Songnotes

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A Companion to the Old Town School Songbook

Compiled and edited byMark Dvorak.

I Am A Pilgrim

There is a style of playing the guitar called “Travis” picking. The style was developed and made popular by Merle Travis, son of a Kentucky coal miner who wrote dozens of hit songs and whose music has been influential to generations of songwriters and guitarists.
     After playing guitar in several hillbilly bands as a young man, Merle wound up living in Hollywood, CA and recording for Capitol Records in Los Angeles (his single “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette” was the first million seller for Capitol). There he got to know the composer Earl Robinson, and was impressed with Earl’s manner of explaining an old folk song to make it come alive to an audience.
     Merle persuaded Capitol to let him record some older folk songs instead of the commercialized country music he was usually saddled with. Capitol reluctantly agreed and in 1947 “Folk Songs of the Hills” was released, but never promoted. It sold sparsely, but two songs from the album, “Dark as a Dungeon” and “16 Tons” spread slowly across the country.
     Around 1955, Nashville recording artist Tennessee Ernie Ford sang “16 Tons” on a television program and to everyone’s surprise he got thousands of requests for it. Ford recorded the song and it became one of the biggest hits of the 1950s.
     “I Am a Pilgrim” was one of the other pieces Travis arranged in his distinctive picking style and included on his legendary “Folk Songs of the Hills” collection.

Sources:

“Ozark Folk Center” home page
The Incompleat Folksinger, by Pete Seeger, edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz. Simon and Schuster.

Recordings on File by: The Byrds, David Grisman & Tony Rice, Merle Travis.

I Know You Rider

“I Know You Rider” is a real blues. It's roots are in the great dark valley of the blues, the Mississippi Delta.
The blues not only formed jazz, but it has influenced all forms indigenous and popular Anglo music. The blues have crept into the churches under the guise of “gospel” songs. What used to be called “hillbilly” and “country western” is now called “country” and it rocks across the air waves with an underlying groove of rhythm and blues. As cante hondo is the national song form of Spain, and the corrido is the national ballad form of Mexico, more than any other song form, the blues are The American Song.
“I Know You Rider,” “C. C. Rider,” “Easy Rider,” and even “Trouble In Mind” are blues that have all borrowed from each other. The rock group Hot Tuna picked up on “I Know You Rider” in the 1960s to redefine it's sound and further the legacy of a classic American blues.

Source: Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
Recordings on File by: Dan Eillers, Dan Keding, Frank Hamilton (Long Lonesome Home), Lead Belly (Easy Rider).

I Ride An Old Paint

“I Ride an Old Paint” was once a very popular song in the west. For many years it was commonly used as the last number of the night at cowboy dances all over Oklahoma and Texas.
It's a slow waltz whose title refers to a kind of horse variously described by the cowboy as paint, pinto, spotted or calico - calico, not because of the color of the horse, but because, mounted on his paint pony, the cowboy rode to see his best girl, his calico. And calico as you might imagine, is the cotton material out of which a dress would be made; the kind of dress a young lady might wear when her sweetheart came to call.

Source: Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
Recordings on File by: Harry Jackson, Pete Seeger & Woody Guthrie.

I'm On My Way

The Civil Rights movement in 1960s was the singingest movement in American history. Old African American spirituals like, “I Will Overcome,” “I'm On My Way to Canaan Land” and dozens of others were adapted by marchers and demonstrators throughout the South and across the nation. By design, the repetitive nature and “call back” structure of a spiritual make it ideal for improvised group singing.

Source: Sing for Freedom, edited and compiled by Guy and Candie Carawan. Sing Out! Publications.
Recordings on File by: Carter Family, Mahalia Jackson, Various artists.

A Final Note…