Songnotes

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A Companion to the Old Town School Songbook

Compiled and edited byMark Dvorak.

Salty Dog Blues

“Salty Dog Blues” is another example of an African American blues converted into a mountain style song. It was first recorded by the Morris Brothers with a great deal of interplay between the guitar and mandolin. In 1951, it was recorded by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs who learned it first hand from the Morris Brothers. It has since become a classic amongst bluegrass musicians.
It should be noted that the term “salty dog” was considered quite off-color in its day. It alluded to the prurient interests of an excited young man.

Source: Old-Time Stringband Songbook, Oak Publications.
Recordings on File by: Erik Darling, Flatt & Scruggs.

Scarborough Fair

Francis J. Child’s (born 1825) five volume work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads , is considered by many as the “canon” of folk music. The collection consists of exhaustive research on over 300 ballads, focusing on the history of the words and themes rather than music. Child provides single line melodies for only about fifty of the tunes in an addendum.
Scholars, musicians and traditional music enthusiasts often refer to the titles in Child’s collection by the number he assigned. For example, Child #12 = “Lord Rendal.” Child #2 = “The Elfin Knight,” the original source for the more popular, “Scarborough Fair.”
In British Isles balladry, elves are full-grown, lusty men, not the diminutive, sexless creatures of nursery stories. In “Scarborough Fair” the elfin knight is a flirtatious lover and he sets before his prospective bride a series of impossible tasks. Rosemary and thyme are herbs which have magical properties for lovers, and are thus repeated throughout the singing.
In the 1960s, the pop duet Simon & Garfunkel recorded “Scarborough Fair.” It was later included in the soundtrack to the motion picture, “The Graduate” which introduced the subtle beauty of “Scarborough Fair” to a generation of new listeners.

Sources:

Folk Music of England, Scotland, Ireland & Wales” site
Folk Ballads of the English Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman. Viking.

Recordings on File by: Ewan McColl & Peggy Seeger. Simon & Garfunkel.

Shady Grove

“Shady Grove” is a Southern mountain tune suitable for a “play party” dance or frolic. It's a song sung and played to express the happiness of good times with friends and neighbors. It's very popular with banjo pickers who tune to “mountain minor” (gDGCD) to get the melody. The verses are interchangeable with other songs, but certain stanzas remain particular to “Shady Grove.”

Source: Old-Time Stringband Songbook, Oak Publications.
Recordings on File by: Eric Muller, Jean Ritchie, Various artists, Doc Watson.

Shenandoah

The primitive work chant, which some historians of music believe was the primordial ancestor of all song, comes to life wherever men have to do hard labor with nothing but their bare hands and cooperative spirit to help them.
“Shenandoah” is among the most enduring of sailor’s work songs called “chanties,” and it is quite likely that no one will ever know exactly where or how the song was made. An early collector of chanties was a man named Captain Whall. He indicates that it may be a voyageur or Missouri River boatman’s song, telling the story of a trader who courts the brown daughter of an Indian chief named Shenandoah.
The melody has the roll and surge and freedom of a tall ship sweeping along before a trade wind, but today “Shenandoah” is often sung as a ballad. Singers and listeners from many backgrounds can identify with the romantic imagery of the lyrics, calling out for a return to a sweetheart, a town or the land itself.

Sources:

The Folk Songs of North America, by Alan Lomax, Doubleday.
Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.

Recordings on File by: Cathy Fink, The Norman Luboff Choir, Jim Post, Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger.

Simple Gifts

Shakers and Shakerism is a religious movement formally known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming that has received considerable scholarly and popular attention. Although initially related to elements of Quakerism, the Shakers developed an idiosyncratic religious expression which included communal living, productive labor, celibacy, and a ritual noted for its dancing and shaking.
“Simple Gifts,” composed in 1848 by Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett as an easy-to-learn tune for Shaker worship, has since become one of America’s most popular all purpose melodies. It is performed with or without its original lyrics by folk singers, school choruses, church choirs and symphony orchestras. Versions have shown up in weddings, funerals, two presidential inaugurations, TV commercials -- and even the hit Irish dance revue, “Lord of the Dance.”

Sources:

“150 Years of Simple Gifts,” by David Crumm. Detroit Free Press, 11/98.
New York Public Library Digital Library.

Recordings on File by: George & Gerry Armstrong, Eric Muller, Shinobu Sato.

Skip to My Lou

In early America, respectable folk in Protestant communities have always regarded the fiddle as the devil’s instrument and dancing as downright sinful. Faced with such a religious prejudice for socializing, young people of the frontier developed the “play-party,” in which all the objectionable features of a square dance were removed or masked so that their grave elders could approve.
     No instruments were permitted - the dancers sang and clapped their own music. In time, the play-party acquired a life of its own. It became an ideal amusement for teenagers and young married couples. In many a frontier community, the bear hunters, Indian fighters, the rough keelboat men and the wild cowboys could be seen dancing innocently with their gals, like so many children at a Sunday school picnic.
     “Skip to My Lou” is a simple game of stealing partners. It begins with any number of couples hand in hand, skipping around in a ring. A lone boy in the center of the moving circle of couple sings, “Lost my partner what’ll I do?” as the girls whirl past him. The young man in the center hesitates while he decides which girl to choose, singing, “I'll get another one prettier than you.” When he grasps the hand of his chosen one, her partner then takes his place in the center of the ring and the game continues. It's an ice-breaker, a good dance to get a group acquainted to one another and to get everyone in the mood for swinging around.
     It's interesting to note that “loo” is the Scottish word for “love.” The spelling change from “loo” to “lou” probably happened as our Anglo ancestors, and the song, became Americanized.

Source: The Folk Songs of North America, by Alan Lomax, Doubleday.
Recordings on File by: Carter Family, Lead Belly, Mike & Peggy Seeger, Pete Seeger.

Sloop John B.

Although the pop group, “The Beach Boys” brought this Bahamian folk song to international popularity in the 1960s, the story behind the “Sloop John B.,” or as it's originally called, “The John B. Sails,” goes way, way back.
     Around 1926, John T. McCutcheon and his wife learned to sing this song while spending time in the West Indies. McCutcheon was a world traveller, philosopher and the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune. He said of “The John B. Sails” that, “Time and usage have given the song almost the dignity of a national anthem around Nassau.”
     A sloop is a kind of sailing vessel which commonly has only one mast and perhaps a bowsprit - a single spar extending forward from the front end of the boat. The kind of sloops that sailed around Nassau, and the kind referenced in “The John B. Sails,” were smallish, perhaps 16-footers. They functioned much like country wagons in pioneer America. With a crew of 4 or 5 sailors, a crowded little sloop may have brought livestock, produce, passengers and other goods for trade from an island two or three hundred miles away. Sea-scarred and ragged, its deck only a few inches above the waves, a sloop carried no charts, no compasses and no auxiliary engine. The only navigational tools were the instincts and experience of a Bahamian pilot who was at home on the reef-filled azure sea.
     In the mid-1950s, singer and actor Harry Belafonte added many of the popular folk songs from his Caribbean heritage - including “The John B. Sails” - to his performances and recordings, effectively igniting the Calypso movement in American popular song.
     Around that same time, the Old Town School of Folk Music was founded in Chicago. There's a story that says “The John B. Sails” was the first song sung by Frank Hamilton, Win Stracke and a host of other musicians and prospective students as part of the opening ceremonies at the Old Town School.

Sources:

The American Songbag, by Carl Sandburg. Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich
The Folk Songs of North America, by Alan Lomax, Doubleday.

Recordings on File by: Michael Cooney, Pete Seeger, The Weavers.

So Long It's Been Good to Know Yuh

In 1929 the New York Stock Market crashed signaling the beginning of a Great Depression that would last well into the 1940s and World War II. During the 1930s, great dust storms followed on the heels of drought and blew away the topsoil on many agricultural areas of the Great Plains. Farmers lost their homes, banks went bankrupt (there was no FDIC then), and many, many people were out of work.
     Woody writes: “I heard folks talk and cry about the dust storms all out across our 16 middlewest states. I saw that lost gone look on their faces when they told me the government didn't follow the plan of FDR and so our land is still a dustbowl hit by dust storms and the dust storms are getting higher and wilder and meaner, and the hearts of the people are getting sickly worried.
     “No job, low pay, high prices, higher taxes, bum houses, slummy houses. Great diseases are running and great sores are spreading down across our map and the dust storm and the cyclone and the dirty winds and the twisters ride high and wide low across our whole land. Government experts tell me these dusters will get a lot worse.
     “I've lived in these dust storms just about all my life (I mean, I tried to live). I've met millions of good folks trying to hang on and to stay alive with the dust cutting down every hope. I am made out of this dust and out of this fast wind and I know that I'm going to win out on top of both of them if only my government and my office holder will help me.”
     “So Long It's Been Good to Know Yuh” (originally titled, “Dusty Old Dust”) is one of the songs Woody included in his recorded masterpiece, “Dust Bowl Ballads.” Using the melody to an older ballad, “Billy the Kid” as a model, Woody simply wrote down what he saw and composed a wonderful, singable chorus. When the popular folk singing group, The Weavers wished to record the song, Woody agreed to rewrite some verses, making the song accessible to a wider audience.

Sources:

A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Lead Belly, by Will Schmid, Music Educators Conference in Association with the Smithsonian Institution Office of Folklife Programs.
Liner notes to “Dust Bowl Ballads” by Woody Guthrie./li>

Recordings on File by: Woody Guthrie, The Weavers.

Sporting Life Blues

Brownie McGhee’s death in 1996 represented an enormous and irreplaceable loss to the blues field. Although he had been semi-retired in his last years, he was still the leading Piedmont-style bluesman and guitarist on the planet, venerated worldwide for his prolific activities both on his own and with his longtime partner, the blind harpist Sonny Terry.
     Walter Brown McGhee grew up near Knoxville in Kingsport, TN. He contracted polio at the age of four, which left him with a serious limp and plenty of time away from school to practice the guitar chords that he'd learned from his father, Duff McGhee. Brownie’s younger brother, Granville McGhee, also became a talented guitarist. He earned his nickname, “Sticks,” by pushing his crippled sibling around in a small cart propelled by a stick.
     A 1937 operation sponsored by the March of Dimes restored most of McGhee’s mobility. Off he went as soon as he recovered, traveling and playing throughout the Southeast. His jaunts brought him into contact with talent scout J.B. Long who got him a recording contract with Okeh/Columbia in 1940. Long’s principal blues artist, Blind Boy Fuller, died in 1941, precipitating Okeh to issue some of McGhee’s early efforts under the sobriquet of Blind Boy Fuller No. 2. McGhee cut a moving tribute song, "Death of Blind Boy Fuller," shortly after the passing and soon hooked up with whooping harpist Sonny Terry.
     The pair resettled in New York in 1942 and quickly got connected with the city’s burgeoning folk music circuit, working with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly. After the end of World War II, McGhee began to record most prolifically, both with and without Terry, for a myriad of R&B labels before crossing over to the folk audience during the late ‘50s.
     McGhee and Terry were among the first blues artists to tour Europe during the 1950s, and they ventured overseas often after that. Their plethora of albums presented the duo in the acoustic Piedmont-style musical interplay that became their trademark. The wheels finally came off the partnership of McGhee and Terry during the mid-’70s. Toward the end, they preferred not to share a stage with one another, let alone communicate.
     “Sporting Life Blues” is one of Brownie’s best known numbers, a blues he composed in the 1930s when he was just 19 years old. McGhee’s final concert appearance came at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival; his voice still robust, and his full-bodied acoustic guitar work still rich. His like won't pass this way again.

Source: All Music Guide site.
Recordings on File by: Brownie McGhee, Dave Van Ronk.

South Australia

British folklorist A.L. Lloyd, whose studies and renditions of traditional Australian songs are known throughout the world, says of this sea song: “In the days of sail, “South Australia” was a familiar going-away song, sung as the men trudged around the capstan to heave up the heavy anchor. Some say the song originated on wool-clippers, others say it was first heard on the emigrant ships. There is no evidence to support either belief; it was sung just as readily aboard Western Ocean ships as in those on the Australian run.
“Laura Smith, a remarkable Victorian lady, obtained a 14 stanza version from a colored seaman in the Sailor’s Home at Newcastle-On-Tyne in the early 1880s. The song's first appearance in print was in Miss Smith’s Music of the Waters. Later, it was often used as a forebitter, sung off-watch, merely for fun with any instrumentalist joining in.
“The present version was learned from an old sailing-ship sailor, Ted Howard of Barry, South Wales. Ted told how he and a number of shellbacks were gathered round the bed of a former shipmate. The dying man remarked, ‘Blimey, I think I'm slipping me cable. Strike up ‘South Australia’ lads and let me go happy.”

Source: The Collected Reprints from Sing Out! Volumes 1964-73, Sing Out Publications.
Recordings on File by: The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem.

Stewball

The most famous horse race in folk song history took place on the race course at Kildare, Ireland sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s. Matched were “Sku-ball,” a skewbald horse owned by Arthur Marvell, and a grey mare, “Miss Portly,” the property of Sir Ralph Gore. A skewbald horse, according to authorities, has patches of brown or bay on a white coat.
     Whether the horse’s name was actually “Sku-Ball” or whether this is just a ballad-singer’s license with the word “skewbald,” is unclear. In any event, the race was won by Sku-Ball and this was probably something in the nature of a major upset, since the event was memorialized in an Irish street ballad which has now lasted a couple centuries.
     Perhaps the song's popularity derives in part from the seeming “common” origin of Sku-ball and the elation of the ordinary folk in triumph over the thoroughbred mare.
     The ballad of “Skewball” appears in print as early as 1822 in England, and just a few years later is to be found in an American songster dated 1829. At some point, the old ballad was learned by slaves in the southern United States who thoroughly overhauled the music and the story until all that remained of the original was the horse’s name (adapted to “Stewball”) and the fact that a race took place (some versions have the name of the mare as Molly).
     In various African American versions of the song, the location of the race has been changed to California, Texas and other sites in the United States.

Source: “Sing Out!” Magazine.
Recordings on File by: Woody Guthrie & Friends, Peter, Paul & Mary.

St. James Infirmary

Also known as “The Gambler’s Blues,” “St. James Infirmary” is derived from a British street ballad named, “The Unfortunate Rake.” Here in the States it's had many versions and adaptations, and is even related to the somber cowboy lament, “Streets of Laredo.” Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong both recorded “St. James Infirmary” in the 1930s and it has since been considered a standard in the blues and jazz repertoire.
     Guitarist and singer Josh White also performed it as a signature piece throughout his career, though most blues enthusiasts think of Josh White as a folk revival artist.
     It's true that the second half of his music career found him based in New York playing to the coffeehouse and cabaret set and hanging out with Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and fellow transplanted blues artists Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. And in the 1960s, White could be seen performing with his shirt unbuttoned to the waist à la Harry Belafonte. White was clearly a show business personality - a star renowned for his sexual magnetism and his dramatic vocal presentations.
     What many people don't know is that Josh White was a major figure in the Piedmont blues tradition. The first part of his career saw him as apprentice and lead boy to some of the greatest blues and religious artists ever, including Willie Walker, Blind Blake, Blind Joe Taggart (with whom he recorded), and allegedly even Blind Lemon Jefferson. On his own, he recorded both blues and religious songs, including a classic version of “Blood Red River.” A fine guitar technician with an appealing voice, he became progressively more sophisticated in his presentation.
     Like many other Carolinians and Virginians who moved north to urban areas, he took up city ways, remaining a fine musician if no longer a down-home artist. Like several other canny blues players, he used his roots music to broaden and enhance his life experience, and his talent was such that he could choose the musical idiom that was most lucrative at the time.

Source: All Music Guide.
Recordings on File by: Louis Armstrong, Doc Watson & Richard Watson, Josh White.

Sweet Home Chicago

If the blues has a truly mythic figure, it's the one and only Robert Johnson. Certainly the most celebrated figure in the history of the blues, Johnson’s legend is immensely fortified by the fact that he also left behind a legacy of recordings that are considered the emotional apex of the genre itself.
     These recordings - including “Love in Vain,” “Crossroads,” “Stop Breaking Down” and “Sweet Home Chicago” - have not only entered the realm of blues standards, but have been adapted by rock & roll artists as diverse as the Rolling Stones, Steve Miller, Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton.
     As a young man, Johnson lived on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he idolized the Delta recording star Lonnie Johnson, sometimes introducing himself to newcomers as “Robert Lonnie, one of the Johnson brothers.” Scrapper Blackwell, Skip James and Kokomo Arnold were also inspirational to young Johnson and he drew from their styles to help shape his own. His slide technique certainly came from hours of watching local stars like Charley Patton and Son House, among others, but perhaps his biggest influence came from an unrecorded bluesman named Ike Zinneman.
     Zinneman never recorded so no one will ever know what his music sounded like. There are documented reports that he liked to practice late at night in the local graveyard, sitting on tombstones while he strummed away. It is also known that after a year or so under Zinneman’s tutelage, Johnson returned with an encyclopedic knowledge of his instrument, an ability to sing and play in a multiplicity of styles and a very carefully worked out approach to song construction, keeping his original lyrics with him in a personal digest.
     To a man, there was only one explanation as how Johnson had gotten that good, that fast: He had sold his soul to the Devil. He received instructions to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery’s plantation at midnight. There he was met by the Devil who took the form of a large Black man. The stranger took the guitar from Johnson, tuned it and handed it back to him. Within less than a year’s time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.
     As success came with live performances and phonograph recordings, Johnson was constantly haunted by nightmares of hellhounds on his trail. He found release from his pain and mental anguish only in the writing and performing of his music. Just as he was about to be brought to Carnegie Hall to perform in John Hammond’s first Spirituals to Swing concert, the news had come from Mississippi; Robert Johnson was dead, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend while playing a jook joint. Those who were there swear he was last seen alive foaming at the mouth, crawling around on all fours, hissing and snapping at onlookers like a mad dog. His dying words were, “I pray that my redeemer will come and take me from my grave.” He was buried in a pine box in an unmarked grave, his deal with the Devil at an end.
     In the intervening years since his death in 1938 at the age of 26, Johnson’s name and likeness has become a cottage growth merchandising industry. Reissues of the 41 original recordings that he made (including out-takes) posters, postcards, t-shirts, guitar picks, strings, straps and polishing cloths - all bearing either his likeness or signature (taken from his second marriage certificate) - have become available, making him the ultimate blues commodity with his image being reproduced for profit far more than any contemporary bluesman, dead or alive.

Sources:

All Music Guide.
Liner notes from “Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings,” Columbia.

Recordings on File by: Robert Johnson, Taj Mahal.

Sing Low Sweet Chariot

In West Africa the Gods of the river, of the thunder, of the sea, of the wind, of love, of death and of ancestral spirits accompanied, punished, and protected every individual in his daily life. Their worship filled the year with brilliant ceremony and encouraged every person to express himself, in songs, in dance, and in acts of self-dramatization.
     In America all these local, tribal and personal protectors were far away, powerless and dumb, and the satisfactory pattern of ritual and dance and song was shattered. African vaudou (which continued to flourish in Catholic areas such as Haiti and Louisiana) survived in Protestant areas only in scraps of black magic. The slaves, impressed by the power of the white man’s God and feeling the need of some fixed point in a situation deprived of most human values, embraced the faith of their Protestant masters and became ardent Baptists and Methodists.
     Some planters did not allow their slaves to hold religious meetings, fearing, quite correctly, that Christian-Democratic ethics would put rebellious ideas into their heads. Other planters encouraged conversion of their slaves so long as “obey your masters” was made the primary religious doctrine.
     Many sincere white Christians welcomed their black slaves into the fellowship of Christ, and, as time passed, this condition became more and more general. By the time of the Civil War, the vast majority of the slaves were practicing Christians, and their African approach to religion attracted the whites to the singing meetings where spirituals like “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” were born.
     In the case of “Swing Low” however, some folklorists suggest that slaves originally sung, “Swing Low, Sweet Harriet,” as a literal plea for Harriet Tubman to swing into the deep South and lead them to freedom. The “chariot” in the song may have been inserted to mask the reference to Tubman, one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad.
     Tubman herself was a slave, but she escaped in 1849 and led more than 300 others to freedom, reportedly forcing the timid ahead with a loaded revolver. She was a friend of the principal abolitionists, and John Brown almost certainly confided his Harpers Ferry plan to her. In the Civil War, Harriet Tubman attached herself to the Union forces in coastal South Carolina, serving as a nurse, laundress, and spy.

Sources: