Songnotes

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|R|S|T|U|W|

A Companion to the Old Town School Songbook

Compiled and edited byMark Dvorak.

Mail Myself to You

Woody Guthrie has described his musical education pretty well: “The lonesome old ballads sung by my mother, and the honky-tonk blues, the wild hollers I heard from my father and the other men in town.”
     It is worth mentioning that Woody learned his style of guitar picking straight off the recordings of the Carter Family which were popular around 1931, when he was about eighteen years old. He also learned some of his favorite songs directly off these recordings.
     After World War II, Woody settled in New York City. He recorded many songs during this time, among them a collection of children’s songs. He and his wife Marjorie were determined to make these sessions and recordings successful. And they were. Woody’s “Songs to Grow On” albums sold better than his more “serious” works and were soon a staple in nurseries across the country. Each album contained a little booklet with photographs and Woody’s drawings of kids at play.
     Woody explains his purposes: “Now I don't want to see you use my songs to divide nor split your family all apart. I mean, don't just buy these records and take them home so your kids can play around with them while you go off and do something else. I want to see you join right in, do what your kids do. Let your kids teach you how to play and act these songs out...
     “Please, please don't read nor sing my songs like no lesson book, like no little text for today. But, let them be a little key to sort of unlock and let down all your old bars.
     “Watch the kids. Do like they do. Act like they act. Yell like they yell. Dance the way you see them dance. Sing like they sing. Work and rest the way the kids do.
     “You'll be healthier. You'll feel wealthier. You'll talk wiser. You'll go higher, do better and live longer amongst us, if you'll just only jump in here and swim around in these songs and do like the kids do.
     “I don't want the kids to be grown up. I want to see the grownup folks be kids.”

Sources:

The Incompleat Folksinger, by Pete Seeger, edited by Jo Metcalf-Schwartz. Simon & Schuster.
A Life, by Joe Klein. Ballantine Books.

Recordings on File by: Faith Petric, Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger.

Midnight Special

Like so many American folk songs, the hero of “The Midnight Special” is not a person but a train. Folklorists report that the legendary train in the song was a real train called The Golden Gate Limited. It pulled out of the Southern Pacific depot at Houston, TX at midnight sharp, headed for San Antonio, El Paso and other points west and ran right past the Texas State Prison Farm at Sugar Land, just outside Houston.
Prisoners lying awake could easily hear the sound of that train crashing through the darkness. And if the ever lovin’ light from the headlamp shone through the barred windows and landed on a convict, legend says that man would soon go free.
“The Midnight Special” was first introduced to northern audiences in the mid 1930s by the great folk singer and folk song composer Lead Belly, who had done time at Sugar Land. In the years since, many thousands of musicians, singers and listeners have identified with longing for freedom expressed in the lyrics of “The Midnight Special” without ever having spent a day behind bars.

Source: Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
Recordings on File by: Lead Belly. Odetta, The Weavers.

My Home's Across The Smoky Mountains

The most influential group in country music history, the Carter Family switched the emphasis from hillbilly instrumentals to vocals, made scores of their songs part of the standard country music canon, and made a style of guitar playing, “Carter-picking,” the dominant technique for decades. Along with Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family were among the very first stars in country music.
Comprised of a gaunt, shy gospel quartet member called Alvin P. Carter and two reserved country girls - his wife Sara and their sister-in-law Maybelle - the Carter Family sang a pure, simple harmony that influenced not only the numerous other family groups of the ‘30s and the ‘40s, but folk, bluegrass and rock musicians like Woody Guthrie, Bill Monroe, the Kingston Trio, Doc Watson, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris, to mention just a few. It's unlikely that bluegrass music would have existed without the Carter Family. A. P., the family patriarch, collected hundreds of British Isles and Appalachian folk songs and, in arranging these for recording, both enhanced the pure beauty of these “facts-of-life tunes” and at the same time saved them for future generations.
Those hundreds of songs the trio found around their Virginia and Tennessee homes, after being sung by A.P., Sara, and Maybelle, became Carter songs, even though these were folk songs and in the public domain. Among the more than 300 sides they recorded are “Worried Man Blues,” “Wabash Cannonball,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken," "Wildwood Flower," "Keep on the Sunny Side" and “My Home’s Across the Smoky Mountains.”

Source: All Music Guide
Recordings on File by: Pete Seeger & Frank Hamilton, Doc Watson.

Nine Hundred Miles

Woody Guthrie reported he had learned this hillbilly railroad blues from a little black shoe shine boy in his hometown of Okemah, OK. The tune has appeared in many disguises and has relatives all over the South. In Virginia, it's called “Old Reuben” and in the backwoods further west, sharecroppers called it “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy” or “Pay Day,” each sung to the tune of “Nine Hundred Miles.”
Up in Kentucky and Tennessee, several coal mining ballads have the same melody again but perhaps the oldest of them all are the verses to “Black Girl,” otherwise known as “In the Pines.”
Where ever this melody has turned up, it has been a vehicle for melancholy, for a yearning toward faraway places and toward things that are lost and irretrievable. It is one of America’s most haunting and enduring melodies.

Source: Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
Recordings on File by: Woody Guthrie, Mike Seeger, Flatt & Scruggs.

Nine Pound Hammer

“Nine Pound Hammer” is one of the few work songs to ever enjoy popularity. Early string bands such as Frank Blevins’ Tar Heel Rattlers and Al Hopkins Bucklebusters were the first to introduce it as a performance piece. Bluegrass pioneers Bill and Charlie Monroe and finger picker Merle Travis brought it to a wider audience and are largely responsible for its continuing popularity.
It is said of Merle Travis that he could write you a hit song and sing it; he could draw you a cartoon, play you a great guitar solo, or fix your watch. He was born in western Kentucky in the heart of coal mining country and he would become one of country music's true legends.
Merle developed a style of picking the guitar based on the “Kentucky choke style” which was introduced to him by local players Mose Rager and Ike Everly (father of The Everly Brothers). Soon this approach to playing the guitar would be internationally referred to as “Travis picking.”

Sources: