Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
The folk revival sparked by the Kingston Trio [1] assumed people who attended colleges had parties where they sang. It was one of those self-fulfilling concepts: because people believed this was what people like themselves were doing, they began doing it. With singing, one needed songs, and if a tradition did not exist, then there was an need for someone to create a repertoire.
James Franklin Leisy produced two songbooks in 1961 that filled that void. Songs for Swingin’ Housemothers [2] and Songs for Singin’ [3] provided words and tunes to the gross and naughty songs children and adolescents sang to shock their elders. They did not include the truly obscene ones young men, including those in fraternities, sang to impress each other. [4]
Mixed in with lyrics for "Grandma’s in the Cellar" [5] and "Worms Crawl In" [6] were drinking songs like "Unfortunate Miss Bailey" [7] and "Three Jolly Coachman" [8] that were recorded by the Kingston Trio. The only folk revival songs Leisy included were the Trio’s "Tom Dooley" [9] and "Worried Man Blues," [10] and Harry Belafonte’s "Banana Boat Song." [11]
Leisy’s background was similar to the men in the Trio. While Dave Guard and Bob Shane were in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed, [12] Leisy graduated from high school in 1944 [13] and served a year in the Naval Reserve. [14] At that time, he copyrighted some songs in the popular music vein. [15]
While all three members of the Trio graduated from college with degrees in business, Leisy attended Southern Methodist University where his father was on the English faculty. [16] Leisy himself was a business major. After graduation in 1949, he was hired as an editor by Prentice Hall. In 1954, he moved to Allen and Bacon. [17]
The Kingston Trio didn’t plan to create folk music. Each of the men began with the popular music traditions they heard when they were adolescents. For Leisy, that was country music. In the early 1950s, he had some songs [18] recorded by second tier artists who had a few popular recordings and mainly toured as the opening acts for others: Hawkshaw Hawkins, [19] Hank Locklin, [20] and the Davis Sisters. [21]
Leisy’s songwriting career ended in 1957 when the popularity of Elvis Presley changed the taste in popular and country music. He had founded his own publishing company the year before in California that specialized in technical books. Wadsworth Publishing prospered after the Soviet Union launched its first satellite in 1957. [22] He indulged his interest in music by producing collections for the Methodist Church. [23] Its publishing arm was still in New York City.
The success of Leisy’s two college collections led to a contract with Fawcett Publications. That company published magazines, like True Confessions and Woman’s Day, and issued original mass-market paperbacks. [24]
In 1962, Leisy published Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’. [25] It mixed sections of "Folk Songs and Ballads" and "Campus Favorites" with "Gospel and Spiritual." While it included Roy Acuff’s "Great Speckled Bird," [26] it didn’t include "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." "Kumbaya" didn’t appear because Joan Baez hadn’t yet released her recording of it. [27]
Leisy issued another collection for Fawcett in 1964 to exploit the popularity of the ABC Television program, Hootenanny, discussed in the post for 3 November 2019. Hootenanny Tonight! included a version of "Kum Ba Ya" influenced by The Weavers. [28] He took their word it was a fragment, and printed only one verse. He described it as "lullaby-like." [29]
The same year he produced a different collection for Sam Fox, the publisher of plays. Folk Song Fest was subtitled "Songs and Ideas for Performance Artistry."
As a songwriter and publisher, he understood the copyright law. He added his own verse, "someone’s hoping," to the usual three in Fest to create a unique text. While he always used the key of D, with two sharps, he changed the rhythm from publication to publication. Hootenanny used 3/4, while Fest utilized 3/2.
His tone was that of a documentarian making polite suggestions, but not issuing decrees. He told Fest readers that "new verses are constantly being coined" and that they were free to use "use ‘kum ba ya’ or ‘come by here’." It also was the singer’s choice to treat the verses as an open ended song, a finite song, or one that alternated a "kumbaya" burden with unique stanzas.
His only requirement was that it be sung "slowly with dignity." [30]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: unison
Instrumental Accompaniment: chords
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Hootenanny Tonight!
"I’ve been told the song originated in the southern United States and traveled to Africa, where this fragmentary version became traditional. According to this legend the lyrics are an attempt to imitate the words ‘come by here.’ A few years ago this song was ‘found’ in Africa and brought back to the U.S., where it has now become part of our tradition."
Folk Song Fest
"There is a widely circulated theory that this song was based by Africans on the words ‘come by here’ learned from American missionaries."
Notes on Lyrics
Hootenanny Tonight
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom bay yah
Verses: kumbaya
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Folk Song Fest
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom bay yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying, hoping
Pronoun : Someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: may be open-ended or finite
Verse Repetition Pattern: "New verses are constantly being coined. A few examples are shown here. It’s use to you whether you use "kum ba ya" or "come by here." You will hear it performed both ways. You may repeat the chorus after each verse."
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Hootenanny Tonight
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Rhythm: "six even beats to a measure"
Folk Song Fest
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/2
Tempo: slowly
Both
Key Signature: two sharps
Guitar Chords: D G A A7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final "Lord"
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics - Song Fest: "light strumming accompaniment (down and up strum to each beat)."
Audience Perceptions
Leisy’s collections were used. One man said he bought Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’ to replace my wife’s falling-apart copy. [31] Another bought a replacement for Swingin’ Housemothers because "at sometime Ioaned" my copy "to someone (against my better judgement, and never saw it again. Was able to remember my favorites but missed the book Still play and sing. It is my ‘psychiatrist and mood elevator. And to be reunited with my book brings me peace and happiness." [32]
The books became part of family traditions. One woman said Pickin’ and Singin’ "has been a musical mainstay for my husband/family," [33] while a man told Amazon customers Swingin’ Housemothers "was a book of songs my family used to sing out of when I was a mere youth." [34]
Notes on Performers
Leisy came from a Mennonite family. His maternal great-great-grand father migrated from the Palatine [35] sometime after his son was born in 1832. [36] His grandfather edited the denomination’s newspaper [37] and helped found Bethany College. [38]
He used the name Jim Leisy for his country lyrics, James F. Leisy when he was publishing collections for Fawcett and the Methodist Church, and Frank Lynn for his college songbooks. His family moved to Dallas soon after he was born in 1927, [39] and he grew up in a Methodist social environment. This use of three pen names allowed him to isolate activities financed by the church from more secular ones. It is not known if this was a simply a businessman’s recognition of the need to keep Methodists happy by not offending their public morality, or signified some deeper ambivalence toward the various activities.
Availability
Book: James F. Leisy. "Kum Ba Ya. In Hootenanny Tonight. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1964. 39.
Book: James F. Leisy. "Kum ba ya." In Folk Song Fest: Songs and Ideas for Performance Artistry. New York: Sam Fox Publishing Company, 1964. 12.
End Notes
1. The role of the Kingston Trio was discussed in the post for 13 October 2019.
2. Frank Lynn. Songs for Swingin’ Housemothers. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1961.
3. Frank Lynn. Songs for Singin’. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1961.
4. It was only in 1959 that a Federal Court in the United States ruled books by D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller were not obscene because of their artistic intent. [40] No one pretended bawdy college songs were sung for aesthetic reasons, and so were essentially unpublishable in the early 1960s. Gershon Legman’s books that provided a scholarly rationale for publishing erotica didn’t appear in the United States until 1970. [41]
5. "Grammaws in the Cellar." 30 in Housemothers.
6. "The Hearse Song." 60 in Housemothers.
7. "Miss Bailey." 224 in Housemothers.
Kingston Trio. "The Unfortunate Miss Bailey." Here We Go Again! Capitol Records T-1258. 1959.
8. "Landlord, Fill the Flowing Bowl." 77 in Housemothers. Also, 11 in Frank Lynn. The Beer Bust Songbook. San Francisco: Fearon Publishers, 1963. [42]
Kingston Trio. "Three Jolly Coachmen." The Kingston Trio. Capitol Records T-996. 1958.
9. "Tom Dooley," 167 in Housemothers; and 43 in Beer Bust.
Kingston Trio. "Tom Dooley." The Kingston Trio.
10. "Worried Man Blues," 243 in Housemothers; and 43 in Beer Bust.
Kingston Trio. "A Worried Man." Here We Go.
11. "Banana Boat Loader’s Song." 259 in Housemothers.
Harry Belafonte. "The Banana Boat Song." RCA 447-0324. Recorded 20 October 1955, released 1956.
12. See post for 13 October 2019 for discussion of World War II and the Kingston Trio.
13. Amazon advertisement for Highland Park High School [Dallas, Texas] yearbook for 1944 edited by senior James Leisy.
14. "James Franklin Leisy." Prabook website.
15. The United States Copyright Office’s Catalog of Copyright Entries: Musical compositions, Part 3. Unpublished music listed ten songs by James Franklin Leisy of Dallas in 1946. The titles included: "I’ll Take a Raincheck on Love" and "In the Hills of Old Tennessee."
16. "Leisy, Ernest E. (1888-1968)." Mennonite Weekly Review 3:14 March 1968.
17. James Leisy, Prabook.
18. Leisy also had songs recorded by country artists whose names weren’t as recognizable. My list came from WorldCat, which had entries from the John Edwards Memorial Foundation collection of country music records, and Discogs, which connected Jim Leisy with James F. Leisy.
19. Hawkshaw Hawkins. "Rebound." Written by Jim Leisy and Ray Male. RCA Victor. 1954. Hawkins had just joined the Ozark Jubilee television program when this was recorded; his more famous records were made later. [43]
20. Hank Locklin. "Pinball Millionaire." Written by James F. Leisy, Hank Locklin, and Slim Willet. 4 Star Records 1466. 1950. Locklin’s biggest hit, "Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On," had been released in 1949. [44]
21. The Davis Sisters. "Fiddle Diddle Boogie." Written by Charles Grean and Jim Leisy. RCA Victor 47-6086. 1955. At this time the group consisted of Skeeter Davis and Georgia Davis. The original member, Billy Jack Davis, was killed in 1954. Skeeter had adopted the Davis name to perform, and recorded "The End of the World" as a soloist in 1962. [45]
22. "James F. Leisy; Leading Textbook Publisher." Los Angeles Times. 15 July 1989. The satellite was Sputnik. [46]
23. James F. Leisy. Abingdon Song Kit. New York: Abingdon Press, 1957.
James F. Leisy. Let’s All Sing. New York: Abingdon Press, 1959.
24. Wikipedia. "Fawcett Publications."
25. James F. Leisy. Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1962.
26. Roy Acuff. "The Great Speckled Bird." Vocalion 04252, OKeh 04252, and Conqueror 8740. 1936. [47]
27. Joan Baez’s concert album appeared later in 1962. See the post for 9 October 2017 for details.
28. The Weavers’ version was discussed in the post for 3 October 2017.
29. The Weavers treated "Kumbaya" as a lullaby.
30. Leisy, Hootenanny Tonight!.
31. AZ. Comment posted 10 October 2016. Amazon website for Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’.
32. Stuart E. Wunsh. Comment posted 13 March 2016. Amazon website for 1963 edition of Songs for Singin’ Housemothers.
33. Jeannie C. Comment posted 5 September 2013. Amazon website for Songs for Pickin’ and Singin’.
34. Badluck Bob. Comment posted 9 August 2015. Amazon website for 1961 edition of Songs for Singin’ Housemothers.
35. Barbara HARMS Craig. "Johannes ‘John’ Krehbiel." Find a Grave website. 13 March 2010. Leisy’s great-great-grandfather.
36. Barb. "Rev Christian Krehbiel." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2008. Leisy’s great-grandfather.
37. Tom Crago. "Elva Agnes Krehbiel Leisy." Find a Grave website. 12 January 2009. Leisy’s mother. Her father, Leisy’s grandfather, was Henry Peter Krehbiel.
38. "Margaret Leisy Steineger." The Kansas City Star. 25 May 2014. Leisy’s sister.
39. Ernest E. Leisy.
40. Wikipedia. "Lady Chatterley’s Lover."
41. Wikipedia. "Gershon Legman."
42. Beer Bust was published two years after Housemothers and Singin’, and included both new and previously published material. The refinements may have reflected comments he received about his first two books.
43. Wikipedia. "Hawkshaw Hawkins."
44. Wikipedia. "Hank Locklin."
45. Wikipedia. "Skeeter Davis."
46. Wikipedia. "Sputnik 1"
47. "Great Speckled Bird, The." The Traditional Ballad Index. California State University-Fresno website.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Sunday, December 8, 2019
Minnie Lee
Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Minnie Lee was the most important performer in Alliance, North Carolina, and not just because she knew a variant of "Come By Here."
