. "Today’s Events in the Newport Jazz Festival." The New York Times, 29 June 1974.
20. Phyl Garland. Review. Ebony. December 1974. 30.
21. Wikipedia. "Nina Simone."
22. Al Schackman. Quoted by Ellis Widner. "Simone, Music Director in Perfect Harmony, Schackman Recalls." Arkansas Online website. 17 February 2009.
23. Schackman.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Selma, Alabama - Come by Here
Topic: Political Versions
Guy Carawan’s suggestion for using "Come by Here" in Civil Rights protests was adopted during the 1965 march in Selma, Alabama. He had published it in his section of songs for Voter Registration, [1] and that was the original issue in Selma.
Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that addressed problems of discrimination in public places like busses and lunch counters. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference turned its attention to voter registration, and on 1 February 1965 began a drive in Marion, Alabama. [2] The city was located west of Selma and east of Sumter County where Ruby Pickens Tartt had been on the voter registration panel. [3]
When African Americans were arrested for entering a white restaurant on 2 February, local students protested and stopped attending high school classes. On 18 February, police arrested the SCLC leader to halt the boycott. That evening, as people left Zion Methodist Church to march to the county jail to protect James Orange, police attacked them. One African-American man was hunted down and shot. [4]
Jimmie Lee Jackson died 26 March. On the 28th, an SCLC leader proposed a march from Selma through the town to Montgomery to redirect the anger in Marion. That led to the confrontation on Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma on Sunday, 7 March. By then, white clergymen and other white supporters had arrived from the North. One was killed on 9 March after Martin Luther King halted a second march in compliance with a federal injunction. [5]
While King was applying pressure on the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, and the president, Lyndon Johnson, he also was inviting more outsiders to come South to participate. One was Carl Benkert, an architectural interior designer from Detroit, who arrived with a group of local clergyman. His daughter remembered: "Dr. King called for people to come and he felt moved to do it." [6]
He and other whites were asked to work as night watchmen protecting the gathered masses of marchers. [7] Benkert brought a tape recorder, which he concealed from the police, [8] and turned on during the tense days between the aborted march of 9 March and the successful one that began 21 March. Parts of his tapes later were released by Folkways Records.
The first version of "Come by Here" was recorded 15 March, the same day Johnson sent a draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress. Police had re-erected a barricade and Hosea Williams had led singing in the Brown A. M. E. Chapel in Selma. Music continued outside. [9]
The tape began while people were singing "Come by Here." A woman started the verses, and the marchers joined as soon as they knew the verse. She used incremental substitution to localize a standard verse when she sang "Wallace needs you," then "we need you." She used the Hightowers’ 1-5 melody.
The second version of "Come by Here" recorded by Benkert was from an organizational meeting held 18 March in the Zion Methodist church. Someone, possibly Orange, [10] moved from song to song while the attendees clapped a strong, unvarying rhythm. The tape began with "This Little Light of Mine," followed by "Which Side Are You On," and a chant for freedom. It ran out before the completion of "Come by Here."
The verses may have been based on Carawan’s "somebody’s starving," but the leader used the three-syllable "people are" instead. The verbs alluded to hard lives in the South (begging, suffering, dying) with some carrying additional implicit references to the current situation. The melody was the Southern one popularized by the Hightowers, not Carawan’s.
Performers
15 March
Song Leader: woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
18 March
Song Leader: man
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: hand claps
Notes on Lyrics
15 March
Language: English
Verses: come by here, need you
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: we
Term for Deity: Lordy, Lord
Special Terms:
Wallace needs you: George Wallace was governor of Alabama, and refusing to protect the marchers.
18 March
Language: English
Pronunciation: dropped the middle syllable of suffering to fit the line’s meter
Verses: come by here, begging, suffering, dying
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: none, used "people are" instead
Term for Deity: Lord, Lordy
Special Terms: references to local events and problems confronted by Blacks in the South
Both versions
Format: open-ended
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern:
15 March: xAxA
18 March: AxxBBx, where A is "come by here"
Both versions
Line Meter: dactyl
Line Length: 9 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
15 March
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: group
Singing Style: one syllable to one note in unison. One man did sing a harmonic part in places.
Solo-Group Dynamics: woman sang the statement in the first line, and the group joined as soon as they knew the verse and sang every word thereafter. This pattern was repeated with every verse.
18 March
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: group
Singing Style: one syllable to one note in unison
Solo-Group Dynamics: man started the first line without an introduction; group joined in the middle of the second line and sang the rest in unison. No pauses between verses, and people continued singing while the man set the next verses. As a result, it was not clear if everyone was using the same verb.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: hand claps were strong and on the first beat of the measures
Notes on Performers
The obituaries for Carl Benkert and his wife have not been posted on-line. What was known from genealogy websites was his grandfather was born in Richmond, Indiana, and moved to Piqua, Ohio, near Dayton. Both Carl and his father were raised there, and both Carl and his wife were buried there. [11]
While Piqua in 2010 was 92.4% white, it had a community of slaves freed by John Randolph in 1833. The most famous favorite sons when Benkert was a child were the Mills Brothers. [12]
He was 17 in 1940, so presumably served in World War II. [13] By the middle 1950s he was working for General Motors’ Styling Section, and had a knack for electronic devices. While the Styling Section was responsible for the exteriors and interiors of automobiles, the head, Harley Earl, also set up a separate design firm. [14] In the 1950s, Benkert designed the table in Earl’s private dining room in the new GM Technical Center with a music console. [15] A few years later he designed the interior furnishings for the new administrative building at the Delco Radio Division in Kokomo, Indiana. [16]
The year before the march in Selma he worked on the interiors of Saint Augustine’s House in Oxford, Michigan. [17] The architect, Glen Paulsen, had worked with Eero Saarinen in the 1950s. [18] Saarinen had been the creative manager of the Tech Center when Benkert worked on Earl’s office suite. It was not known if the religious group Benkert traveled with to Alabama came from this Lutheran monastic retreat, or from his own church, whatever that was.
Availability
Album: Freedom Songs: Selma, Alabama. Folkways FW05594. 1965. Liner notes unsigned.
Amazon: has the two versions for sale.
Benkert’s papers, including the original tapes, were donated to the University of Michigan.
The 17 March version was used in the final seconds of Selma. [19] Paramount Pictures released Ava DuVernay’s film on 25 December 2014. [20]
End Notes
1. See posting for 5 October 2017 for more on Carawan.
2. J. Mills Thornton. Dividing Lines. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002. 486.
3. In 1961, Justice Department attorneys concluded Tartt uniformly helped whites to register to vote, but was selective in which Blacks she helped. J. Harold Flannery and Carl Gabel. Memorandum. "R. P. Tartt and Registration Statistics." 20 July 1962. Cited by Brian K. Landsberg. "Sumter County, Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act." Alabama Law Review 54:877-958:2003. 909.
4. Thornton. 486. The SCLC leader was C. T. Vivian, mentioned in the post for 5 October 2017.
5. Wikipedia. "Selma to Montgomery Marches."
6. Catherine Benkert. Quoted by Roger Catlin. "Listen to the Freedom Songs Recorded 50 Years Ago During the March From Selma to Montgomery." Smithsonian Magazine website, 15 January 2015.
7. Catlin.
8. Catlin.
9. Liner notes.
10. The Liner notes indicated Orange led singing in the church after the meeting broke up. His obituary indicated he was known for his baritone voice. (Atlanta Constitution, 17 February 2008. Cited by Wikipedia, "James Orange," and posted on Legacy website.)
11. America. "Margaret Mary Besanceney Benkert" [his wife] and "Carl Aloysius Benkert, Jr." Find a Grave. 1 November 2014. Carol Johnson. "John Michael Benkert (1864 - 1948)" [his grandfather]. Wiki Tree website. 5 May 2015, last updated 18 May 2015. Carol Johnson. "Julia (Kloeb) Benkert (1864 - 1942)" [his grandmother]. Wiki Tree website. 18 May 2015.
12. Wikipedia. "Piqua, Ohio."
13. "Carl Benkert in the 1940 Census." Ancestry website.
14. "85 Years of GM Design: The Timeline." Car Body Design website. 18 June 2012.
15. United States National Park Service. "General Motors Technical Center." National Historical Landmark Nomination form.
16. Item. The Kokomo [Indiana] Tribune. 27 January 1956. 13.
17. Item. Detroit Free Press. 6 August 1964. 4.
18. "S. Glen Paulsen Papers." Archives. Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
19. Sophie Mayer. "Selma Songs, or Listening to the Language of Changing Times." Glasfryn Project website. 7 May 2015.
20. Wikipedia. "Selma (Film)."
Guy Carawan’s suggestion for using "Come by Here" in Civil Rights protests was adopted during the 1965 march in Selma, Alabama. He had published it in his section of songs for Voter Registration, [1] and that was the original issue in Selma.
Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that addressed problems of discrimination in public places like busses and lunch counters. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference turned its attention to voter registration, and on 1 February 1965 began a drive in Marion, Alabama. [2] The city was located west of Selma and east of Sumter County where Ruby Pickens Tartt had been on the voter registration panel. [3]
When African Americans were arrested for entering a white restaurant on 2 February, local students protested and stopped attending high school classes. On 18 February, police arrested the SCLC leader to halt the boycott. That evening, as people left Zion Methodist Church to march to the county jail to protect James Orange, police attacked them. One African-American man was hunted down and shot. [4]
Jimmie Lee Jackson died 26 March. On the 28th, an SCLC leader proposed a march from Selma through the town to Montgomery to redirect the anger in Marion. That led to the confrontation on Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma on Sunday, 7 March. By then, white clergymen and other white supporters had arrived from the North. One was killed on 9 March after Martin Luther King halted a second march in compliance with a federal injunction. [5]
While King was applying pressure on the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, and the president, Lyndon Johnson, he also was inviting more outsiders to come South to participate. One was Carl Benkert, an architectural interior designer from Detroit, who arrived with a group of local clergyman. His daughter remembered: "Dr. King called for people to come and he felt moved to do it." [6]
He and other whites were asked to work as night watchmen protecting the gathered masses of marchers. [7] Benkert brought a tape recorder, which he concealed from the police, [8] and turned on during the tense days between the aborted march of 9 March and the successful one that began 21 March. Parts of his tapes later were released by Folkways Records.
The first version of "Come by Here" was recorded 15 March, the same day Johnson sent a draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress. Police had re-erected a barricade and Hosea Williams had led singing in the Brown A. M. E. Chapel in Selma. Music continued outside. [9]
The tape began while people were singing "Come by Here." A woman started the verses, and the marchers joined as soon as they knew the verse. She used incremental substitution to localize a standard verse when she sang "Wallace needs you," then "we need you." She used the Hightowers’ 1-5 melody.
The second version of "Come by Here" recorded by Benkert was from an organizational meeting held 18 March in the Zion Methodist church. Someone, possibly Orange, [10] moved from song to song while the attendees clapped a strong, unvarying rhythm. The tape began with "This Little Light of Mine," followed by "Which Side Are You On," and a chant for freedom. It ran out before the completion of "Come by Here."
The verses may have been based on Carawan’s "somebody’s starving," but the leader used the three-syllable "people are" instead. The verbs alluded to hard lives in the South (begging, suffering, dying) with some carrying additional implicit references to the current situation. The melody was the Southern one popularized by the Hightowers, not Carawan’s.
Performers
15 March
Song Leader: woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
18 March
Song Leader: man
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: hand claps
Notes on Lyrics
15 March
Language: English
Verses: come by here, need you
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: we
Term for Deity: Lordy, Lord
Special Terms:
Wallace needs you: George Wallace was governor of Alabama, and refusing to protect the marchers.
18 March
Language: English
Pronunciation: dropped the middle syllable of suffering to fit the line’s meter
Verses: come by here, begging, suffering, dying
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: none, used "people are" instead
Term for Deity: Lord, Lordy
Special Terms: references to local events and problems confronted by Blacks in the South
Both versions
Format: open-ended
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern:
15 March: xAxA
18 March: AxxBBx, where A is "come by here"
Both versions
Line Meter: dactyl
Line Length: 9 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
15 March
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: group
Singing Style: one syllable to one note in unison. One man did sing a harmonic part in places.
Solo-Group Dynamics: woman sang the statement in the first line, and the group joined as soon as they knew the verse and sang every word thereafter. This pattern was repeated with every verse.
