Songnotes

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A Companion to the Old Town School Songbook

Compiled and edited byMark Dvorak.

Pay Me My Money Down

The Georgia Sea Islands is a section of the United States rich in African American folk song. For over a hundred miles, these low flat islands decorate the Atlantic Coast. Here's where slaves were brought fresh from Africa and for generations, spent their entire lives out of touch with the mainland.
In olden days, transportation to the mainland was provided by small boats and strong arms to row them. The oar crews from different plantations prided themselves on their singing, each making up new songs that no other boat would ever sing.
Two of the best known songs whose roots are in this tradition of Georgia Sea Island singing are “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” and the more recent, “Pay Me My Money Down.” The melody to “Pay Me” is a re-working of the chantey, “Blow the Man Down.”

Source: The Incompleat Folksinger, by Pete Seeger, edited by Jo Metcalf-Schwartz. Simon & Schuster.
Recordings on File by: The Weavers.

Pretty Saro

Jean Ritchie was born in Viper, KY, in the Cumberland Mountains in 1922. She was the youngest of 14 children and her family was already well-known in the area for their musical ability. Jean’s father first taught her to play the mountain, or lap dulcimer, and she quickly became proficient at accompanying her beautifully clear, untrained voice.
     In 1948, Mitch Miller, who would later star on a television sing-a-long show, heard Jean demonstrate her dulcimer playing technique in a store and was impressed enough to produce her first recording. Later, having earned a degree in social work from the University of Kentucky, Jean traveled to New York to gain practical experience at the Henry Street Settlement. With her mountain dulcimer, she taught her family songs and games to the children of New York’s Lower East Side, and learned theirs in return.
     She was soon invited to entertain at parties and give performances in elementary schools and was introduced by a friend to the well known folklorist, Alan Lomax. Lomax recorded Ritchie’s songs, both for his own collection and for the Library Of Congress Folksong Archives and from there Jean’s music career flourished.
     Fifty years worth of performances, recordings and books have made Jean Ritchie and the Ritchie family name synonymous with the mountain dulcimer and traditional mountain music.
     Antecedent versions of “Pretty Saro” were probably first brought to the Cumberlands by Scots-Irish settlers in the 1700s. It's one of the many traditional songs carried around the world by the singing of Jean Ritchie.

Sources:

The Dulcimer Book, by Jean Ritchie. Oak Publications.
The Jean Ritchie Home Page.

Recordings on File by: Jean Ritchie & Doc Watson, Doc Watson.

Puff the Magic Dragon

Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers are three folk singers who met in Greenwich Village, New York in the early 1960s. Yarrow held a degree in psychology from Cornell University had come to the Village to explore the vibrant and growing music scene. There he met stand-up comic Paul Stookey and singer Mary Travers, who had grown up in the Village and was already locally established as a vocalist. They rehearsed for seven months in Travers’ apartment and debuted at the Bitter End Coffee House in 1961. The influential Albert Grossman became their manager and Peter, Paul & Mary embarked on a touring schedule that would last for ten years.
     Although their arrangements were characteristic of the times, Peter, Paul & Mary brought a new voice and a new sensibility to the tradition of group folk-singing. They sought out fresh material from the brilliant young songwriters working and hanging out around the Village. As a result, the music of Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver and others was introduced to a national audience.
     Peter, Paul & Mary’s repertoire also included traditional songs and they committed themselves to using their music to widen the awareness of social issues and injustices. In 1963, their arrangement of Pete Seeger's “If I Had a Hammer” went to number one on the charts and became one of the anthems of the Civil Rights Movement.
     After ten years of constant touring and recording, the group separated to pursue individual interests, but reunited in the late 1970s for a string of concerts and recordings that has continued to the present. “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a children’s song written by Yarrow and a man named Leonard Lipton was one of the groups early hits and has become an American classic.

Source: The “Peter, Paul & Mary” page.
Recordings on File by: Peter Paul & Mary.

A Final Note…