Her repertoire included more genres than Julian Boyd collected from his students in the local high school. She gave him lyrics for play parties and lullabies, as well as a folk tale. She later recorded three of the songs attributed to her by Boyd, while Alexander Price performed another two of her lyrics for Frank Brown. Two more of her songs were included in the Brown tune collection. [1]
Boyd identified her as Minnie Lee, [2] while Brown identified her as Mrs. Minnie Lee. [3] The most likely person buried in Pamlico County was born Minnie Parsons in 1898. [4] She married Timothy Lee in 1915. [5]
The 1920 census reported Minnie Lee was a widow with two children living next to Ludie Parsons. Ten years later her sons, Leston and Duval, were living with Ludie in Arapahoe. Their ages indicated they were born in 1917 and 1919. [6]
How Timothy died so young is guess work. If he’d been killed in World War I, his name probably would have appeared in some list of casualties on the internet. He may have died in the flu epidemic that swept the country in 1918, [7] or died on the job, or from any of the other causes that affected young men.
By 1940 Minnie had married Herbert Dixon and was living in Grantsboro with his children, Duval, and Bernice Broughton. [8] Dixon died in 1955, [9] and sometime after that she married Hymric Brown. He died in 1974, [10] and she was buried next to Dixon in 1974. [11]
Minnie’s parentage is unclear. John James Parsons married Ludie Price in 1905, seven years after Minnie was born. In 1900, he was listed as a farm laborer boarding with John M. Ipock in Vanceboro, more than twenty miles north of New Bern in Craven County. Minnie was not listed as a resident in their household in 1910. [12]
John’s brother Lenard and his two sons were living with the family in Vanceboro in 1910. After John died that year, Ludie married Lenard in 1914. [13] Minnie may have been a daughter of Lenard who was sent to live with another relative when his wife died, or she may have been the daughter of another family member. The Lee Minnie married probably was from that part of Craven County. [14]
Ludie and one of her husbands moved to Pamlico County after the railroad was completed in 1906. [15] The sawmills may have needed more men.
Grantsboro did not exist in 1900. It was then a settlement at the intersection of the road from New Bern and Scott’s Store Road that went south through Arapahoe. A peddler from New York passed through around 1900 and saw possibilities. William Grant married a local woman and opened a store. [16]
There were few places where the young, unmarried Boyd could have collected songs from a comparatively young widow in the small community of Alliance without exciting gossip in 1926. He would have been expected to go to church, and, since his grandfather was a Methodist minister, [17] he probably went to the local Methodist one. Lee was buried in a Free Will Baptist cemetery in Grantsboro.
More than likely Boyd boarded with some family. If that family hired someone to help with the cooking, cleaning, or laundry, Boyd could have talked with an outside woman inside the house. One would guess this was how he met Lee.
Almost nothing can be deduced about her cultural heritage, beyond membership in the Free Baptist Church. The Ipock with whom her father boarded in 1900 was the descendant of one of the first Anabaptist settlers in New Bern, [18] but Parsons, Price, Dixon, Brown, and Lee were all English names that appeared without antecedents.
They appeared where land was available, and were invisible in areas where it was not. They intermarried, but the kinship connections were not recorded in online genealogies.
Few left any paper trails. Jonathan Butcher tried to trace Leven Lee, the progenitor of the Pamlico County Lees. He found more than one person with that name at the time, and none appeared in wills or other legal records. The one time Leven’s name did appear, it was related to a fence that probably was on land he was renting in 1823. Butcher concluded this Lee was a "rather poor man, at least in terms of landholding, the sort who is difficult to trace in early 19th century records." [19]
Not many even left material remains. Few headstones existed anywhere in Pamlico County before 1900, and most of those probably were erected years later by descendants. The area lacked the necessary raw materials. Any tombstone would have had to have been brought by small boat, and then hauled overland in a cart or wagon. The wooden crosses and piles of stone that sufficed would have decayed or been disturbed by animals or farmers.
For instance, the earliest known burial in the Ganus Cemetery south of Arapahoe was 1903. However, "there are two graves marked with wood stakes. There are several graves with cement slabs but no inscriptions. One probable grave marked with flowers. There may be other unmarked graves." [20]
Map
United States Department of the Interior. Geological Survey. Selection from "Bayboro Quadrangle North Carolina 7.5 Minute Series." 1968.
End Notes
1. Frank Brown’s recording session in Alliance was discussed in the post for 1 December 2019. Julian Boyd’s work was discussed in the post for 6 February 2019. Minnie Lee’s contributions were included in the following volumes of Brown’s collection.
The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press. Volume 1. Section on Folk Tales and Legends edited by Stith Thompson. 1952.
___. Volume 2. Folk Ballads from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.
___. Volume 3. Folk Songs from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.
___. Volume 4. The Music of the Ballads. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1957.
___. Volume 5. The Music of the Folk Songs. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1962.
2. Brown. Volumes 1–3.
3. Brown. Volumes 4–5.
4. John47. "Minnie Parsons Lee Dixon Brown." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
5. "Minnie Parsons." Ancestors website.
6. J.D. Larimore. "Ira Nelson Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013. He was the son of Ludie Price and John James Parsons.
7. The influenza epidemic reached Wilmington, North Carolina, in September 1919 and spread west along the railroads. It affected urban areas more than isolated rural ones. [21] The worst was past by the end of the year, but a mild resurgence occurred in the spring. [22] This was when at least two African-American children died in Pamlico County. [23]
8. "Herbert Dixon in the 1940 Census." Archives website.
9. John47. "L Herbert Dixon." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
10. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
11. John47, Minnie Lee.
12. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
13. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
14. Lees have lived in Pamlico County since Leven Lee moved there from Bath, North Carolina, before the Revolution, [24] but Timothy was not mentioned among his descendants. One son, Asa, was buried in a cemetery now on the grounds of Camp Don Lee. [25] Joseph Bryan Lee, the son of another of Asa’s sons, Robert, [26] was buried in the Lee Family cemetery. [27] Bernice Broughton, who was described as someone’s niece in the Dixon household in 1940, was descended from Asa’s son John Riley Lee. [28] Ludie’s son Ira later married Bessie Lee. [29] She was descended from Robert [30] and a Free Will Baptist. [31]
15. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 78–79.
16. "Welcome to beautiful Grantsboro, North Carolina!" Grantsboro website.
17. For more about Boyd’s family, see the post for 6 February 2019.
18. Donald E. Collins. "Swiss and Palatine Settlers." NC Pedia website. 2006.
19. Jonathan B. Butcher. "Levin Leigh Ancestry and the James Leigh Family." May 1988. Copy available from "Judge James Leigh of Bath Precinct, North Carolina." Roots Web website.
20. "Ganus Cemetery." Find a Grave website.
21. David L. Cockrell. "‘A Blessing in Disguise’: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and North Carolina’s Medical and Public Health Communities." The North Carolina Historical Review 73:309–327:1996. 311.
22. Cockrell. 320.
23. Grace Smith, the daughter of John Smith and Fanny Kenyan, died in 1919. [32] Sadie Ollison McGlone’s sister died in Mesic while their father was in the military in Kentucky. [33]
24. Suzy Dixon Bennett. "Re: Lee,Leven 1755 Va." Genealogy website. 26 March 2001.
Floyd Bryan Mack. "Leven Lee." Geni website. 9 November 92014.
25. Floyd Bryan Mack. "Asa Lee." Geni website. 9 November 2014.
26. Bennett identified all, or at least many, of Leven’s children.
27. Christina Carlton. "Joseph Bryan Lee." Find a Grave website. 16 April 2009. Last updated by J.D. Larimore.
28. Her father was Golden Cephas Broughton. [34] His mother, her grandmother, was Rhoda Lee Belangia. [35] She was the daughter of Riley Lee, [36] who then was Bernice’s great-grandfather.
29. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
30. Her father was Eric Lee, [37] the son of Joseph Bryan Lee. [38]
31. J.D. Larimore. "Bessie Lee Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.
32. Sonny William Smith. "In Search Of Rodger 1710-2004." Genealogy website. 28 July 2004. Page 6.
33. Sadie Ollison McGlone. Interview, 23 April 2007. University of North Carolina. Southern Oral History Project website.
34. J.D. Larimore. "Bernice Broughton Murray." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
35. J.D. Larimore. "Golden Cephas Broughton." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
36. J.D. Larimore. "Rhoda Lee Belangia." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
37. Larimore, Bessie Parsons.
38. J.D. Larimore. "Eric Lee." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.
Minnie Lee was the most important performer in Alliance, North Carolina, and not just because she knew a variant of "Come By Here."
Her repertoire included more genres than Julian Boyd collected from his students in the local high school. She gave him lyrics for play parties and lullabies, as well as a folk tale. She later recorded three of the songs attributed to her by Boyd, while Alexander Price performed another two of her lyrics for Frank Brown. Two more of her songs were included in the Brown tune collection. [1]
Boyd identified her as Minnie Lee, [2] while Brown identified her as Mrs. Minnie Lee. [3] The most likely person buried in Pamlico County was born Minnie Parsons in 1898. [4] She married Timothy Lee in 1915. [5]
The 1920 census reported Minnie Lee was a widow with two children living next to Ludie Parsons. Ten years later her sons, Leston and Duval, were living with Ludie in Arapahoe. Their ages indicated they were born in 1917 and 1919. [6]
How Timothy died so young is guess work. If he’d been killed in World War I, his name probably would have appeared in some list of casualties on the internet. He may have died in the flu epidemic that swept the country in 1918, [7] or died on the job, or from any of the other causes that affected young men.
By 1940 Minnie had married Herbert Dixon and was living in Grantsboro with his children, Duval, and Bernice Broughton. [8] Dixon died in 1955, [9] and sometime after that she married Hymric Brown. He died in 1974, [10] and she was buried next to Dixon in 1974. [11]
Minnie’s parentage is unclear. John James Parsons married Ludie Price in 1905, seven years after Minnie was born. In 1900, he was listed as a farm laborer boarding with John M. Ipock in Vanceboro, more than twenty miles north of New Bern in Craven County. Minnie was not listed as a resident in their household in 1910. [12]
John’s brother Lenard and his two sons were living with the family in Vanceboro in 1910. After John died that year, Ludie married Lenard in 1914. [13] Minnie may have been a daughter of Lenard who was sent to live with another relative when his wife died, or she may have been the daughter of another family member. The Lee Minnie married probably was from that part of Craven County. [14]
Ludie and one of her husbands moved to Pamlico County after the railroad was completed in 1906. [15] The sawmills may have needed more men.
Grantsboro did not exist in 1900. It was then a settlement at the intersection of the road from New Bern and Scott’s Store Road that went south through Arapahoe. A peddler from New York passed through around 1900 and saw possibilities. William Grant married a local woman and opened a store. [16]
There were few places where the young, unmarried Boyd could have collected songs from a comparatively young widow in the small community of Alliance without exciting gossip in 1926. He would have been expected to go to church, and, since his grandfather was a Methodist minister, [17] he probably went to the local Methodist one. Lee was buried in a Free Will Baptist cemetery in Grantsboro.
More than likely Boyd boarded with some family. If that family hired someone to help with the cooking, cleaning, or laundry, Boyd could have talked with an outside woman inside the house. One would guess this was how he met Lee.
Almost nothing can be deduced about her cultural heritage, beyond membership in the Free Baptist Church. The Ipock with whom her father boarded in 1900 was the descendant of one of the first Anabaptist settlers in New Bern, [18] but Parsons, Price, Dixon, Brown, and Lee were all English names that appeared without antecedents.
They appeared where land was available, and were invisible in areas where it was not. They intermarried, but the kinship connections were not recorded in online genealogies.
Few left any paper trails. Jonathan Butcher tried to trace Leven Lee, the progenitor of the Pamlico County Lees. He found more than one person with that name at the time, and none appeared in wills or other legal records. The one time Leven’s name did appear, it was related to a fence that probably was on land he was renting in 1823. Butcher concluded this Lee was a "rather poor man, at least in terms of landholding, the sort who is difficult to trace in early 19th century records." [19]
Not many even left material remains. Few headstones existed anywhere in Pamlico County before 1900, and most of those probably were erected years later by descendants. The area lacked the necessary raw materials. Any tombstone would have had to have been brought by small boat, and then hauled overland in a cart or wagon. The wooden crosses and piles of stone that sufficed would have decayed or been disturbed by animals or farmers.
For instance, the earliest known burial in the Ganus Cemetery south of Arapahoe was 1903. However, "there are two graves marked with wood stakes. There are several graves with cement slabs but no inscriptions. One probable grave marked with flowers. There may be other unmarked graves." [20]
Map
United States Department of the Interior. Geological Survey. Selection from "Bayboro Quadrangle North Carolina 7.5 Minute Series." 1968.
End Notes
1. Frank Brown’s recording session in Alliance was discussed in the post for 1 December 2019. Julian Boyd’s work was discussed in the post for 6 February 2019. Minnie Lee’s contributions were included in the following volumes of Brown’s collection.
The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press. Volume 1. Section on Folk Tales and Legends edited by Stith Thompson. 1952.
___. Volume 2. Folk Ballads from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.
___. Volume 3. Folk Songs from North Carolina. Edited by Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson. 1952.
___. Volume 4. The Music of the Ballads. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1957.
___. Volume 5. The Music of the Folk Songs. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1962.
2. Brown. Volumes 1–3.
3. Brown. Volumes 4–5.
4. John47. "Minnie Parsons Lee Dixon Brown." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
5. "Minnie Parsons." Ancestors website.
6. J.D. Larimore. "Ira Nelson Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013. He was the son of Ludie Price and John James Parsons.
7. The influenza epidemic reached Wilmington, North Carolina, in September 1919 and spread west along the railroads. It affected urban areas more than isolated rural ones. [21] The worst was past by the end of the year, but a mild resurgence occurred in the spring. [22] This was when at least two African-American children died in Pamlico County. [23]
8. "Herbert Dixon in the 1940 Census." Archives website.
9. John47. "L Herbert Dixon." Find a Grave website. 4 July 2011.
10. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
11. John47, Minnie Lee.
12. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
13. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
14. Lees have lived in Pamlico County since Leven Lee moved there from Bath, North Carolina, before the Revolution, [24] but Timothy was not mentioned among his descendants. One son, Asa, was buried in a cemetery now on the grounds of Camp Don Lee. [25] Joseph Bryan Lee, the son of another of Asa’s sons, Robert, [26] was buried in the Lee Family cemetery. [27] Bernice Broughton, who was described as someone’s niece in the Dixon household in 1940, was descended from Asa’s son John Riley Lee. [28] Ludie’s son Ira later married Bessie Lee. [29] She was descended from Robert [30] and a Free Will Baptist. [31]
15. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 78–79.
16. "Welcome to beautiful Grantsboro, North Carolina!" Grantsboro website.
17. For more about Boyd’s family, see the post for 6 February 2019.
18. Donald E. Collins. "Swiss and Palatine Settlers." NC Pedia website. 2006.
19. Jonathan B. Butcher. "Levin Leigh Ancestry and the James Leigh Family." May 1988. Copy available from "Judge James Leigh of Bath Precinct, North Carolina." Roots Web website.
20. "Ganus Cemetery." Find a Grave website.
21. David L. Cockrell. "‘A Blessing in Disguise’: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and North Carolina’s Medical and Public Health Communities." The North Carolina Historical Review 73:309–327:1996. 311.
22. Cockrell. 320.
23. Grace Smith, the daughter of John Smith and Fanny Kenyan, died in 1919. [32] Sadie Ollison McGlone’s sister died in Mesic while their father was in the military in Kentucky. [33]
24. Suzy Dixon Bennett. "Re: Lee,Leven 1755 Va." Genealogy website. 26 March 2001.
Floyd Bryan Mack. "Leven Lee." Geni website. 9 November 92014.
25. Floyd Bryan Mack. "Asa Lee." Geni website. 9 November 2014.
26. Bennett identified all, or at least many, of Leven’s children.
27. Christina Carlton. "Joseph Bryan Lee." Find a Grave website. 16 April 2009. Last updated by J.D. Larimore.
28. Her father was Golden Cephas Broughton. [34] His mother, her grandmother, was Rhoda Lee Belangia. [35] She was the daughter of Riley Lee, [36] who then was Bernice’s great-grandfather.
29. Larimore, Ira Parsons.
30. Her father was Eric Lee, [37] the son of Joseph Bryan Lee. [38]
31. J.D. Larimore. "Bessie Lee Parsons." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.
32. Sonny William Smith. "In Search Of Rodger 1710-2004." Genealogy website. 28 July 2004. Page 6.
33. Sadie Ollison McGlone. Interview, 23 April 2007. University of North Carolina. Southern Oral History Project website.
34. J.D. Larimore. "Bernice Broughton Murray." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
35. J.D. Larimore. "Golden Cephas Broughton." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
36. J.D. Larimore. "Rhoda Lee Belangia." Find a Grave website. 27 August 2014.
37. Larimore, Bessie Parsons.
38. J.D. Larimore. "Eric Lee." Find a Grave website. 30 January 2013.
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Alliance, North Carolina, Melodies
Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Julian Boyd’s collection of folk songs from Pamlico County, North Carolina, went through several filters before selections were published in the 1952 compendium of North Carolina folklore amassed by Frank C. Brown. [1]
Boyd sent a copy of his compilation to John Winslow Gordon in February 1927. Drawing on Boyd’s cover letter, Stephen Winick concluded: "he was apparently quite selective, keeping only those songs he deemed true folksongs and discarding the rest." [2]
When Brown received his copy of Boyd’s manuscript, he or some of his students went to Alliance to record some of the performers. Jan Philip Schinhan selected material from eight individuals when he transcribed the melodies in Brown’s collection in 1962.
It’s not known when Brown went to Alliance, but it was while Boyd was still there. A version by Minnie Lee was "recorded with the co-operation of Julian P. Boyd." [3]
This must have been a major event in Alliance. The settlement did not have electricity. [4] The recordings were done on wax cylinders, [5] with a machine run by a mechanical spring motor. Artists had to sing into a large bell. [6] Boyd may have provided a room in the school.
The session may have occurred soon after Brown received Boyd’s manuscript and may have contributed to the criticisms mentioned in the post for 6 February 2019 that led Boyd to leave the town at the end of the school year. He described his problems to Gordon in a March letter. [7]
The largest numbers of texts included in the Brown collection came from Lee (18), Catherine Bennett (14), and Jeannette Tingle (10). Only Lee and Tingle were recorded, and Lee provided 5 of the 19 published tunes.
Tingle was not in Boyd’s high school class, but the first cousin of one of his students, James Tingle. She was two years younger. [8] When she heard about the project, she may have volunteered her own material. There is evidence she was interested in music. Her daughter acted in amateur theater productions and taught drama at East Carolina University. [9]
Tingle’s son was a professional actor and antiques dealer in Chicago. When he died, a friend remembered "he could write a song and sit down at the piano and sing it." [10] Another recalled he was "a wonderful storyteller with a talent for the dramatic." [11]
Two songs were recorded by Claude James. One had been provided by Ruby Casey. Another came from Mr. T. Barnes. He may have been a Tingle relative. Jeannette’s mother was Clara Missouria Barnes. [12]
Boyd apparently also was collecting songs. Twenty-four of the texts were from unnamed sources or archives, including songs recorded by Mrs. L. F. Banks. Bryan Banks was one of his students. Boyd also was credited by Schinhan as providing a melody by Alfonso Coleman. [13]
Minnie Lee appeared as both a singer and a collector. The texts of two of the three songs recorded by Alexander Price were attributed to Lee.
Mary Price was one of the people included in Boyd’s collection who could not be identified. Alexander’s name was common in the county, and several married women named Mary. If she were not a student, she could have been the Mary Jane Ipock who married the son of Alex Price in 1901. [14] Or, she could have been Mary Holland Thomas who married Alexander Price. His father also was Alexander Price. [15]
End Notes
1. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952.
2. Stephen Winick. "The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song." Folklife Center News 34(3–4):3–10:2010. 4.
3. Brown. The Music of the Folk Songs. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1962. 5:446.
4. In 1940, only 24% of the houses in the Pamlico County had electricity, [16] and 39% had radios powered by batteries. [17]
5. Brown. The Music of the Ballads. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1957. 4:xv, xvi.
6. Andrew Boyd. "Recording Without Electricity." University of Houston. Engines of Our Ingenuity website. 8 May 2014.
7. Winick. 4.
8. J.D. Larimore. "Doris Jeanette Tingle Curtis." Find a Grave. 9 May 2014. Jeannette and James’ fathers were sons of Burney Sylvester Tingle. [18]
9. Joan Williams Bowen. Obituary. [New Bern, North Carolina] Sun Journal. 1 February 2004. 32.
10. Diana Bittel. Quoted by "Taylor B. Williams, 71, Chicago Dealer." Antiques and The Arts Weekly. 4 April 2006.
11. Pam Guthman Kissock. Quoted by Antiques.
12. Larimore, Jeanette Tingle.
13. Brown. 5:345.
Find a Grave website. 15 Aug 2017.
15. Doug Williams. "Laverta Belle Price." Find a Grave website. 22 May 2017. Updated by J.D. Larimore.
16. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 118.
17. Mobley. 119.
Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
Julian Boyd’s collection of folk songs from Pamlico County, North Carolina, went through several filters before selections were published in the 1952 compendium of North Carolina folklore amassed by Frank C. Brown. [1]
Boyd sent a copy of his compilation to John Winslow Gordon in February 1927. Drawing on Boyd’s cover letter, Stephen Winick concluded: "he was apparently quite selective, keeping only those songs he deemed true folksongs and discarding the rest." [2]
When Brown received his copy of Boyd’s manuscript, he or some of his students went to Alliance to record some of the performers. Jan Philip Schinhan selected material from eight individuals when he transcribed the melodies in Brown’s collection in 1962.
It’s not known when Brown went to Alliance, but it was while Boyd was still there. A version by Minnie Lee was "recorded with the co-operation of Julian P. Boyd." [3]
This must have been a major event in Alliance. The settlement did not have electricity. [4] The recordings were done on wax cylinders, [5] with a machine run by a mechanical spring motor. Artists had to sing into a large bell. [6] Boyd may have provided a room in the school.
The session may have occurred soon after Brown received Boyd’s manuscript and may have contributed to the criticisms mentioned in the post for 6 February 2019 that led Boyd to leave the town at the end of the school year. He described his problems to Gordon in a March letter. [7]
The largest numbers of texts included in the Brown collection came from Lee (18), Catherine Bennett (14), and Jeannette Tingle (10). Only Lee and Tingle were recorded, and Lee provided 5 of the 19 published tunes.
Tingle was not in Boyd’s high school class, but the first cousin of one of his students, James Tingle. She was two years younger. [8] When she heard about the project, she may have volunteered her own material. There is evidence she was interested in music. Her daughter acted in amateur theater productions and taught drama at East Carolina University. [9]
Tingle’s son was a professional actor and antiques dealer in Chicago. When he died, a friend remembered "he could write a song and sit down at the piano and sing it." [10] Another recalled he was "a wonderful storyteller with a talent for the dramatic." [11]
Two songs were recorded by Claude James. One had been provided by Ruby Casey. Another came from Mr. T. Barnes. He may have been a Tingle relative. Jeannette’s mother was Clara Missouria Barnes. [12]
Boyd apparently also was collecting songs. Twenty-four of the texts were from unnamed sources or archives, including songs recorded by Mrs. L. F. Banks. Bryan Banks was one of his students. Boyd also was credited by Schinhan as providing a melody by Alfonso Coleman. [13]
Minnie Lee appeared as both a singer and a collector. The texts of two of the three songs recorded by Alexander Price were attributed to Lee.
Mary Price was one of the people included in Boyd’s collection who could not be identified. Alexander’s name was common in the county, and several married women named Mary. If she were not a student, she could have been the Mary Jane Ipock who married the son of Alex Price in 1901. [14] Or, she could have been Mary Holland Thomas who married Alexander Price. His father also was Alexander Price. [15]
End Notes
1. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952.
2. Stephen Winick. "The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song." Folklife Center News 34(3–4):3–10:2010. 4.
3. Brown. The Music of the Folk Songs. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1962. 5:446.
4. In 1940, only 24% of the houses in the Pamlico County had electricity, [16] and 39% had radios powered by batteries. [17]
5. Brown. The Music of the Ballads. Edited by Jan Philip Schinhan. 1957. 4:xv, xvi.
6. Andrew Boyd. "Recording Without Electricity." University of Houston. Engines of Our Ingenuity website. 8 May 2014.
7. Winick. 4.
8. J.D. Larimore. "Doris Jeanette Tingle Curtis." Find a Grave. 9 May 2014. Jeannette and James’ fathers were sons of Burney Sylvester Tingle. [18]
9. Joan Williams Bowen. Obituary. [New Bern, North Carolina] Sun Journal. 1 February 2004. 32.
10. Diana Bittel. Quoted by "Taylor B. Williams, 71, Chicago Dealer." Antiques and The Arts Weekly. 4 April 2006.
11. Pam Guthman Kissock. Quoted by Antiques.
12. Larimore, Jeanette Tingle.
13. Brown. 5:345.
Find a Grave website. 15 Aug 2017.
15. Doug Williams. "Laverta Belle Price." Find a Grave website. 22 May 2017. Updated by J.D. Larimore.
16. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 118.
17. Mobley. 119.
Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Alliance, North Carolina, High School Class of 1927
Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Julian Boyd sent copies of his collection of folk songs from Pamlico County, North Carolina, to John Winslow Gordon and Frank Brown in early 1927. [1] Editors of Brown’s collection included material from sixteen people, including Minnie Lee who knew "O Lord. Won’t You Come by Here?"
I could find information on ten, who were born in 1908 or 1909. This made them seventeen-years-old in 1927, and seniors in the all-white high school. Two of the ten were girls, while five of the unidentified were female. When women marry and change their names, they become difficult to track online.
The history of Pamlico County contributed to problems identifying Boyd’s students. As mentioned in the post for 6 February 2019, the county was created in 1872 from parts of Craven and Beaufort counties. This created a break in the chronology of the Pamlico area. Unless individuals were prominent in one of the parent counties, they were not included in modern research by local historians.
Earliest Date: surname found in Craven or Beaufort county before 1872 or Pamlico county after 1872
1790 Census: number of households with last name in Craven and Beaufort counties
1790 Slaves: greatest number owed by one household
1850 Census: name appears in Craven County census
Cemeteries: number of Pamlico County cemeteries with last name
Items: number of items reprinted by Brown from individual
Clear genealogies existed for three students. Carlos Holton’s first known ancestor, Jesse Holton, was reported in Beaufort County in 1755. [2] Clifton McCotter’s immigrant ancestor, Hezekiah McCotter, was born in Maryland in 1742, and died in Craven County in 1792. Family tradition said he "came to this country from Scotland as a British Soldier in the Revolutionary War." [3]
James Tingle’s immigrant ancestor settled in Somerset County, Maryland, sometime between 1654 and 1683. [4] His son [5] and grandson, [6] moved to Craven County before 1764. The next in line, Shadrick Tingle, married Sally McCotter in 1794, [7] while Hezekiah McCotter’s son, Archibald, married Sidney Tingle in 1795. [8]
Traces exist for four other families in the area before the American Revolution, although they may not be the direct ancestors of the students. Choswell Dixon was born in 1735 in Beaufort County, [9] John Bennett was born in Craven County in 1743, [10] and Peter Bank’s father owned a farm near Goose Creek when Peter enlisted in the militia in the Revolution. [11]
Jonathan West was part of an Anabaptist community on the eastern side of the county in 1840. [12] Rosebud West’s ancestors on her father’s side could not be traced beyond her parents. [13] However, her mother’s maternal grandfather’s father, John Miller, was known to be in Craven County in 1786. [14]
Some new surnames appeared in the census for 1790 for Craven County. Then, in-migration seems to have stopped. New lands were available west of the Appalachians. Joe Mobley thought men from Pamlico County may have joined those moving to Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama after the Panic of 1819. [15]
The next influx of people came after the Civil War. First, there were Northerners who bought land for saw mills and railroads. Those industries attracted workers until the usable trees were gone. A 1913 hurricane destroyed what remained of the mills and wharves in the county. [16]
Men left for World War I, and didn’t return. The population of Pamlico County dropped from 9,966 to 9,060 between 1910 and 1920. [17] The students taught by Boyd were children of men who never left, or returned after they served in the military.
Pamlico County had no community or white church cemeteries; they all were on family land. When one examines names on the markers, it’s obvious most of the students’ families had intermarried like the McCotters and Tingles. [18] The surnames of 11 of the 16 were on grave stones in more than one family burial ground.
The Department of Agriculture said that few of the land holdings in the county were contiguous in 1930. [19] That would have followed from land being subdivided by deaths and re-aggregated by marriages. Overlapping kinship networks were spread wide.
West was the most ambitious of Boyd’s students. Her father was a farmer, but two of her sisters were stenographers in 1920. [20] Rosebud began training as a teacher at the Methodist’s Louisburg College, but returned to marry Alfred Earl Ireland in 1928. She worked as a substitute teacher in the county, and sang in the church choir. [21]
James Tingle also started college, but left after one year. He would have been in his sophomore year when the economy crashed in October 1929. He served in the army in World War II, [22] but returned to Pamlico County where he was interred in Alliance in 1966. [23]
Holton’s father was a farm laborer in 1900, [24] while his grandfather finished tables and one uncle worked in a saw mill. Other uncles and an aunt worked in knitting mills. [25] Carlos managed the electric cooperative’s office in Grantsboro. [26] He stayed active in the Disciples of Christ church, where he help develop Camp Caroline. [27] He died and was buried in 1973 in New Bern. [28]
Few of the other students, who could be identified, left Pamlico County. Graham Holton Wayne was living in New Bern in 1940 where he "was a presser in a garment factory." When he died in 1978, he had a farm in Craven County. [29] McCotter also was living in New Bern in 1940. [30]
Elsie Rawls was buried in Alliance in 1997. [31] Bryan Banks [32] and Frederick Livermore [33] lived in Grantsboro. Only Luther Belangia went far afield: he was a grocery store operator and was buried in Wake Forest. [34] His family was also the last to settle in the county.
If Pamlico County was not a folk community, in the traditional sense, Boyd’s students represented a small, rural enclave that had existed for generations in an isolated area.
End Notes
1. Julian Parks Boyd was discussed in the post for 6 February 2019.
2. Leo Toler. "Jesse Holton." Lee Toler’s Family Tree. Geneanet website.
3. Linda Dail. "Descendants of Hezekiah McCotter." NC Gen website. The Ancestry website has him born in Ireland in 1742. [35] McCotter was an Irish, not a Scots name. [36] None of the origin tales conflict with the possibility he moved to the area after the Revolution.
4. Marvin Permenter. "Hugh Tingle, Sr." Permenter and Spradlin History website. Last updated 13 July 2016.
5. Marvin Permenter. "Hugh Jr. Tingle." Permenter and Spradlin History website. Last updated 13 July 2016.
6. Marvin Permenter. "Joseph T. Tingle." Permenter and Spradlin History website. Last updated 13 July 2016.
7. "Shadrick Tingle (1769 - bef. 1799)." Wiki Tree website.
8. Dail.
9. Genevieve Annie Moniga. "Choswell Dixon." Geni website. 5 December 2014.
10. Tim Dowling. "John Bennett." The Dowling Family Tree. Geneanet website.
11. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 15.
12. Mobley. 11.
13. J.D. Larimore. "Joseph Allen West." Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
14. Leo Toler. "Person Page 17." Toler Family of Eastern North Carolina. Toler Genealogy website.
15. Mobley. 19. Craven County’s population increased by 5.6% between 1810 and 1820, but by only 2.5% between 1820 and 1830. [37]
16. Mobley. 80. The post-Civil War economy of Pamlico County will be discussed in the posts for 24 May 2020, 31 May 2020, and 7 June 2020. Hurricane Four struck the area on 3 September 2013, with the worst damage round New Bern. [38]
17. United States Census. Reproduced by Wikipedia. "Pamlico County, North Carolina."
18. Clifton McCotter’s mother was Flora Ethel Tingle. [39]
19. John T. Miller and Arthur E. Taylor. United States Department of Agriculture. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. Soil Survey of Pamlico County, North Carolina. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937. 6.
20. United States Census. 1910. Extracted by J.D. Larimore. "Joseph Allen West." Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
21. Rosebud West Ireland. Obituary. [New Bern] Sun Journal. 16 June 2000. 4.
22. J.D. Larimore. "James Arthur Tingle." Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
23. "James A Tingle, Jr." Lupton Family Genealogy website. Last updated 6 August 2014.
24. United States Census. 1900. Extracted by J.D. Larimore. "Ada M. Holton Roberts." Find a Grave site. 31 August 2015.
25. United States Census. 1900. Extracted by J.D. Larimore. "William Henry Holton." Find a Grave website. 15 January 2015.
26. Larry and Jerry Prescott. "Remembering An Electric Co-op Pioneer." North Carolina Electric Cooperatives. Carolina Country. September 2016.
27. Charles Crossfield Ware. Pamlico Profile. New Bern: Owen G. Dunn, 1961.
28. sandi gunter hawkins. "Carlos McIver Holton." Find a Grave website. 9 December 2014.
29. J.D. Larimore. "Graham Holton Wayne." Find a Grave website. 12 August 2014.
30. "Julia McCotter in the 1940 Census." Ancestry website.
31. Elsie Rawls Story. Obituary. [New Bern] Sun Journal. 7 February 1997. 4.
32. Victor T. Jones, Jr. "Sunday’s Obituary: Mittie Banks." Genealogy Jones and the Lost Crusade website.
33. Bernd Doss. "Benjamin Frederick Liverman." Find a Grave website. 4 September 2010.
34. Daniel Nathan Maltz. "Luther Dees Belangia." Geni website. 1 April 2018.
35. "Hezekiah Mccotter." Ancestry website.
36. "Last name: McCotter." Name Origin Research’s Surname DB website.
37. United States census. Reproduced by Wikipedia. "Craven County, North Carolina."
38. Wikipedia. "1913 Atlantic Hurricane Season."
39. "John Lawrence McCotter." Ancestry website.
Julian Boyd sent copies of his collection of folk songs from Pamlico County, North Carolina, to John Winslow Gordon and Frank Brown in early 1927. [1] Editors of Brown’s collection included material from sixteen people, including Minnie Lee who knew "O Lord. Won’t You Come by Here?"
I could find information on ten, who were born in 1908 or 1909. This made them seventeen-years-old in 1927, and seniors in the all-white high school. Two of the ten were girls, while five of the unidentified were female. When women marry and change their names, they become difficult to track online.
The history of Pamlico County contributed to problems identifying Boyd’s students. As mentioned in the post for 6 February 2019, the county was created in 1872 from parts of Craven and Beaufort counties. This created a break in the chronology of the Pamlico area. Unless individuals were prominent in one of the parent counties, they were not included in modern research by local historians.
1790 Census: number of households with last name in Craven and Beaufort counties
1790 Slaves: greatest number owed by one household
1850 Census: name appears in Craven County census
Cemeteries: number of Pamlico County cemeteries with last name
Items: number of items reprinted by Brown from individual
Clear genealogies existed for three students. Carlos Holton’s first known ancestor, Jesse Holton, was reported in Beaufort County in 1755. [2] Clifton McCotter’s immigrant ancestor, Hezekiah McCotter, was born in Maryland in 1742, and died in Craven County in 1792. Family tradition said he "came to this country from Scotland as a British Soldier in the Revolutionary War." [3]
James Tingle’s immigrant ancestor settled in Somerset County, Maryland, sometime between 1654 and 1683. [4] His son [5] and grandson, [6] moved to Craven County before 1764. The next in line, Shadrick Tingle, married Sally McCotter in 1794, [7] while Hezekiah McCotter’s son, Archibald, married Sidney Tingle in 1795. [8]
Traces exist for four other families in the area before the American Revolution, although they may not be the direct ancestors of the students. Choswell Dixon was born in 1735 in Beaufort County, [9] John Bennett was born in Craven County in 1743, [10] and Peter Bank’s father owned a farm near Goose Creek when Peter enlisted in the militia in the Revolution. [11]
Jonathan West was part of an Anabaptist community on the eastern side of the county in 1840. [12] Rosebud West’s ancestors on her father’s side could not be traced beyond her parents. [13] However, her mother’s maternal grandfather’s father, John Miller, was known to be in Craven County in 1786. [14]
Some new surnames appeared in the census for 1790 for Craven County. Then, in-migration seems to have stopped. New lands were available west of the Appalachians. Joe Mobley thought men from Pamlico County may have joined those moving to Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama after the Panic of 1819. [15]
The next influx of people came after the Civil War. First, there were Northerners who bought land for saw mills and railroads. Those industries attracted workers until the usable trees were gone. A 1913 hurricane destroyed what remained of the mills and wharves in the county. [16]
Men left for World War I, and didn’t return. The population of Pamlico County dropped from 9,966 to 9,060 between 1910 and 1920. [17] The students taught by Boyd were children of men who never left, or returned after they served in the military.
Pamlico County had no community or white church cemeteries; they all were on family land. When one examines names on the markers, it’s obvious most of the students’ families had intermarried like the McCotters and Tingles. [18] The surnames of 11 of the 16 were on grave stones in more than one family burial ground.
The Department of Agriculture said that few of the land holdings in the county were contiguous in 1930. [19] That would have followed from land being subdivided by deaths and re-aggregated by marriages. Overlapping kinship networks were spread wide.
West was the most ambitious of Boyd’s students. Her father was a farmer, but two of her sisters were stenographers in 1920. [20] Rosebud began training as a teacher at the Methodist’s Louisburg College, but returned to marry Alfred Earl Ireland in 1928. She worked as a substitute teacher in the county, and sang in the church choir. [21]
James Tingle also started college, but left after one year. He would have been in his sophomore year when the economy crashed in October 1929. He served in the army in World War II, [22] but returned to Pamlico County where he was interred in Alliance in 1966. [23]
Holton’s father was a farm laborer in 1900, [24] while his grandfather finished tables and one uncle worked in a saw mill. Other uncles and an aunt worked in knitting mills. [25] Carlos managed the electric cooperative’s office in Grantsboro. [26] He stayed active in the Disciples of Christ church, where he help develop Camp Caroline. [27] He died and was buried in 1973 in New Bern. [28]
Few of the other students, who could be identified, left Pamlico County. Graham Holton Wayne was living in New Bern in 1940 where he "was a presser in a garment factory." When he died in 1978, he had a farm in Craven County. [29] McCotter also was living in New Bern in 1940. [30]
Elsie Rawls was buried in Alliance in 1997. [31] Bryan Banks [32] and Frederick Livermore [33] lived in Grantsboro. Only Luther Belangia went far afield: he was a grocery store operator and was buried in Wake Forest. [34] His family was also the last to settle in the county.
If Pamlico County was not a folk community, in the traditional sense, Boyd’s students represented a small, rural enclave that had existed for generations in an isolated area.
End Notes
1. Julian Parks Boyd was discussed in the post for 6 February 2019.
2. Leo Toler. "Jesse Holton." Lee Toler’s Family Tree. Geneanet website.
3. Linda Dail. "Descendants of Hezekiah McCotter." NC Gen website. The Ancestry website has him born in Ireland in 1742. [35] McCotter was an Irish, not a Scots name. [36] None of the origin tales conflict with the possibility he moved to the area after the Revolution.
4. Marvin Permenter. "Hugh Tingle, Sr." Permenter and Spradlin History website. Last updated 13 July 2016.
5. Marvin Permenter. "Hugh Jr. Tingle." Permenter and Spradlin History website. Last updated 13 July 2016.
6. Marvin Permenter. "Joseph T. Tingle." Permenter and Spradlin History website. Last updated 13 July 2016.
7. "Shadrick Tingle (1769 - bef. 1799)." Wiki Tree website.
8. Dail.
9. Genevieve Annie Moniga. "Choswell Dixon." Geni website. 5 December 2014.
10. Tim Dowling. "John Bennett." The Dowling Family Tree. Geneanet website.
11. Joe A. Mobley. Pamlico County. Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1991. 15.
12. Mobley. 11.
13. J.D. Larimore. "Joseph Allen West." Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
14. Leo Toler. "Person Page 17." Toler Family of Eastern North Carolina. Toler Genealogy website.
15. Mobley. 19. Craven County’s population increased by 5.6% between 1810 and 1820, but by only 2.5% between 1820 and 1830. [37]
16. Mobley. 80. The post-Civil War economy of Pamlico County will be discussed in the posts for 24 May 2020, 31 May 2020, and 7 June 2020. Hurricane Four struck the area on 3 September 2013, with the worst damage round New Bern. [38]
17. United States Census. Reproduced by Wikipedia. "Pamlico County, North Carolina."
18. Clifton McCotter’s mother was Flora Ethel Tingle. [39]
19. John T. Miller and Arthur E. Taylor. United States Department of Agriculture. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. Soil Survey of Pamlico County, North Carolina. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937. 6.
20. United States Census. 1910. Extracted by J.D. Larimore. "Joseph Allen West." Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
21. Rosebud West Ireland. Obituary. [New Bern] Sun Journal. 16 June 2000. 4.
22. J.D. Larimore. "James Arthur Tingle." Find a Grave website. 9 May 2014.
23. "James A Tingle, Jr." Lupton Family Genealogy website. Last updated 6 August 2014.
24. United States Census. 1900. Extracted by J.D. Larimore. "Ada M. Holton Roberts." Find a Grave site. 31 August 2015.
25. United States Census. 1900. Extracted by J.D. Larimore. "William Henry Holton." Find a Grave website. 15 January 2015.
26. Larry and Jerry Prescott. "Remembering An Electric Co-op Pioneer." North Carolina Electric Cooperatives. Carolina Country. September 2016.
27. Charles Crossfield Ware. Pamlico Profile. New Bern: Owen G. Dunn, 1961.
28. sandi gunter hawkins. "Carlos McIver Holton." Find a Grave website. 9 December 2014.
29. J.D. Larimore. "Graham Holton Wayne." Find a Grave website. 12 August 2014.
30. "Julia McCotter in the 1940 Census." Ancestry website.
31. Elsie Rawls Story. Obituary. [New Bern] Sun Journal. 7 February 1997. 4.
32. Victor T. Jones, Jr. "Sunday’s Obituary: Mittie Banks." Genealogy Jones and the Lost Crusade website.
33. Bernd Doss. "Benjamin Frederick Liverman." Find a Grave website. 4 September 2010.
34. Daniel Nathan Maltz. "Luther Dees Belangia." Geni website. 1 April 2018.
35. "Hezekiah Mccotter." Ancestry website.
36. "Last name: McCotter." Name Origin Research’s Surname DB website.
37. United States census. Reproduced by Wikipedia. "Craven County, North Carolina."
38. Wikipedia. "1913 Atlantic Hurricane Season."
39. "John Lawrence McCotter." Ancestry website.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
The Greenhill Singers - Kumbaya
Topic: Commercial Folk Revival
After the cancellation of the Hootenanny television program in September 1964, critics attributed the decline of the commercial folk-music revival to the popularity of The Beatles, who had appeared on Ed Sullivan’s program in February 1964. [1]
This was true only if one used Billboard as a guideline. Its popular music charts were simple statistics of sales by genre, with no concern for the audience. In 1964, the audience for the Beatles was teenyboppers, while that for the commercial folk-music revival always had been college-age listeners. The math was simple: there were more young girls buying single records than older students. [2]
Folk-revival music did change during the time Hootenanny was on the air. The new performers were more likely to be soloists, like Judy Collins, [3] than male trios and quartets. Innovative small-group vocal music became the domain of Motown artists like the Four Tops and the Temptations.
The original commercial folk-music style survived as a genre, like polka music, that was produced by unknown artists for budget labels sold in bargain bins both by record stores and non-conventional retailers like truck stops and gift shops.
United Artists Records was established in 1957 to market film soundtracks. [4] In early 1963, it released five albums for audiences that had come of age when songs were more important that performers. Each album contained fifty songs. [5]
The performers were experienced instrumentalists who could prepare material quickly and efficiently. Two had popularized theme songs: Al Caiola played guitar on the Bonanza theme in 1961, [6] while Ferrante and Teicher had released the themes from two UA films in 1960, The Apartment [7] and Exodus. [8] The other albums were by Ralph Marterie, who had played trumpet with own band after World War II, [9] and Tito Rodríguez, who had been a poplar Puerto Rican singer in the 1950s. [10]
The record devoted to songs of the folk-music revival was produced by Sonny Lester. He probably used a group of session musicians who were dubbed The Greenhill Singers. When he worked for MGM’s budget line, "he would head to France, book Eddie Barclay’s studio for the better part of two months, and record a years’ worth of easy listening, anonymous rock and roll covers, and other material for the MGM and Lion labels." [11]
While four of the albums used medleys to present fifty songs in forty minutes, the folk songs were given individual treatments. Most were recorded with simple harmonies, often with guitar accompaniments influenced by country music. However, "Midnight Special" used syncopation and "Hard Traveling" relied upon southern, white, gospel quartet techniques. "Kumbaya" incorporated vocal homophony with two women singing the melody and two men countering with an arcing bum-bum-bum-bum-bum rhythm part.
The Greenhill Singers’ lyrics were borrowed from The Weavers, with "sleeping" changed to "sleepy." It was sandwiched between other songs popularized by The Weavers: "The Wreck of the John B." [12] and "Wimoweh." [13] "John B." followed a series of sea chanties.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: women and men
Instrumental Accompaniment: harpsichord-style
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum
Producer: Sonny Lester
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum ba ya
Verses: sleepy
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: none
Special Terms: "na na" for "Lord"
Basic Form: one-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Influences: The Weavers
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: homophony, with women singing melody and men singing "bum-bum-bum-bum-bum" rhythm
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Notes on Performers
Sonny Lester, like Caiola and Marterie, was a journeyman musician in the Big Band era. He wasn’t a good enough trumpeter to be placed in a military band, and so spent World War II in the infantry. [14]
After the war, Lester married and settled in New York. Rather than tour with a band, he became an arranger, finally finding steady work with the Edwin Morris Music publishing company. From there, he became a producer for Coral and Dot Records. By the time he produced 50 Fabulous Folk Favorites, he was doing free-lance work. He later became involved with United Artists’ jazz division. [15]
Availability
Album: The Greenhill Singers. "Kumbaya." 50 Fabulous Folk Favorites. United Artists UAL 3347. 1964.
End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Hootenanny (American TV Series)" and "The Beatles."
2. The term "teenybopper" was coined in 1965 to describe the audience for "The Beatles." [16]
3. Judy Collins appeared on Hootenanny one time in the first season and twice in the second. [17] She didn’t have a single record in Billboard’s top ten until "Both Sides Now" in 1968. [18]
4. Wikipedia. "United Artists Records."
5. "‘Winter Magic’ UA Message." Billboard. 11 January 1964. 3.
6. Wikipedia. "Al Caiola."
The album was Al Caiola And His Orchestra. 50 Fabulous Guitar Favorites. United Artist Records UAL 3330. 1964.
The single was "Bonanza." United Artists UA 302. 1961. [19]
7. Steve Huey. "Ferrante & Teicher." All Music website.
The album was Ferrante and Teicher. 50 Fabulous Piano Favorites. United Artist Records UAL 3343. 1964.
The film was The Apartment. Directed by Billy Wilder. United Artist. 1960. [20]
The single was "Theme From The Apartment." United Artists UA 231. 1960. [21]
8. The film was Exodus. Directed by Otto Preminger. United Artists. 1960. [22]
The single was "Exodus." United Artists UA 274. 1960. [23]
9. "Ralph Marterie Biography." Oldies website.
The album was The Famous Ralph Marterie Orchestra. 50 Fabulous Dance Favorites. United Artist Records UAL 3349. 1964.
10. Wikipedia. "Tito Rodríguez."
The album was Tito Rodriguez And His Orchestra. 50 Fabulous Latin Favorites. United Artists Records UAL 3345. 1964.
11. "Sonny Lester." Space Age Pop website.
12. The Weavers. "John B." Decca 27332. December 1950. [24]
13. The Weavers. "Wimoweh." Decca 27928. 1951. [25]
14. Space Age Pop.
15. Space Age Pop.
16. Dave Wilton. "1966 Words." Word Origins website. 15 April 2012.
17. "Hootenanny." Episode Calendar website.
18. Wikipedia. "Judy Collins."
19. "Al Caiola And His Orchestra – Bonanza. United Artists Records." Discogs website.
20. Wikipedia. "The Apartment."
21. "Ferrante And Teicher With Their Orch. & Chorus – Theme From The Apartment." Discogs website.
22. Wikipedia. "Exodus (1960 Film)."
23. "Ferrante And Teicher – Exodus / Twilight." Discogs website.
24. "The Weavers – The Roving Kind / (The Wreck Of The) John B." Discogs website.
25. "The Weavers And Gordon Jenkins And His Chorus And Orchestra – Old Paint (Ride Around Little Dogies) / Wimoweh." Discogs website.
After the cancellation of the Hootenanny television program in September 1964, critics attributed the decline of the commercial folk-music revival to the popularity of The Beatles, who had appeared on Ed Sullivan’s program in February 1964. [1]
This was true only if one used Billboard as a guideline. Its popular music charts were simple statistics of sales by genre, with no concern for the audience. In 1964, the audience for the Beatles was teenyboppers, while that for the commercial folk-music revival always had been college-age listeners. The math was simple: there were more young girls buying single records than older students. [2]
Folk-revival music did change during the time Hootenanny was on the air. The new performers were more likely to be soloists, like Judy Collins, [3] than male trios and quartets. Innovative small-group vocal music became the domain of Motown artists like the Four Tops and the Temptations.
The original commercial folk-music style survived as a genre, like polka music, that was produced by unknown artists for budget labels sold in bargain bins both by record stores and non-conventional retailers like truck stops and gift shops.
United Artists Records was established in 1957 to market film soundtracks. [4] In early 1963, it released five albums for audiences that had come of age when songs were more important that performers. Each album contained fifty songs. [5]
The performers were experienced instrumentalists who could prepare material quickly and efficiently. Two had popularized theme songs: Al Caiola played guitar on the Bonanza theme in 1961, [6] while Ferrante and Teicher had released the themes from two UA films in 1960, The Apartment [7] and Exodus. [8] The other albums were by Ralph Marterie, who had played trumpet with own band after World War II, [9] and Tito Rodríguez, who had been a poplar Puerto Rican singer in the 1950s. [10]
The record devoted to songs of the folk-music revival was produced by Sonny Lester. He probably used a group of session musicians who were dubbed The Greenhill Singers. When he worked for MGM’s budget line, "he would head to France, book Eddie Barclay’s studio for the better part of two months, and record a years’ worth of easy listening, anonymous rock and roll covers, and other material for the MGM and Lion labels." [11]
While four of the albums used medleys to present fifty songs in forty minutes, the folk songs were given individual treatments. Most were recorded with simple harmonies, often with guitar accompaniments influenced by country music. However, "Midnight Special" used syncopation and "Hard Traveling" relied upon southern, white, gospel quartet techniques. "Kumbaya" incorporated vocal homophony with two women singing the melody and two men countering with an arcing bum-bum-bum-bum-bum rhythm part.