18 March
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: group
Singing Style: one syllable to one note in unison
Solo-Group Dynamics: man started the first line without an introduction; group joined in the middle of the second line and sang the rest in unison. No pauses between verses, and people continued singing while the man set the next verses. As a result, it was not clear if everyone was using the same verb.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: hand claps were strong and on the first beat of the measures
Notes on Performers
The obituaries for Carl Benkert and his wife have not been posted on-line. What was known from genealogy websites was his grandfather was born in Richmond, Indiana, and moved to Piqua, Ohio, near Dayton. Both Carl and his father were raised there, and both Carl and his wife were buried there. [11]
While Piqua in 2010 was 92.4% white, it had a community of slaves freed by John Randolph in 1833. The most famous favorite sons when Benkert was a child were the Mills Brothers. [12]
He was 17 in 1940, so presumably served in World War II. [13] By the middle 1950s he was working for General Motors’ Styling Section, and had a knack for electronic devices. While the Styling Section was responsible for the exteriors and interiors of automobiles, the head, Harley Earl, also set up a separate design firm. [14] In the 1950s, Benkert designed the table in Earl’s private dining room in the new GM Technical Center with a music console. [15] A few years later he designed the interior furnishings for the new administrative building at the Delco Radio Division in Kokomo, Indiana. [16]
The year before the march in Selma he worked on the interiors of Saint Augustine’s House in Oxford, Michigan. [17] The architect, Glen Paulsen, had worked with Eero Saarinen in the 1950s. [18] Saarinen had been the creative manager of the Tech Center when Benkert worked on Earl’s office suite. It was not known if the religious group Benkert traveled with to Alabama came from this Lutheran monastic retreat, or from his own church, whatever that was.
Availability
Album: Freedom Songs: Selma, Alabama. Folkways FW05594. 1965. Liner notes unsigned.
Amazon: has the two versions for sale.
Benkert’s papers, including the original tapes, were donated to the University of Michigan.
The 17 March version was used in the final seconds of Selma. [19] Paramount Pictures released Ava DuVernay’s film on 25 December 2014. [20]
End Notes
1. See posting for 5 October 2017 for more on Carawan.
2. J. Mills Thornton. Dividing Lines. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002. 486.
3. In 1961, Justice Department attorneys concluded Tartt uniformly helped whites to register to vote, but was selective in which Blacks she helped. J. Harold Flannery and Carl Gabel. Memorandum. "R. P. Tartt and Registration Statistics." 20 July 1962. Cited by Brian K. Landsberg. "Sumter County, Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act." Alabama Law Review 54:877-958:2003. 909.
4. Thornton. 486. The SCLC leader was C. T. Vivian, mentioned in the post for 5 October 2017.
5. Wikipedia. "Selma to Montgomery Marches."
6. Catherine Benkert. Quoted by Roger Catlin. "Listen to the Freedom Songs Recorded 50 Years Ago During the March From Selma to Montgomery." Smithsonian Magazine website, 15 January 2015.
7. Catlin.
8. Catlin.
9. Liner notes.
10. The Liner notes indicated Orange led singing in the church after the meeting broke up. His obituary indicated he was known for his baritone voice. (Atlanta Constitution, 17 February 2008. Cited by Wikipedia, "James Orange," and posted on Legacy website.)
11. America. "Margaret Mary Besanceney Benkert" [his wife] and "Carl Aloysius Benkert, Jr." Find a Grave. 1 November 2014. Carol Johnson. "John Michael Benkert (1864 - 1948)" [his grandfather]. Wiki Tree website. 5 May 2015, last updated 18 May 2015. Carol Johnson. "Julia (Kloeb) Benkert (1864 - 1942)" [his grandmother]. Wiki Tree website. 18 May 2015.
12. Wikipedia. "Piqua, Ohio."
13. "Carl Benkert in the 1940 Census." Ancestry website.
14. "85 Years of GM Design: The Timeline." Car Body Design website. 18 June 2012.
15. United States National Park Service. "General Motors Technical Center." National Historical Landmark Nomination form.
16. Item. The Kokomo [Indiana] Tribune. 27 January 1956. 13.
17. Item. Detroit Free Press. 6 August 1964. 4.
18. "S. Glen Paulsen Papers." Archives. Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
19. Sophie Mayer. "Selma Songs, or Listening to the Language of Changing Times." Glasfryn Project website. 7 May 2015.
20. Wikipedia. "Selma (Film)."
Monday, August 21, 2017
Lightnin’ Hopkins - Needed Time
Topic: Seminal Versions
The copyright law inherited English precedents that went back before Haydn when the only recognized compositions were made for the court or church. It then was assumed the folk tradition was a corrosive process that took those compositions, broke them down, and preserved bits.
