Songnotes

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A Companion to the Old Town School Songbook

Compiled and edited byMark Dvorak.

Wabash Cannonball

In America, the railroad itself became folklore. From the Catskills to the Cascades the continent was strung with steel like a great harp, singing of money and power to the railroad barons but, for the poor, making a different music. The mule-skinner in the Mississippi bottoms timed his long days by the whistle of the passing trains. The mountaineer, penned up by his Southern hills, heard the trains blowing down in the valley and dreamed of the big world “out yonder.” The blue-noted whistles made a man miss pretty women he'd never seen. Boys in hick towns, lost on the prairie, heard the locomotives snorting and screaming in the night and they knew they were bound for small town stagnation only for the lack of a railroad ticket.
From the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s, no subject produced more American music than the railroads. Folk ballads like “John Henry,” “Casey Jones” and “Old ‘97” were popular across the country. A cycle of powerful work songs for every aspect of railroad building emerged form the crews who built and maintained the lines. Spirituals like “This Train” and “All Night Long” were sung by congregations and love songs like “Down in the Valley” and “Careless Love” were common to entertainers and indigenous singers alike. Blues verses without number were composed and improvised upon - indeed the blues might be said to be half-African and half-locomotive rhythm - and an endless string jazz tunes and pop songs such as “Yancey’s Special,” “Blues in the Night,” “Chatanooga Choo-Choo,” “The Fireball Mail” and “Tuxedo Junction” filled the dance halls, night clubs and airwaves.
But of all the songs inspired by the rhythm and romance of the railroad, “The Wabash Cannonball” is perhaps the grand-daddy. The lineage of this classic pre-dates the birth of the recording industry, if not the advent of the phonograph itself. There have been hobo versions, hillbilly versions, country versions, city versions, western versions and versions from Roy Acuff to Lawrence Welk.

Sources:

The Folk Songs of North America, by Alan Lomax, Doubleday.
Liner notes from “When Steam Was King,” written by Larry Penn. Cookie Man Music.

Recordings on File by: Carter Family, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Flatt & Scruggs.

Water Is Wide

Pete Seeger probably has had a greater influence on the development of modern folk music than any other single individual. The son of musicologist Charles Seeger, he began playing the banjo in his teens, soon turning to the five-string version that would become his trademark.
     He hooked up with Woody Guthrie in the late 1930s, and the two formed the politically oriented Almanac Singers with several other folk singers to promote unions and condemn fascism. He was a cofounder of such organizations as People’s Songs (which is now Sing Out! Magazine) and People’s Artists. In 1948 he formed the folk group The Weavers, which scored massive hits with “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene,” and “On Top of Old Smoky” before losing its record contract and bookings during the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s.
     Seeger refused to testify before the House Committee on Unamerican Activities and was charged with contempt of Congress, winning his case in 1962. By that time, he had made numerous solo albums for Folkways and more Weavers albums for Vanguard. In 1961, he signed to Columbia Records, staying with the label until the end of the decade.
     Seeger was a major force at the Newport Folk Festivals and a promoter of upcoming talent. His marathon-length concerts included Spanish songs, African songs, Negro work songs, new protest songs, and old folk songs, sometimes with rewritten lyrics. And he got everyone singing along, often in multi-part harmony. Seeger's own songs, sometimes adaptations from other sources, became hits for others: “If I Had a Hammer” for Trini Lopez and Peter, Paul, & Mary; “Turn! Turn! Turn!” for The Byrds but he was also known for his hit version of Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes,” for “We Shall Overcome,” for “Guantanamera,” and for dozens more.
     In 1969, Seeger launched the sloop Clearwater and formed a group to help clean up the Hudson River. He has maintained a busy appearance schedule into his octogenarian years, much of it given over to benefits for a variety of causes.
     “The Water is Wide” is one of the many traditional folk songs that Seeger has adapted and sung with audiences around the world. He writes of the tune: “This song has been one of the most widely known love laments in Britain. I learned this version from my sister Peggy more than thirty-five years ago. I put it in 4/4 time with the sonority of the twelve string guitar in dropped D tuning, and added a sixth verse to the song. I tend to point out that we have oceans of misunderstanding between the peoples of this world.”

Sources:

All Music Guide.
Liner notes from “Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger,” Appleseed Recordings. 1998.

Recordings on File by: Pete Seeger, Various artists.

Waterbound

“Waterbound” is a play-party song from Grayson County, Virginia, that has since become a favorite of fiddlers and banjo pickers throughout the country. The verses relate to the idea of a mountain frolic that goes until morning because the creek bed road has washed out.
“Waterbound” was recorded in 1938 by the famous Bogtrotters Band of Galax who undoubtedly spread the song about. The “B” part of the instrumental version suggests that the tune may hark back to the well-known “Buffalo Gals.”

Source: “Sing Out!” Magazine.
Recordings on File by: Michael Cooney, Art Thieme.

Wayfaring Stranger

The American Revolution meant not only the promise of freedom from British rule, for many it also meant the promise of religious freedom. The Revolution of 1776 marked the first instance in the history of Christendom that a people had won full liberty in the religious phase of their culture. Membership in the Protestant faiths mushroomed between the years 1783 and 1800.
     These worshippers were not only religious radicals, but they were also carrying out a musical revolution. They needed songs to match their soaring emotions. The result was they threw out the old Psalms and, as had happened in every revolution in the Christian church, brought folk tunes into the hymn books. Ballad tunes, jigs, marches and love songs were again put into the service of the Lord solemnly dressed up with religious texts that spoke directly to the woes and problems of the individuals who sang them.
     The makers of hymnals collected and compiled these new songs into the “shaped note” system of notation where the notes on the page were distinguished by their shape as well as their position. In the early 1800s this singing tradition took root as The Sacred Harp movement.
     The Sacred Harp singing movement once involved hundreds of thousands of singers in its meetings and to this day these gatherings still produce a most remarkable type of American singing.
     The meetings were, and are run in strict parliamentary fashion with every singer given the opportunity to lead two or three songs. The songs are arranged for four part harmony singing and the singers form themselves into a hollow square pattern - basses, altos, tenors and trebles on their respective sides. The leader gives the number of the hymn he prefers, and after the gathering has rustled through their fat Sacred Harp book to find the proper page, the leader intones a pitch, leads the congregation in a run through of the tune, and the group is off, singing in four part harmony at the top of their lungs.
     “Wayfaring Stranger” falls into the category of religious ballad and is a song for solo performance at a religious meeting or for group “shaped-note” singing.
     The song began to reach widespread popularity with secular, urban audiences when folk song collector, singer, and actor Burl Ives recorded it in the early 1940s--one of the earliest interpretive commercial folk recordings. Ives is an important figure in the popularization of folk music in the mid-1900s and was an artistic contemporary of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger before heading to Hollywood in the 1950s to pursue a film career. For a time, “Wayfaring Stranger” was synonymous with Ives’ grandfatherly image and he sung it throughout his life as one of his signature pieces (“Blue-Tailed Fly” was another).
     “Wayfaring Stranger” has remained popular with rural people throughout the South and it is certainly one of the most recognizable songs in the Anglo hymn tradition.

Sources:

Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
All Music Guide

Recordings on File by: Almeda Riddle, David Grisman, Emmy Lou Harris, Tim O’Brien & Dirk Powell.

Welcome Table

“Welcome Table” is an African-American spiritual with pre-Civil War roots. A spiritual is characteristically repetitive to be easily learned by a group or singers. The lyrics to “I'm Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table” speak of a better day when the singer will be able to “walk the streets of glory” and be “welcomed” to the dinner table of just souls.
During the Civil Rights demonstrations of the 1960s, many of the older spirituals were revived. Their repetitive structure again served impromptu groups of marchers and singers well. And the subject matter of “I'm On My Way,” “Study War No More” and “Welcome Table” spoke directly to the worldly concerns of the freedom marchers.

Source: “Sing Out!” Magazine.
Recordings on File by: Brownie McGhee, Various artists.

When the Saints

In the years before emancipation, it was not uncommon for backwoods slave owners to bring their slaves to summer revival meetings. Here the slaves could freely participate in the meeting, contribute to the singing and to the general excitement of the occasion.
“Old Ship of Zion” was commonly sung at such a revival and was one of the first songs to cross the race line from white camp-meeting hymn to African American spiritual. Black singers have used the melody to create an entire family of spirituals - ”The Gospel Train,” “The Whole Round World,” “Way Beyond the Sun,” and the best known of all, “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
It's ironic that over the years “The Saints” has become an international hot jazz standard. The New Orleans jazz men, most of whom came from good religious homes, would never jazz up the normal spiritual, but “The Saints” was an exception. It had already been turned into a red-hot revival tune.

Source: The Folk Songs of North America, by Alan Lomax, Doubleday.
Recordings on File by: Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Weavers.

When Things Go Wrong

In terms of his musical skill, the sheer size of his repertoire, the length and variety of his career and his influence on contemporaries and musicians who would follow, Big Bill Broonzy is among a select few of the most important figures in recorded blues history. Among his hundreds of titles are standards like “All By Myself” and “Key to the Highway.” In this country he was instrumental in the growth of the Chicago Blues sound, and his travels abroad rank him as one of the leading blues ambassadors.
     Born literally on the banks of the Mississippi, he was one of a family of 17 who learned to fiddle on a homemade instrument. Taught by his uncle, he was performing by age ten at social functions and in church. After brief stints on the pulpit and in the Army, he moved to Chicago where he switched his attention from violin to guitar, playing with elders like Papa Charlie Jackson. Broonzy began his recording career with Paramount in 1927. In the early ‘30s he waxed some brilliant blues and hokum and worked Chicago and the road with great players like pianist Black Bob, guitarist Will Weldon and Memphis Minnie.
     During the Depression years Big Bill Broonzy continued full steam ahead, recording continually for Paramount, Bluebird, Columbia and Okeh. In addition to solo efforts, he contributed his muscular guitar licks to recordings by Bumble Bee Slim, John Lee, Sonny Boy Williamson and others who were forging a powerful new Chicago sound.
     The early 1940s found Broonzy barnstorming the South with Lil Green’s road show or kicking back in Chicago with Memphis Slim. He continued alternating stints in Chicago and New York with coast-to-coast road work until 1951 when live performances and recording dates overseas earned him considerable notoriety in Europe and led to worldwide touring. Back in the States he recorded for Chess, Columbia and Folkways, working with a spectrum of artists from Blind John Davis to Pete Seeger. In 1955, Big Bill Blues, his life as told to Danish writer Yannick Bruynoghe, was published.
     In 1957, after one more British tour, the pace began to catch up with Broonzy. He spent the last year of his life in and out of hospitals and succumbed to cancer in 1958. He survives though; not only in his music, but in the remembrances of people who knew him - from Muddy Waters to Studs Terkel. A gentle giant they say, “tough enough to survive the blues world, but not so tough he wouldn't give a struggling young musician the shirt off his back.”
     Throughout his career, Broonzy sang blues, work songs, spirituals, hollers, folk songs and popular standards, but he mostly sang blues. His music, of course, is absolutely basic to the blues experience. He composed over three hundred blues (most of which he recorded) in his lifetime and sang the definitive blues numbers of his generation: LeRoy Carr’s, “In the Evenin’ (When the Sun Goes Down),” Big Maceo’s “Worried Life Blues,” Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues,” and Tampa Red’s “When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too.)”

Sources:

All Music Guide
Liner notes from “The Bill Broonzy Story.” Verve, 1960 & 1999.

Recordings on File by: Big Bill Broonzy, Jim Craig.

Wild Rover

This traditional ballad is known both in Australia and the United States. It appears to have grown out of an old English street ballad, “The Green Bed,” which told of the adventures of a sailor in an uncharitable boarding house. Australian versions, however, are more prevalent than the American, and it is possible there may have been a certain amount of direct swapping between Australians and Americans.
To this day, “The Wild Rover” is still popular in English speaking pubs world wide. It has been recorded many times by a plethora of artists including, The Clancy Brothers and Burl Ives.

Source: The Collected Reprints from Sing Out! Volumes 1964-73, Sing Out Publications.
Recordings on File by: Burl Ives.

Wildwood Flower

For generations now, “The Wildwood Flower” has been one of the most popular songs amongst guitar pickers in the country, for both instrumental performance and just practice. Although it can be heard widely, almost all the present versions can be traced to the original Carter Family recordings by means of recognizing the tune, the distinctive guitar arrangement, as well as the particularly odd wording used in the poetry.
It's a parlor song first published in the United States in 1888 under the title, “I'll Twine Mid the Ringlets” (words by Maude Irving, music by J. B. Webster) and well known prior to the Carter Family’s 1928 recording.

Sources:

Old-Time Stringband Songbook, Oak Publications.
The Bluegrass Songbook, By Peter Wernick. Oak Publications.