The Greenhill Singers’ lyrics were borrowed from The Weavers, with "sleeping" changed to "sleepy." It was sandwiched between other songs popularized by The Weavers: "The Wreck of the John B." [12] and "Wimoweh." [13] "John B." followed a series of sea chanties.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: women and men
Instrumental Accompaniment: harpsichord-style
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum
Producer: Sonny Lester
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum ba ya
Verses: sleepy
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: none
Special Terms: "na na" for "Lord"
Basic Form: one-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Influences: The Weavers
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: homophony, with women singing melody and men singing "bum-bum-bum-bum-bum" rhythm
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Notes on Performers
Sonny Lester, like Caiola and Marterie, was a journeyman musician in the Big Band era. He wasn’t a good enough trumpeter to be placed in a military band, and so spent World War II in the infantry. [14]
After the war, Lester married and settled in New York. Rather than tour with a band, he became an arranger, finally finding steady work with the Edwin Morris Music publishing company. From there, he became a producer for Coral and Dot Records. By the time he produced 50 Fabulous Folk Favorites, he was doing free-lance work. He later became involved with United Artists’ jazz division. [15]
Availability
Album: The Greenhill Singers. "Kumbaya." 50 Fabulous Folk Favorites. United Artists UAL 3347. 1964.
End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Hootenanny (American TV Series)" and "The Beatles."
2. The term "teenybopper" was coined in 1965 to describe the audience for "The Beatles." [16]
3. Judy Collins appeared on Hootenanny one time in the first season and twice in the second. [17] She didn’t have a single record in Billboard’s top ten until "Both Sides Now" in 1968. [18]
4. Wikipedia. "United Artists Records."
5. "‘Winter Magic’ UA Message." Billboard. 11 January 1964. 3.
6. Wikipedia. "Al Caiola."
The album was Al Caiola And His Orchestra. 50 Fabulous Guitar Favorites. United Artist Records UAL 3330. 1964.
The single was "Bonanza." United Artists UA 302. 1961. [19]
7. Steve Huey. "Ferrante & Teicher." All Music website.
The album was Ferrante and Teicher. 50 Fabulous Piano Favorites. United Artist Records UAL 3343. 1964.
The film was The Apartment. Directed by Billy Wilder. United Artist. 1960. [20]
The single was "Theme From The Apartment." United Artists UA 231. 1960. [21]
8. The film was Exodus. Directed by Otto Preminger. United Artists. 1960. [22]
The single was "Exodus." United Artists UA 274. 1960. [23]
9. "Ralph Marterie Biography." Oldies website.
The album was The Famous Ralph Marterie Orchestra. 50 Fabulous Dance Favorites. United Artist Records UAL 3349. 1964.
10. Wikipedia. "Tito Rodríguez."
The album was Tito Rodriguez And His Orchestra. 50 Fabulous Latin Favorites. United Artists Records UAL 3345. 1964.
11. "Sonny Lester." Space Age Pop website.
12. The Weavers. "John B." Decca 27332. December 1950. [24]
13. The Weavers. "Wimoweh." Decca 27928. 1951. [25]
14. Space Age Pop.
15. Space Age Pop.
16. Dave Wilton. "1966 Words." Word Origins website. 15 April 2012.
17. "Hootenanny." Episode Calendar website.
18. Wikipedia. "Judy Collins."
19. "Al Caiola And His Orchestra – Bonanza. United Artists Records." Discogs website.
20. Wikipedia. "The Apartment."
21. "Ferrante And Teicher With Their Orch. & Chorus – Theme From The Apartment." Discogs website.
22. Wikipedia. "Exodus (1960 Film)."
23. "Ferrante And Teicher – Exodus / Twilight." Discogs website.
24. "The Weavers – The Roving Kind / (The Wreck Of The) John B." Discogs website.
25. "The Weavers And Gordon Jenkins And His Chorus And Orchestra – Old Paint (Ride Around Little Dogies) / Wimoweh." Discogs website.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
The Revelers - Kumbaya
Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
The Hootenanny television show lasted until the fall of 1964 on the ABC network. By then, it had increased to an hour, but no longer was presenting new material. There was a finite number of folk-revival performers, and that number did not magically double. [1] The first season the Limeliters appeared 7 times. The second year the Brothers Four performed 8 times, while the Chad Mitchell Trio and Bob Gibson sang on 6 programs. [2]
The producers expanded the roster to include gospel, jazz, and country music artists. [3] Such inclusiveness was a return to the original spirit of the word. Terry Pettus, who introduced the term "hootenanny" in Seattle, said back in Indiana it "was used to designate a party which just seemed to happen as against being planned." [4]
Peter Tamony found in Oklahoma it was "a ‘kitchen sweat,’ the most informal of parties," while in Ohio it referred to entertainment associated with group activities like apple-butter making and slaughtering. [5] If the music happened to all be one style, that was an consequence of who happened to attend, not the gathering itself.
"Folk" no longer was limited to New York City artists who used music to engage people for political ends. Instead, it became a generic reference for entertainers who used simple guitar accompaniments with rhythms borrowed from Pete Seeger’s banjo. The songs could be traditional ones, or ones written by contemporary composers. The New Christy Minstrels and Serendipity Singers appeared on a number of Hootenanny programs as an idealized versions of groups singing such songs. [6]
Artists in other genres added folk-revival songs to their repertoires. This was especially true of the utilitarian entertainers who appeared in amusement parks, county fairs, and small city concerts. They were expected to be versatile enough to provide the equivalent of an entire variety show by themselves.
The Revelers seem to have been one such group. They appeared in Ohio in 1968 under the auspices of the Portsmouth Concert Association. The local newspaper advised readers they had "genuine singing talent and high standards of musicianship," and that their performance would "mix their own fresh blend of taste and talent with such sparkling arrangements and superb showmanship that every performance vibrates with a contemporary beat." [7]
The quartet made an album in 1966 [8] that it probably sold at appearances. It included Bob Dylan’s "Blowin’ in the Wind" and the Kingston Trio’s "Turn Around," as well as the traditional "Greensleeves" and "Poor Wayfaring Stranger." Their version of "Kumbaya" was arranged by the group’s baritone, Ray Murcell.
The arrangement used the standard three verses, but in the order recorded by Seeger in 1957. [9] They also used his pronunciation of "koom by ah." The melody and harmony were borrowed from Joan Baez and The Seekers, [10] especially the minor progression in the second line. However, their vocal arrangement used more elements of formal part singing than other performers.
Newspapers from three cities where they performed between 1966 and 1968 have archived their reports of their concerts: Portsmouth, Ohio; [11] Poughkeepsie, New York; [12] and Altoona, Pennsylvania. [13] All three had prospered from the locations on major transportation routes: the Ohio and Hudson rivers, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.
However, by the 1960s, when the commercial folk-music revival was flourishing, they were entering their industrial decline. Portsmouth’s population dropped by 17.8% between 1960 and 1970, [14] while Poughkeepsie’s fell 16.4%. [15] Altoona’s only decreased by 9.1%, but it had been falling since 1940. [16]
It’s easy to dismiss their audiences’ preference for music that sounded both familiar and original as nostalgia for something that never may have been. It also can be seen as form of protest against the economic forces that controlled their lives, no less compelling than that of Southern union organizers in the 1930s. They didn’t face the same physical dangers, but their young were forced to leave to find jobs. Those who remained signaled their refusal to surrender to changes by maintaining their civil organizations and their taste in music in the face of repudiation by corporate managers who closed factories.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: male
Vocal Group: Tom Edwards, tenor; Carl Olsen, tenor; Ray Murcell, baritone; Doc Savage, bass
Vocal Director: Milt Okun
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar and/or banjo
Rhythm Accompaniment: drums
Credits
Arr: Murcell
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum ba ah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song, framed by kumbaya
Verse Repetition Pattern: A-A-x-x-A-x-A where A = kumbaya
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: relationship of vocal parts varied by iteration. The "crying" verse used a solo part with a descant. The "singing" verse used the group with a high counter melody. The "praying" verse was a duet.
Singing Style: usually one syllable to one note, except for variations on "Lord" in the last line.
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: only a drum was used during much of the arrangement. Stringed instruments were heard in the brief breaks between iterations, but were treated as ornaments rather that structural parts.
Notes on Performance
Cover: heads of four men in white ties and black tuxedos
Audience Perceptions
The quartet performed in Poughkeepsie in 1968. The program ranging "from Welsh and Irish folk music, Beethoven and Schumann love songs, Negro spirituals, to a series from the contemporary Broadway stage hits."
The local newspaper accessed the qualities of the three men who remained from 1966. [17] It said "Tom Edwards, the quartet’s spokesman," had the best personality.
The Journal noted Ray Murcell "gave an emotionally impacting performance of ‘Steal Away’. He demonstrated throughout the concert a superior technical control with constant voice quality over his rather large vocal range."
The critic was most taken by Carl Olsen, "who displayed skill and ease as he sang the upper note range for the quartet. He sang in full voice and in only one arrangement did he employ a falsetto tone." [18]
Another person who only used the name "Ref" told Mudcat Café "there used to be a male Quartet called The Revelers who recorded a spectacular, rolling, uplifting version of it that sounded like eight guys instead of just the four." [19]
Notes on Performers
Edwards organized The Revelers in 1955, after he purchased rights to the name from a survivor of a quartet [20] that had performed on Will Rogers’ radio program in the 1930s. [21] Hans-Joachim Krohberger found record albums they made in 1956 for Urania, [22] an East German company that just had been transferred to New Jersey. [23] Edwards and three others recorded collection of drinking songs [24] and sea chanties. [25]
By the 1960s, Edwards was associated with Milt Okun, who was producing records for the reconstituted Chad Mitchell Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary. [26] Okun was the musical director for the record, and did some of the arrangements. Murcell did the others.
After the end of the commercial folk-revival, The Revelers found work singing the quartet parts in local productions of Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. [27] In 1971, Edwards and Murcell revived some of the original Reveler’s songs in a Gay 90s program. [28]
Edwards and most of the other singers remain anonymous. Doc Savage may not even have been a nickname, but a pseudonym based on a pulp-fiction character created in 1933 by Street and Smith Publications. [29]
Olsen’s is the only one whose name appeared on the internet. He began as an operatic tenor with the New York City Opera, [30] and free-lanced with opera companies elsewhere in the country. In 1981 he was teaching voice, [31] and managing the revival of an opera company on Long Island. [32]
Availability
Album: The Revelers. "Kumbaya." The Revelers Sings. Records sold by The Revelers Incorporated of Westbury, New York.
End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Hootenanny (American TV series)."
2. Totals calculated from data in "Hootenanny." Episode Calendar. The Spanish-language website lists the songs by artist by program, although sometimes some details are missing.
3. Wikipedia, Hootenanny.
4. Peter Tamony. "‘Hootenanny’: the Word, its Content and Continuum." John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 16:95–98:1980. Reprinted from Western Folklore 22:165–170:1963. 96. Pettus was mentioned in the post for 3 November 2019.
5. Tamony. 97.
6. Wikipedia, Hootenanny. Each appeared eight times in the second season.
7. Item. Portsmouth [Ohio] Times. 27 April 1968. 17. No doubt it was quoting the group’s promotional materials.
8. The record jacked was undated. The album included "With the Wind on My Mind." John Denver copyrighted it in 1966. [33]
9. Seeger’s version was described in the post for 6 October 2019.
10. The Seeker’s versions were described in the posts for 29 January 2018, 31 January 2018, and 2 February 2018.
11. Portsmouth Times.
12. Item. Poughkeepsie [New York] Journal. 26 February 1968. 8.
13. Item. Altoona [Pennsylvania] Mirror. 3 December 1966. 42.
14. United States Census data. Reported by Wikipedia. "Portsmouth, Ohio."
15. United States Census data. Reported by Wikipedia. "Poughkeepsie, New York."
16. United States Census data. Reported by Wikipedia. "Altoona, Pennsylvania.
17. Doc Savage had been replaced by Karl Thomas.
18. Poughkeepsie Journal.
19. Ref. Mudcat Café website. "Holding Hands and Singing ‘Kumbaya’." Thread begun 29 January 2007. Comment added 29 January 2007.
20. John S. Wilson. "Revelers Singing at the Gay 90’s." The New York Times. 11 November 1971.
21. William Ruhlmann. "The Revelers." All Music website.
22. Hans-Joachim Krohberger. "The Revelers (2) (New York)." Doo-Wop blog, Germany.
23. Wikipedia. "Urania Records."
24. Drinking Songs Around The World. Urania UR 9008.
25. Salty Sea Chanties. Urania UR 9007 / Urania UR 9020. The singers were Thomas Edwards, tenor; Feodore Tedick, tenor; Laurence Bogue, baritone; Edward Ansara, bass. The conductor was Jacques Belasco. [34]
26. Colin Stutz. "Milton Okun, Legendary Producer & Cherry Lane Founder, Dies at 92." Billboard website. 15 November 2016. When Mitchell left the Chad Mitchell Trio in 1965, John Denver replaced him in the Mitchell Trio. [35]
27. Meredith Wilson. The Music Man. 1957. It included a barbershop quartet that entered at strategic points to sing "Lida Rose."
28. Wilson. The tenors were Darrel Lauer and Paul Forrest.
29. Wikipedia. "Doc Savage." Bantam Books began reprinting the original stories in 1964.
30. Barbara Delatiner. "Opera Opening on a Rousing Note." The New York Times. 20 September 1981.
31. "Carl Olsen Singers Institute." Its website.
32. Delatiner.
33. United States Copyright Office. Catalog of Copyright Entries. July-December 1966. 2125.
34. "Jacques Belasco, The Revelers – Salty Sea Chanties." Discogs website.
35. Wikipedia. "John Denver."
The Hootenanny television show lasted until the fall of 1964 on the ABC network. By then, it had increased to an hour, but no longer was presenting new material. There was a finite number of folk-revival performers, and that number did not magically double. [1] The first season the Limeliters appeared 7 times. The second year the Brothers Four performed 8 times, while the Chad Mitchell Trio and Bob Gibson sang on 6 programs. [2]
The producers expanded the roster to include gospel, jazz, and country music artists. [3] Such inclusiveness was a return to the original spirit of the word. Terry Pettus, who introduced the term "hootenanny" in Seattle, said back in Indiana it "was used to designate a party which just seemed to happen as against being planned." [4]
Peter Tamony found in Oklahoma it was "a ‘kitchen sweat,’ the most informal of parties," while in Ohio it referred to entertainment associated with group activities like apple-butter making and slaughtering. [5] If the music happened to all be one style, that was an consequence of who happened to attend, not the gathering itself.
"Folk" no longer was limited to New York City artists who used music to engage people for political ends. Instead, it became a generic reference for entertainers who used simple guitar accompaniments with rhythms borrowed from Pete Seeger’s banjo. The songs could be traditional ones, or ones written by contemporary composers. The New Christy Minstrels and Serendipity Singers appeared on a number of Hootenanny programs as an idealized versions of groups singing such songs. [6]
Artists in other genres added folk-revival songs to their repertoires. This was especially true of the utilitarian entertainers who appeared in amusement parks, county fairs, and small city concerts. They were expected to be versatile enough to provide the equivalent of an entire variety show by themselves.
The Revelers seem to have been one such group. They appeared in Ohio in 1968 under the auspices of the Portsmouth Concert Association. The local newspaper advised readers they had "genuine singing talent and high standards of musicianship," and that their performance would "mix their own fresh blend of taste and talent with such sparkling arrangements and superb showmanship that every performance vibrates with a contemporary beat." [7]
The quartet made an album in 1966 [8] that it probably sold at appearances. It included Bob Dylan’s "Blowin’ in the Wind" and the Kingston Trio’s "Turn Around," as well as the traditional "Greensleeves" and "Poor Wayfaring Stranger." Their version of "Kumbaya" was arranged by the group’s baritone, Ray Murcell.
The arrangement used the standard three verses, but in the order recorded by Seeger in 1957. [9] They also used his pronunciation of "koom by ah." The melody and harmony were borrowed from Joan Baez and The Seekers, [10] especially the minor progression in the second line. However, their vocal arrangement used more elements of formal part singing than other performers.
Newspapers from three cities where they performed between 1966 and 1968 have archived their reports of their concerts: Portsmouth, Ohio; [11] Poughkeepsie, New York; [12] and Altoona, Pennsylvania. [13] All three had prospered from the locations on major transportation routes: the Ohio and Hudson rivers, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.
However, by the 1960s, when the commercial folk-music revival was flourishing, they were entering their industrial decline. Portsmouth’s population dropped by 17.8% between 1960 and 1970, [14] while Poughkeepsie’s fell 16.4%. [15] Altoona’s only decreased by 9.1%, but it had been falling since 1940. [16]
It’s easy to dismiss their audiences’ preference for music that sounded both familiar and original as nostalgia for something that never may have been. It also can be seen as form of protest against the economic forces that controlled their lives, no less compelling than that of Southern union organizers in the 1930s. They didn’t face the same physical dangers, but their young were forced to leave to find jobs. Those who remained signaled their refusal to surrender to changes by maintaining their civil organizations and their taste in music in the face of repudiation by corporate managers who closed factories.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: male
Vocal Group: Tom Edwards, tenor; Carl Olsen, tenor; Ray Murcell, baritone; Doc Savage, bass
Vocal Director: Milt Okun
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar and/or banjo
Rhythm Accompaniment: drums
Credits
Arr: Murcell
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum ba ah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song, framed by kumbaya
Verse Repetition Pattern: A-A-x-x-A-x-A where A = kumbaya
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: relationship of vocal parts varied by iteration. The "crying" verse used a solo part with a descant. The "singing" verse used the group with a high counter melody. The "praying" verse was a duet.
Singing Style: usually one syllable to one note, except for variations on "Lord" in the last line.
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: only a drum was used during much of the arrangement. Stringed instruments were heard in the brief breaks between iterations, but were treated as ornaments rather that structural parts.
Notes on Performance
Cover: heads of four men in white ties and black tuxedos
Audience Perceptions
The quartet performed in Poughkeepsie in 1968. The program ranging "from Welsh and Irish folk music, Beethoven and Schumann love songs, Negro spirituals, to a series from the contemporary Broadway stage hits."
The local newspaper accessed the qualities of the three men who remained from 1966. [17] It said "Tom Edwards, the quartet’s spokesman," had the best personality.
The Journal noted Ray Murcell "gave an emotionally impacting performance of ‘Steal Away’. He demonstrated throughout the concert a superior technical control with constant voice quality over his rather large vocal range."
The critic was most taken by Carl Olsen, "who displayed skill and ease as he sang the upper note range for the quartet. He sang in full voice and in only one arrangement did he employ a falsetto tone." [18]
Another person who only used the name "Ref" told Mudcat Café "there used to be a male Quartet called The Revelers who recorded a spectacular, rolling, uplifting version of it that sounded like eight guys instead of just the four." [19]
Edwards organized The Revelers in 1955, after he purchased rights to the name from a survivor of a quartet [20] that had performed on Will Rogers’ radio program in the 1930s. [21] Hans-Joachim Krohberger found record albums they made in 1956 for Urania, [22] an East German company that just had been transferred to New Jersey. [23] Edwards and three others recorded collection of drinking songs [24] and sea chanties. [25]
By the 1960s, Edwards was associated with Milt Okun, who was producing records for the reconstituted Chad Mitchell Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary. [26] Okun was the musical director for the record, and did some of the arrangements. Murcell did the others.
After the end of the commercial folk-revival, The Revelers found work singing the quartet parts in local productions of Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. [27] In 1971, Edwards and Murcell revived some of the original Reveler’s songs in a Gay 90s program. [28]
Edwards and most of the other singers remain anonymous. Doc Savage may not even have been a nickname, but a pseudonym based on a pulp-fiction character created in 1933 by Street and Smith Publications. [29]
Olsen’s is the only one whose name appeared on the internet. He began as an operatic tenor with the New York City Opera, [30] and free-lanced with opera companies elsewhere in the country. In 1981 he was teaching voice, [31] and managing the revival of an opera company on Long Island. [32]
Availability
Album: The Revelers. "Kumbaya." The Revelers Sings. Records sold by The Revelers Incorporated of Westbury, New York.
End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Hootenanny (American TV series)."
2. Totals calculated from data in "Hootenanny." Episode Calendar. The Spanish-language website lists the songs by artist by program, although sometimes some details are missing.
3. Wikipedia, Hootenanny.
4. Peter Tamony. "‘Hootenanny’: the Word, its Content and Continuum." John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 16:95–98:1980. Reprinted from Western Folklore 22:165–170:1963. 96. Pettus was mentioned in the post for 3 November 2019.
5. Tamony. 97.
6. Wikipedia, Hootenanny. Each appeared eight times in the second season.
7. Item. Portsmouth [Ohio] Times. 27 April 1968. 17. No doubt it was quoting the group’s promotional materials.
8. The record jacked was undated. The album included "With the Wind on My Mind." John Denver copyrighted it in 1966. [33]
9. Seeger’s version was described in the post for 6 October 2019.
10. The Seeker’s versions were described in the posts for 29 January 2018, 31 January 2018, and 2 February 2018.
11. Portsmouth Times.
12. Item. Poughkeepsie [New York] Journal. 26 February 1968. 8.
13. Item. Altoona [Pennsylvania] Mirror. 3 December 1966. 42.
14. United States Census data. Reported by Wikipedia. "Portsmouth, Ohio."
15. United States Census data. Reported by Wikipedia. "Poughkeepsie, New York."
16. United States Census data. Reported by Wikipedia. "Altoona, Pennsylvania.
17. Doc Savage had been replaced by Karl Thomas.
18. Poughkeepsie Journal.
19. Ref. Mudcat Café website. "Holding Hands and Singing ‘Kumbaya’." Thread begun 29 January 2007. Comment added 29 January 2007.
20. John S. Wilson. "Revelers Singing at the Gay 90’s." The New York Times. 11 November 1971.
21. William Ruhlmann. "The Revelers." All Music website.
22. Hans-Joachim Krohberger. "The Revelers (2) (New York)." Doo-Wop blog, Germany.
23. Wikipedia. "Urania Records."
24. Drinking Songs Around The World. Urania UR 9008.
25. Salty Sea Chanties. Urania UR 9007 / Urania UR 9020. The singers were Thomas Edwards, tenor; Feodore Tedick, tenor; Laurence Bogue, baritone; Edward Ansara, bass. The conductor was Jacques Belasco. [34]
26. Colin Stutz. "Milton Okun, Legendary Producer & Cherry Lane Founder, Dies at 92." Billboard website. 15 November 2016. When Mitchell left the Chad Mitchell Trio in 1965, John Denver replaced him in the Mitchell Trio. [35]
27. Meredith Wilson. The Music Man. 1957. It included a barbershop quartet that entered at strategic points to sing "Lida Rose."
28. Wilson. The tenors were Darrel Lauer and Paul Forrest.
29. Wikipedia. "Doc Savage." Bantam Books began reprinting the original stories in 1964.
30. Barbara Delatiner. "Opera Opening on a Rousing Note." The New York Times. 20 September 1981.
31. "Carl Olsen Singers Institute." Its website.
32. Delatiner.
33. United States Copyright Office. Catalog of Copyright Entries. July-December 1966. 2125.
34. "Jacques Belasco, The Revelers – Salty Sea Chanties." Discogs website.
35. Wikipedia. "John Denver."
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Irwin Silber - Kum Ba Ya
Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
The commercial folk-music revival moved from college campuses to the mass media on 6 April 1963 when ABC television broadcast the first program of a variety series called Hootenanny. [1] At the time, Peter, Paul and Mary had two albums in Billboard’s top ten, while the Kingston Trio’s sixteenth album was in eighth place. [2]
Hootenanny featured several acts performing at a college campus, with the performers and schools changing each week. The first week drew 26% of the reporting audience; the second drew 32%. [3] Look magazine declared it was the "final proof that folk music has gone big-time." [4]
Pete Seeger said he first heard the term "hootenanny" in 1940 [5] at a political event sponsored by the Washington Commonwealth Federation in Seattle. [6] He popularized the word when he applied it to rent parties held by the Almanac Singers in New York City. [7]
Long before the ABC program, other folk-music revival singers were using the word to describe their singing sessions. After April 1963, "hootenanny" became a marketing word applied to any item remotely connected to folk-revival music.
In 1963, Irwin Silber edited the Hootenanny Song Book for a commercial publisher. It was subtitled: "Reprints from Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine." Silber had been editing Sing Out! since 1951. [8] Before the ABC program, he had reprinted collections from the magazine through Oak Publications, which he owned with Moses Asch. [9]
The modifications necessary to make Sing Out! palatable to the general public were editorial, rather than musical. The Spring 1958 issue had included 16 songs, three of which appeared in an anthology in 1961. [10] The Hootenanny Song Book also included three songs from 1958.
Many of the omitted songs were copyrighted, like Malvina Reynolds’ "The Battle of Maxton Field." Others had known authors, who might have expected royalty payments, or were versions of public domain people performed by popular artists like Odetta.
In discussing problems with copyrights for another collection, Jerry Silverman said he only included songs written before 1922
"because after that they’re not in the public domain, and it becomes a hassle with copyright clearances, with payment royalties, with getting permissions. And it’s just not worth it. There were so many good songs that are in the public domain that it doesn’t pay to look for trouble trying to get the one extra song that will land you in a lawsuit for infringement." [11]
If he wasn’t already aware of the problems with the 1909 copyright law, the music editor for the Hootenanny Song Book would have been educated by the lawyers at Consolidated Music Publishers.
The anthology used the original plates from Sing Out! The only change was with "St. James Hospital." In the magazine, it had appeared with an advertisement. That was replaced with more verses. Silverman retranscribed the music for Hootenanny.
What changes were made between Sing Out! and its commercial sibling were done in the head notes. Silber still indicated the version of "Twelve Gates to the City" came from Marion Hicks, but dropped the references to recordings of the song made by Gary Davis and Sonny Terry. In the earlier collection he had kept the promotion for The Weavers’ version of "Done Laid Around."
Similarly, Silber no longer mentioned its version of "Sinner Man" came from a Folkways album by The Folksmiths. It still repeated information from Cecil Sharp that it was a Holiness hymn, but dropped the reference to him.
When Sing Out! published "Kum Ba Yah," it had reproduced an image of the version included in the Girl Guides’ Chansons de Notre Chalet, with a nod to the publisher, Cooperative Recreation Service. [12] The Hootenanny headnote no long acknowledged its source was CRS. Instead, Silber introduced the idea that the African-American "spiritual, ‘Come by Here’," was "first cousin to this Nigerian song."
The original Sing Out! publication introduced the standard version of the "Kumbaya" to people who knew it only from the singing of Pete Seeger. The Hootenanny version was the one used in the Canadian junior high school music book discussed in the post on 14 August 2018. However, while Colin Walley included the "Nigerian Folk Song" attribution, his arrangement was more complex.
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom-bah-yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: not indicated
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar Chords: C F G7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord"
Notes on Performers
Sing Out! was the successor to the Peoples Songs’ Bulletin, discussed in the post for 18 August 2019. It released its last issue in February 1949. [13] Sing Out! Appeared in May 1950, under the editorship of Robert Wolfe. [14]
Silber was born in 1925, but the only thing he ever said about his life before he joined the Communist Party was that his parents were working class Jews [15] who lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. [16] Although he left the United States party in 1955, Silber remained a Marxist. He married Barbara Dane in 1964, [17] who had the distinction of having been rejected by the Party. [18]
It was the period when protests against the War in Vietnam had spawned radical groups like SDS. Silber left Sing Out! to work for The Guardian in 1967. After he became the editor in 1972, it began supporting the Maoist Revolution in China. [19] He remained politically active until his death in 2010.
Silverman’s parents migrated to the United States from London and Russia, and married in this country. His father supplied fabrics to Broadway shows, and perhaps, because of that, he was sent to Wo-Chi-Ca in 1945. When he returned to the Bronx, he began taking guitar lessons. He started doing transcriptions for Sing Out! in 1951 while he was earning a degree in music from City College of New York. He wrote his master’s thesis on blues guitar, and since has edited collections and written instruction manuals. [20]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Ya." Hootenanny Song Book. Edited by Irwin Silber and Jerry Silverman. New York: Consolidated Music Publishers, 1963. 139.
End Notes
1. Tim Brooks and Earle F. Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007 edition. 633.
2. Dave McAleer. The All Music Book of Hit Albums. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 1995. 39.
3. "‘Hootenanny’ Looms As Hour ’63-’64 Entry; Ratings Start To Swing" Variety. 24 April 1963. Cited by Wikipedia. "Hootenanny (American TV Series)."
4. "Folk Singers and Their Fans." Look. 27 August 1963. Cited by Wikipedia, Hootenanny.
5. Seeger’s trip was discussed in the post for 18 August 2019.
6. Wikipedia. "Terry Pettus."
7. Peter Tamony. "‘Hootenanny’: the Word, its Content and Continuum." John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 16:95–98:1980. Reprinted from Western Folklore 22:165–170:1963. 95. This is the best article on the word’s origins.
8. Ken Hunt. "Irwin Silber (1925-2010)." Folk Music Journal. 20 December 2011.
9. Richie Unterberger. "Irwin Silber Interview." June 2002. Furious website. Asch was discussed in the post for 14 October 2017.
10. Irwin Silber. Reprints from Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine. New York: Oak Publications, 1962. Volume 3.
11. Carl Wiser. "Jerry Silverman on Baseball Songs." Song Facts. 27 November 2008.
12. "Kum Ba Yah." Sing Out! Spring 1958. 18. The second edition of Chansons was published in 1959 by CRS. Marion A. Roberts was the editor.
13. Richard A. Reuss. American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927 – 1957. With JoAnne C. Reuss. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2000. 288.
14. Hunt.
15. Wikipedia. "Irwin Silber."
16. Hunt. Silber’s family may have wished to remain anonymous to avoid harassment by the FBI and self-appointed vigilantes.
17. Wikipedia, Silber. Dane was discussed in the post for 23 August 2017.
18. Ben Fong-Torres. "A Life of the Blues." SF Gate website. 22 July 2007.
19. Max Elbaum. Revolution in the Air. London: Verso, 2002. 107–108.
20. Wikipedia. Jerry Silverman. Wo-Chi-Ca was mentioned in the post for 14 July 2019.
The commercial folk-music revival moved from college campuses to the mass media on 6 April 1963 when ABC television broadcast the first program of a variety series called Hootenanny. [1] At the time, Peter, Paul and Mary had two albums in Billboard’s top ten, while the Kingston Trio’s sixteenth album was in eighth place. [2]
Hootenanny featured several acts performing at a college campus, with the performers and schools changing each week. The first week drew 26% of the reporting audience; the second drew 32%. [3] Look magazine declared it was the "final proof that folk music has gone big-time." [4]
Pete Seeger said he first heard the term "hootenanny" in 1940 [5] at a political event sponsored by the Washington Commonwealth Federation in Seattle. [6] He popularized the word when he applied it to rent parties held by the Almanac Singers in New York City. [7]
Long before the ABC program, other folk-music revival singers were using the word to describe their singing sessions. After April 1963, "hootenanny" became a marketing word applied to any item remotely connected to folk-revival music.
In 1963, Irwin Silber edited the Hootenanny Song Book for a commercial publisher. It was subtitled: "Reprints from Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine." Silber had been editing Sing Out! since 1951. [8] Before the ABC program, he had reprinted collections from the magazine through Oak Publications, which he owned with Moses Asch. [9]
The modifications necessary to make Sing Out! palatable to the general public were editorial, rather than musical. The Spring 1958 issue had included 16 songs, three of which appeared in an anthology in 1961. [10] The Hootenanny Song Book also included three songs from 1958.
Many of the omitted songs were copyrighted, like Malvina Reynolds’ "The Battle of Maxton Field." Others had known authors, who might have expected royalty payments, or were versions of public domain people performed by popular artists like Odetta.
In discussing problems with copyrights for another collection, Jerry Silverman said he only included songs written before 1922
"because after that they’re not in the public domain, and it becomes a hassle with copyright clearances, with payment royalties, with getting permissions. And it’s just not worth it. There were so many good songs that are in the public domain that it doesn’t pay to look for trouble trying to get the one extra song that will land you in a lawsuit for infringement." [11]
If he wasn’t already aware of the problems with the 1909 copyright law, the music editor for the Hootenanny Song Book would have been educated by the lawyers at Consolidated Music Publishers.
The anthology used the original plates from Sing Out! The only change was with "St. James Hospital." In the magazine, it had appeared with an advertisement. That was replaced with more verses. Silverman retranscribed the music for Hootenanny.
What changes were made between Sing Out! and its commercial sibling were done in the head notes. Silber still indicated the version of "Twelve Gates to the City" came from Marion Hicks, but dropped the references to recordings of the song made by Gary Davis and Sonny Terry. In the earlier collection he had kept the promotion for The Weavers’ version of "Done Laid Around."
Similarly, Silber no longer mentioned its version of "Sinner Man" came from a Folkways album by The Folksmiths. It still repeated information from Cecil Sharp that it was a Holiness hymn, but dropped the reference to him.
When Sing Out! published "Kum Ba Yah," it had reproduced an image of the version included in the Girl Guides’ Chansons de Notre Chalet, with a nod to the publisher, Cooperative Recreation Service. [12] The Hootenanny headnote no long acknowledged its source was CRS. Instead, Silber introduced the idea that the African-American "spiritual, ‘Come by Here’," was "first cousin to this Nigerian song."
The original Sing Out! publication introduced the standard version of the "Kumbaya" to people who knew it only from the singing of Pete Seeger. The Hootenanny version was the one used in the Canadian junior high school music book discussed in the post on 14 August 2018. However, while Colin Walley included the "Nigerian Folk Song" attribution, his arrangement was more complex.
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom-bah-yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: not indicated
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar Chords: C F G7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord"
Notes on Performers
Sing Out! was the successor to the Peoples Songs’ Bulletin, discussed in the post for 18 August 2019. It released its last issue in February 1949. [13] Sing Out! Appeared in May 1950, under the editorship of Robert Wolfe. [14]
Silber was born in 1925, but the only thing he ever said about his life before he joined the Communist Party was that his parents were working class Jews [15] who lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. [16] Although he left the United States party in 1955, Silber remained a Marxist. He married Barbara Dane in 1964, [17] who had the distinction of having been rejected by the Party. [18]
It was the period when protests against the War in Vietnam had spawned radical groups like SDS. Silber left Sing Out! to work for The Guardian in 1967. After he became the editor in 1972, it began supporting the Maoist Revolution in China. [19] He remained politically active until his death in 2010.
Silverman’s parents migrated to the United States from London and Russia, and married in this country. His father supplied fabrics to Broadway shows, and perhaps, because of that, he was sent to Wo-Chi-Ca in 1945. When he returned to the Bronx, he began taking guitar lessons. He started doing transcriptions for Sing Out! in 1951 while he was earning a degree in music from City College of New York. He wrote his master’s thesis on blues guitar, and since has edited collections and written instruction manuals. [20]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Ya." Hootenanny Song Book. Edited by Irwin Silber and Jerry Silverman. New York: Consolidated Music Publishers, 1963. 139.
End Notes
1. Tim Brooks and Earle F. Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007 edition. 633.
2. Dave McAleer. The All Music Book of Hit Albums. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 1995. 39.
3. "‘Hootenanny’ Looms As Hour ’63-’64 Entry; Ratings Start To Swing" Variety. 24 April 1963. Cited by Wikipedia. "Hootenanny (American TV Series)."
4. "Folk Singers and Their Fans." Look. 27 August 1963. Cited by Wikipedia, Hootenanny.
5. Seeger’s trip was discussed in the post for 18 August 2019.
6. Wikipedia. "Terry Pettus."
7. Peter Tamony. "‘Hootenanny’: the Word, its Content and Continuum." John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 16:95–98:1980. Reprinted from Western Folklore 22:165–170:1963. 95. This is the best article on the word’s origins.
8. Ken Hunt. "Irwin Silber (1925-2010)." Folk Music Journal. 20 December 2011.
9. Richie Unterberger. "Irwin Silber Interview." June 2002. Furious website. Asch was discussed in the post for 14 October 2017.
10. Irwin Silber. Reprints from Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine. New York: Oak Publications, 1962. Volume 3.
11. Carl Wiser. "Jerry Silverman on Baseball Songs." Song Facts. 27 November 2008.
12. "Kum Ba Yah." Sing Out! Spring 1958. 18. The second edition of Chansons was published in 1959 by CRS. Marion A. Roberts was the editor.
13. Richard A. Reuss. American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927 – 1957. With JoAnne C. Reuss. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2000. 288.
14. Hunt.
15. Wikipedia. "Irwin Silber."
16. Hunt. Silber’s family may have wished to remain anonymous to avoid harassment by the FBI and self-appointed vigilantes.
17. Wikipedia, Silber. Dane was discussed in the post for 23 August 2017.
18. Ben Fong-Torres. "A Life of the Blues." SF Gate website. 22 July 2007.
19. Max Elbaum. Revolution in the Air. London: Verso, 2002. 107–108.
20. Wikipedia. Jerry Silverman. Wo-Chi-Ca was mentioned in the post for 14 July 2019.
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