When white folklorists confronted African-American traditions they applied that same concept. In 1937, Ruby Pickens Tartt was asked by the WPA to provide spirituals from Sumter County, Alabama. She wrote a friend she "knew how little" her supervisor "knew of the time it would take to get the verses to eight songs."
"I told her spirituals don’t thrive around the courthouse square, that I might drive all day in the country and never find one complete song. One person would know one verse, one another, and on. [1]
Tartt knew different individuals all sang versions that were recognizably related, but each differed in the verses included. She assumed there once had been a standard version of which each only retained a part.
She did not comprehend that instead of an immutable song that could be transcribed for piano, African Americans had collections of verses they grouped into song clusters, and that anyone, at anytime, could sing any or all of the verses in any order, and the next time that person sang it, he or she could create a different combination. There was no restriction against including a verse from another cluster.
Lightnin’ Hopkins tried to explain the difference to a white film-maker. He claimed the churches
"didn’t teach me the song. Nuh uh, they made them up. Fact of the business, the way it goes, they sang the songs and I played them. Whatever they sing, I played it. All they do is get into tune just like they [plays]." [2]
When Hopkins recorded his version of "Come by Here" in 1952, he used variations on three phrases that had been used in earlier recordings, [3] and added his own. "Come if you don’t stay long" was an abbreviated form of the Southern invitation, "come, even if you can’t stay long" shortened to fit the length of the musical line.
The early recordings of "Come by Here," made primarily by people from the southeastern United States, had repeated one line six times, with little variation. Hopkins was a blues musician from cotton country in the upper reaches of the Trinity river in Texas. He kept the sestet form, but alternated a three-line AAA verse with three repetitions of "now is the needed time." He then reverted to the AAB blues stanza, with "Jesus, will you come by here" as the commentary (AAB-CCC).
His version of "Come by Here" may not have been long enough for a three-minute recording. [4] He began with three variations on the "come" theme, then played the melody on the guitar. Next he reversed the pattern and began with three repetitions of "needed time," which he followed with a repetition of the "stay long" verse. He already had said he was praying for Jesus to come. He reworded that verse by repeating he was down on his knees twice, and finished by singing come by here four times (AAB-BBB).
He made the recording for a company owned by the Bihari brothers. The label gave him credit as the composer, but the music publisher also was owned by the brothers. It was a small operation that diverted royalties whenever it could. [5]
Performers
Instrumental Accompaniment: acoustic guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: acoustic guitar
Credits
Written-by - Lightnin’ Hopkins [6]
Mod Music Pub Co. (BMI) [7]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: a loose coupling between music and text allowed Hopkins to emphasize the important word "come" rather than the one that ended the sentence or phrase, "here."
Verses: come by here, needed time, come if you don’t stay long, praying, praying on my knees
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: I
Term for Deity: Jesus
Jesus: in the form of the Holy Spirit
Now: this is not a premillennial reference to the second coming of Christ, but a request for the Holy Spirit to materialize immediately.
Down on my knees: refers both to the common habit of getting on one’s knees to pray and older African-American initiation rituals where an individual went out in the wilderness to contact the spirits.
Format: sestet
Line Meter: varies around a basic iambic trimeter
Line Repetition Pattern: AAB-CCC
Notes on Music
Basic Structure: repetition of first verse with few changes.
Singing Style: fundamentally one syllable to one note. The sustained words like come, Lord, and Oh occasionally shifted to a second tone toward the end, sometime shading into a hum of the extended vowel. Many African languages did not end in consonants, and the emphasis on the vowel here is one way Black American English perpetuated older pronunciation patterns. [8]
Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: rhythmic accompaniment to vocal parts and an instrumental interlude when the guitar replaced the voice.
The general pattern was simple chords on the first two lines, with the guitar playing a parallel melody on the last phrase of the third line. In the interlude, the guitar played the melody with chords. Base runs were used between melodic phrases.
Notes on Performer
Sam Hopkins, who lived from 1911 to 1982, had two recording careers: one on labels marketed to African-American audiences in the 1940s and 1950s, and another on albums aimed at whites interested in the rural blues. He was a link with early musicians, like Blind Lemon Jefferson, and thus was interviewed numerous times. Sam Charters released one set of interviews on a Prestige record, and Les Blank and PBS captured others on films. Blank made his unused footage available to biographers.
Lightnin’ Hopkins. My Life in Blues. Prestige 7370. 1965. Interviewed by Sam Charters. Fantasy, Inc reissued it as the seventh CD in The Complete Prestige/Bluesville Recordings in 1991.
Les Blank. The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins. El Cerrito, California: Flower Films, 1968.
PBS. Artists in America, 1971, program 6, "Sam ‘Lightnin’’ Hopkins." Produced by KUHT, Houston.
Availability
78/45 rpm: RPM Records 359. Recorded in Houston, 1952.
Reissue: No Blues for Young Men. Leicester, UK: Broken Audio Recordings. 19 September 2013.
Reissue: In God We Trust. Zürich, Switzerland: Brownsville Records. 15 November 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by stompingsevens, 10 February 2013.
End Notes
1. Ruby Pickens Tartt. Letter to Janie Long Allen, undated. Ruby Pickens Tartt Collection, Julia Tutwiler Library, University of West Alabama University. Reprinted by Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 13.
The WPA program was the Federal Writer’s Project sponsored by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration.
2. Lightnin’ Hopkins. Transcribed by Timothy J. O’Brien and David Ensminger. Mojo Hand: The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. 15. Credit to the PBS documentary.
Hopkins’ separation of the roles of accompanying and participating in a church service was the same distinction made about trance rituals by Gilbert Rouget that was discussed in the post for 3 August 2017.
3. I will be discussing the early recordings in later posts.
4. The three-minute record form was discussed in the post for 2 August 2017.
5. Wikipedia. "Bihari Brothers."
6. "Lightning Hopkins And His Guitar – One Kind Favor / Needed Time." Discogs website. It reproduced the label for the other song on the recording, and implied the information was the same for both.
7. RPM was a subsidiary of Modern Records, and Modern Music Publishing was one of the Bihari’s properties.
8. Lorenzo Dow Turner. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2002 edition. 247.
The copyright law inherited English precedents that went back before Haydn when the only recognized compositions were made for the court or church. It then was assumed the folk tradition was a corrosive process that took those compositions, broke them down, and preserved bits.
When white folklorists confronted African-American traditions they applied that same concept. In 1937, Ruby Pickens Tartt was asked by the WPA to provide spirituals from Sumter County, Alabama. She wrote a friend she "knew how little" her supervisor "knew of the time it would take to get the verses to eight songs."
"I told her spirituals don’t thrive around the courthouse square, that I might drive all day in the country and never find one complete song. One person would know one verse, one another, and on. [1]
Tartt knew different individuals all sang versions that were recognizably related, but each differed in the verses included. She assumed there once had been a standard version of which each only retained a part.
She did not comprehend that instead of an immutable song that could be transcribed for piano, African Americans had collections of verses they grouped into song clusters, and that anyone, at anytime, could sing any or all of the verses in any order, and the next time that person sang it, he or she could create a different combination. There was no restriction against including a verse from another cluster.
Lightnin’ Hopkins tried to explain the difference to a white film-maker. He claimed the churches
"didn’t teach me the song. Nuh uh, they made them up. Fact of the business, the way it goes, they sang the songs and I played them. Whatever they sing, I played it. All they do is get into tune just like they [plays]." [2]
When Hopkins recorded his version of "Come by Here" in 1952, he used variations on three phrases that had been used in earlier recordings, [3] and added his own. "Come if you don’t stay long" was an abbreviated form of the Southern invitation, "come, even if you can’t stay long" shortened to fit the length of the musical line.
The early recordings of "Come by Here," made primarily by people from the southeastern United States, had repeated one line six times, with little variation. Hopkins was a blues musician from cotton country in the upper reaches of the Trinity river in Texas. He kept the sestet form, but alternated a three-line AAA verse with three repetitions of "now is the needed time." He then reverted to the AAB blues stanza, with "Jesus, will you come by here" as the commentary (AAB-CCC).
His version of "Come by Here" may not have been long enough for a three-minute recording. [4] He began with three variations on the "come" theme, then played the melody on the guitar. Next he reversed the pattern and began with three repetitions of "needed time," which he followed with a repetition of the "stay long" verse. He already had said he was praying for Jesus to come. He reworded that verse by repeating he was down on his knees twice, and finished by singing come by here four times (AAB-BBB).
He made the recording for a company owned by the Bihari brothers. The label gave him credit as the composer, but the music publisher also was owned by the brothers. It was a small operation that diverted royalties whenever it could. [5]
Performers
Instrumental Accompaniment: acoustic guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: acoustic guitar
Credits
Written-by - Lightnin’ Hopkins [6]
Mod Music Pub Co. (BMI) [7]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: a loose coupling between music and text allowed Hopkins to emphasize the important word "come" rather than the one that ended the sentence or phrase, "here."
Verses: come by here, needed time, come if you don’t stay long, praying, praying on my knees
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: I
Term for Deity: Jesus
Jesus: in the form of the Holy Spirit
Now: this is not a premillennial reference to the second coming of Christ, but a request for the Holy Spirit to materialize immediately.
Down on my knees: refers both to the common habit of getting on one’s knees to pray and older African-American initiation rituals where an individual went out in the wilderness to contact the spirits.
Format: sestet
Line Meter: varies around a basic iambic trimeter
Line Repetition Pattern: AAB-CCC
Notes on Music
Basic Structure: repetition of first verse with few changes.
Singing Style: fundamentally one syllable to one note. The sustained words like come, Lord, and Oh occasionally shifted to a second tone toward the end, sometime shading into a hum of the extended vowel. Many African languages did not end in consonants, and the emphasis on the vowel here is one way Black American English perpetuated older pronunciation patterns. [8]
Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: rhythmic accompaniment to vocal parts and an instrumental interlude when the guitar replaced the voice.
The general pattern was simple chords on the first two lines, with the guitar playing a parallel melody on the last phrase of the third line. In the interlude, the guitar played the melody with chords. Base runs were used between melodic phrases.
Notes on Performer
Sam Hopkins, who lived from 1911 to 1982, had two recording careers: one on labels marketed to African-American audiences in the 1940s and 1950s, and another on albums aimed at whites interested in the rural blues. He was a link with early musicians, like Blind Lemon Jefferson, and thus was interviewed numerous times. Sam Charters released one set of interviews on a Prestige record, and Les Blank and PBS captured others on films. Blank made his unused footage available to biographers.
Lightnin’ Hopkins. My Life in Blues. Prestige 7370. 1965. Interviewed by Sam Charters. Fantasy, Inc reissued it as the seventh CD in The Complete Prestige/Bluesville Recordings in 1991.
Les Blank. The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins. El Cerrito, California: Flower Films, 1968.
PBS. Artists in America, 1971, program 6, "Sam ‘Lightnin’’ Hopkins." Produced by KUHT, Houston.
Availability
78/45 rpm: RPM Records 359. Recorded in Houston, 1952.
Reissue: No Blues for Young Men. Leicester, UK: Broken Audio Recordings. 19 September 2013.
Reissue: In God We Trust. Zürich, Switzerland: Brownsville Records. 15 November 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by stompingsevens, 10 February 2013.
End Notes
1. Ruby Pickens Tartt. Letter to Janie Long Allen, undated. Ruby Pickens Tartt Collection, Julia Tutwiler Library, University of West Alabama University. Reprinted by Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 13.
The WPA program was the Federal Writer’s Project sponsored by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration.
2. Lightnin’ Hopkins. Transcribed by Timothy J. O’Brien and David Ensminger. Mojo Hand: The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. 15. Credit to the PBS documentary.
Hopkins’ separation of the roles of accompanying and participating in a church service was the same distinction made about trance rituals by Gilbert Rouget that was discussed in the post for 3 August 2017.
3. I will be discussing the early recordings in later posts.
4. The three-minute record form was discussed in the post for 2 August 2017.
5. Wikipedia. "Bihari Brothers."
6. "Lightning Hopkins And His Guitar – One Kind Favor / Needed Time." Discogs website. It reproduced the label for the other song on the recording, and implied the information was the same for both.
7. RPM was a subsidiary of Modern Records, and Modern Music Publishing was one of the Bihari’s properties.
8. Lorenzo Dow Turner. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2002 edition. 247.
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