Recordings on File by: Carter Family, David Grisman & Tony Rice, Sonny Osborne, Weisberg, Paley & Rosenbaum.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken” was sung for many years as “Can The Circle Be Unbroken” and is one of the most enduring and popular sacred songs in the American folk tradition. One source says it was composed in 1908, but more than likely, “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” has been around since African and Anglo Americans first began “borrowing” each other’s music.
In the 1920s, when phonograph players first began appearing in many American homes, “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” was recorded by a number of groups including the Metropolitan Quartet, the Silver Leaf Quartet of Norfolk, VA and The Carter Family. It was the Carters who probably changed the title from “Can,” to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

Source: The Collected Reprints from Sing Out! Volumes 1964-73, Sing Out Publications.
Recordings on File by: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band & Others, Frank Profitt, Various artists, Doc Watson with Clint Howard & Fred Price.

Will You Go Lassie, Go

The lyrics to “Will You Go Lassie,” or as it's sometimes known “Wild Mountain Thyme,” are by Scottish poet Robert Tannahill (1774-1810) of Paisley. The poem is called “The Braes of Balquidder,” (pronounced “Balwhither”) which was printed as early as 1742. Tannahill’s version first appeared in a collection of songs in the Pocket Encyclopedia of Scotch, English, and Irish Songs in 1818. The song had circulated prior to that in magazines and to this day is one of the most enduring pieces to come out the British Isles song tradition.

Source: “Folk Music of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and America” site on the World Wide Web.
Recordings on File by: Joan Baez, Clancy Brothers, Jim McCann.

Wind and Rain

Folk music is viewed primarily as a rural tradition where songs are passed down by word of mouth. In fact, printed folk music was extremely popular for more than four hundred years, beginning in the sixteenth century. Words to popular songs were printed on sheets of varying lengths and became known as “broadsides.”
     No music was printed on a broadside, only the words. A note was usually added indicating to which well known tune the words were to be sung. Broadsides were popular in Britain, Holland, France, Italy, Spain and Germany and later in colonial America. Interestingly, many early scholars distinguished between traditional ballads and broadsides, considering broadsides “bad representations of the original.”
     “Wind and Rain” first appeared on a broadside in 1656 as “The Miller and the King’s Daughter.” Folk song collector Francis Child has noted 21 different versions of the tune and story, most commonly recognized as “The Twa Sisters” (Child ballad #10).
     The haunting theme of a musical instrument being fashioned from the bones and hair of a murder victim is not uncommon in old world balladry. But the instrument naming the murderer is a super-natural element to the story which seems to have been forgotten by American singers.

Sources:

Folk Music of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and America site.
“Sing Out!” Magazine.

Recordings on File by: George & Gerry Armstrong, Jerry Garcia & David Grisman, Jeff Warner & Jeff Davis.

Worried Man Blues

“I always just called the blues, plain old bein’ lonesome,” said Woody Guthrie when interviewed for the Library of Congress. “Now, a lot of people don't think that that's a big enough word - but then, you can get lonesome for a lot of things.
     “People down where I come from, they're lonesome for a job, they're lonesome for some spendin’ money, lonesome for some drinkin’ whiskey, lonesome for good times, pretty gals - wine, women and song like they see stuck up in their faces every day by other people.
     “Thinkin’ maybe that you're down and out - disgusted and busted and can't be trusted, gives you a lonesome feeling that somehow the world’s sorta turned against you or there's somethin’ about it you don't understand. Bein’ out of work. Bein’ lonesome.”
     Guthrie learned “Worried Man Blues” from the Carter Family record which circulated the song widely in the early 1930s. It isn't a blues in the classic sense of a 12 bar format, but the lyrics express the same emotions as a blues and it was most certainly born form the African-American experience in America.
     Its structure indicates that it's a musical relative of other early 16 measure blues like, “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad,” “Easy Rider,” “Pallet on the Floor” and “Careless Love.” Each verse is sixteen measures in length, with the first line repeated 3 times and the “punch” or rhyming line as the fourth and final line of the stanza.
     In the late ‘50s, folk music experienced an upswing in popularity on college campuses across America. This Folk Revival brought many aging stars, and many older songs back into the spotlight. The Kingston Trio used the same tune but updated the lyrics to “Worried Man Blues” for their smash-hit record of the song.

Sources: