Songnotes

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A Companion to the Old Town School Songbook

Compiled and edited byMark Dvorak.

Red River Valley

“Red River Valley” stands as a testament to the folk process. It's a re-working of a ditty from New York state called, “The Bright Mohawk Valley.” Latter-day Western singers cut away much of the original pretentiousness from both the melody and the lyrics.
It's a sentimental piece for sure, and characteristic of music rooted in the late 1800s. But there's a great simplicity and long-range stamina to this lazy little tune. It's been featured in movie scores and on hundreds of recordings and by now, destined to become a permanent part of our national folk song consciousness.

Source: Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
Recordings on File by: Sons of the Pioneers, Ralph & Carter Stanley.

Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms

Another old-time bluegrass classic. “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” was first introduced by the Monroe Brothers and made popular by Flatt and Scruggs, but performed by dozens of bluegrass groups over the years. It has been performed by everyone from parking lot pickers to Buck Owens to Leon Russell.
Musically, it's a close relative to “She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain,” “The Crawdad Song,” “Mama Don’t Allow” and a whole bunch of others, but “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” is strictly bluegrass.

Source: The Bluegrass Songbook, by Peter Wernick. Oak Publications.
Recordings on File by: Flatt & Scruggs, Bill and Charlie Monroe, Buck Owens.

Roll Me on the Water

A very beautiful song written by singer and former Old Town School of Folk Music student, Bonnie Koloc. Bonnie entertained as a folk singer in Chicago clubs such as “The Earl of Old Town” in the 1970s before expanding her horizons as a vocalist. She has toured the country with her jazz quintet and appeared in several theatrical productions as well. You may have even heard her sing a commercial jingle or two on television. Bonnie still makes occasional concert appearances in Chicago and along with “City of New Orleans,” “Roll Me On the Water” is one of the songs most closely identified with the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Recordings on File by: Bonnie Koloc.

Roll on Columbia

When John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, told the world about the plight of the Okies, Woody Guthrie , the dust-bowl poet was singing for them over a one-horse radio station in Los Angeles. He always claimed to have learned how to play the guitar while broadcasting. His Okie fans would write him letters--”Keep it up Woody!”
     By 1939, Guthrie wound up in New York City. By then he had mastered the Carter Family guitar style, and became adept at entertaining an audience with his delayed-action, Will Rogers type of humor. Woody had some success recording and broadcasting his songs, but genuinely felt uncomfortable about eating so well and sleeping so soft, when his people were still “wandering around over the west like a herd of locoed buffaloes.” One day he blew out of New York without saying goodbye to the “phony, big-shot producers” and took to the highway again with his guitar.
     This was the era of the drive to harness the rivers of the Great Northwest for cheap public power. The choice between buying electricity from public and private sources lay with the voters, and the Bonneville Power Administration was battling the private power outfits for votes. The big private companies were flying in Hollywood movie stars to draw the public to their meetings when the Bonneville people called around the country looking to hire Woody as a “public relations consultant.”
     Woody hitch-hiked to Portland and signed on. For a month he had a car and a chauffeur at his disposal, and he did the Columbia River basin in style, soaking in the scenery, the statistics and the issues - and writing songs. He sat on the soft green banks and the big blue river talked to him. He looked at the Columbia River with the wonder that had filled the hearts of his pioneer ancestors who had come into that country along the Oregon Trail a hundred years before.
     The ballads poured out of Woody’s typewriter with the fresh flow of the river he had come to love. Twenty-six ballads were composed and recorded in twenty-six days. Soon after, over the radio and through public address systems the people in the Bonneville area were listening to a voice they could believe in - a rural voice, harsh, ironical, humorous, truthful, with the heartbeat of the Southwestern guitar pushing behind it. Apparently, Bonneville voters agreed with him that “twenty million salmon fish couldn't be wrong,” for when they went to the polls, they voted overwhelmingly for public power; and some of his Bonneville ballads are sung today by people in the Northwest who never heard his name.
     “Roll On Columbia” is probably the best known ballad from Woody’s Columbia River collection. Woody fashioned his wonderfully singable chorus from Lead Belly’s “Irene Goodnight.”

Source: The Folk Songs of North America, by Alan Lomax, Doubleday.
Recordings on File by: Woody Guthrie, Various artists, The Weavers.

A Final Note…