"Burl Ives Presents
America's Musical Heritage"
114 Best Loved Songs & Ballads for Listening, Singing and Reading
A Treasury of American Folk Songs & Ballads
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Heart Songs:
American Folk Creations
Introduction
After the Revolutionary War a growing number of songs were composed in the United States: anonymous ballads, hymns – and professional songs for the entertainment field. Even these songs were taken up by the people and sung apart from any printed copies, so that the imagination and memory of the singers worked on the songs to develop them into American folk songs. The anonymous ballads have a poetic quality quite unlike those that become “folk” from other sources.
Some of these new songs were completely original and some were variations of old songs made to fit new conditions. These new, or partially new, songs came out of the experiences the new country offered. There were children’s songs, love songs, ballads and play songs. There was a creative ferment and energy which found expression in singing and produced humor, beauty, anecdote, and social comment. The more religious communities, of which there were many, did not allow dancing. As a substitute, games became the social diversion. The games were group movements made to songs known as play-party songs. The songs were catchy and provided an easy verse form to which new lines could be made up.
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Side One:
Lolly Tu Dum
The dialogue tradition of singing which had come over from the British Isles persisted in songs that originated in the Hills or on the Frontier. Early marriages were of necessity the rule for young pioneer girls, partly because of the lack of women and partly because of the difficulty of the life they were forced to lead. Not unlike “Billy Boy” in context, with a distinctively humorous American quality, this song is from Harlan County, the famous Kentucky region where Cecil Sharpe found so many variants of British folk songs.
Down In The Valley
The isolation of the mountaineers not only preserved the traditional old ballads from Great Britain but lead to so existence of songs which are associated particularly with mountain singing. The Birmingham Jail verse may or may not be a part of the original, just as the song may or may not be of basic Negro origin. Its anonymity fixes it definitely in the true folk category. As the song tells, when the whistle of the locomotive began to be heard in the rough hill country of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, the isolation of the mountain folk was broken.
The Sow Took The Measles
The resourcefulness of a frontier settler is humorously told in this song. William Cobbett reported in London in 1818: “Besides the great quantity of work performed by the American, his skill, the versatility of his talent, is a great thing. Every man can use an axe, a saw, and a hammer. Very few indeed, who cannot kill and dress pigs and sheep, and many of them oxen and calves. Every farmer is a neat butcher; a butcher for market; and, of course, the boys must learn. This is a great convenience. It makes you so independent as to a main part of the means of housekeeping. All are ploughman. In short, a good labourer here can do anything that is to be done upon a farm.”
Old Bangam
This early English narrative ballad about a knight who rescues a lady in distress by killing a wild boar has changed over the years, in the United States, into a song fit for children. This version is often used as a lullaby in the South.
Mr. Rabbit
“Brer Rabbit” is a Negro plantation creation which has conquered the world. This little song has lost its dialect and its buffoonery. It is a haunting, simple religious affirmation.
Hush Little Baby
This lullaby seems to have originated in America, although versions of it are now known in many parts of the English speaking world. Its tenderness, the playfulness of its total concept more than make up for the every-day nature of the gifts described.
Sourwood Mountain
Many early reel tunes such as this one contained the melody for song just as various tunes were taken up by the fiddlers, their words forgotten and dance tunes created. “Sourwood Mountain” is basically a “fiddling tune” and it takes a great old-time fiddler to do it justice.
Old Blue
Dogs were no novelty on the frontier. They were, and are of course, part of a hunter’s life. In the Mid-West and West the hunting of raccoon and possum was from the first done with dogs. This song of an old man and his old dog Blue, with whom he had obviously done much hunting, is one of the great lyric expressions of a relationship.
Poor Little Turtle Dove
Throughout English and American song, the turtle dove is a recurrent theme, being as it is a symbol of true love. The imaginative lyrics of “Poor Little Turtle Dove” tell about a romantic encounter in images of the backwood hills.
Careless Love
In the song, “Careless Love,” we hear an early hint of a coming blues tradition. Although this song has been collected many times over in the mountain regions of America, there is evidence that in its earliest form it was sung by the Negro roustabouts of the Ohio River Packet Boats. It is the earliest song we have that is a precursor of the later blues tradition. The Negro roustabouts of the mid-western rivers developed a number of work and narrative songs, the latter usually about women as in “Careless Love.”
Side Two:
John Henry
The bigger-than-life folk figure, the man of more-than-human prowess came out of the period of American humor and tall-story development. The lumberjacks have Paul Bunyan, the rivermen have Mike Fink, and the sailor, Storm-along. The railroad workers have their “John Henry,” who was so strong that he beat a stream drill. As the story of a man pitted against growing mechanization, this story is relevant to the plight of many today.
Note similarity of verses to verses in “John Hardy.”* As is so often the case in folk songs, images from one song are put into creation of a new song so that a fluid creative exchange takes place by virtue of the public ownership of the image.
*John Hardy – Volume VI
Buckeye Jim
A lullaby, a bit of fantasy, a gem of imagery … all describe this Southern mountain song with its strange delightful quality.
The Leather-Winged Bat
This song is native to the Southern states. Imputing human emotions or aspirations to animals is, in this case, responsible for an eloquent expression of some basic question.
Cotton-Eyed Joe
“Cotton-Eyed Joe” is found in many forms. It can be a square dance or hoe-down or a tender, haunting song.
Darlin’ Cory
This song is an excellent example of the “white” blues of the Kentucky hills. It is associated with the group of songs that have been happily termed “Lonesome Tunes,” personalized expression of intense feeling in the folk idiom. Aside from the haunting call to another person, this song is alive with the realities of mountain living.
Turkey In The Straw (Zip Coon)
This parody of “Old Zip Coon,” a song hit introduced at the Bowery Theatre in New York in 1834, has outlasted the original and is, of course, a famous instrumental piece for country dances everywhere. This is a classic example of a popular tune as the source of a true folk song.
I’m Goin’ Away
This is a slim fragment of a song which once existed in hundreds of forms throughout the American frontier. Although the separation of two lover is a universal theme, this particular expression of a lover’s farewell is based distinctly on an old British ballad.
Needles Eye
All over the United States they learned English folk dances and country dance. They learned the “Countre Dances” where two lines formed and danced opposite each other. They learned the Quadrille (quadrangular in form) and Square Dances (done in square formation). They also learned Jigs from Ireland, Reels from Scotland, and Hornpipes from England. The dance manager who called the steps had wide employment, and many a song developed out of this dance music. But many communities found dancing sinful. Games to music were substituted … and so came the “Play-Party Songs” of which these songs are often-played examples.
Go In And Out The Window
Saturday Night and Sunday Too
A plaintive Negro melody full of beauty, expressing the ideas and images that can fill a man’s mind when he is at leisure from work on Saturday night, and Sunday too.
Frankie and Johnny
The universal theme of love betrayed and revenge taken is celebrated in song and story the world over. The story of “Frankie and Johnny” is the great American classic on this theme. Supposedly based on a St. Louis shooting in the latter part of the 19th Century, the story has gone though many changes in which the man’s name has been Albert or Johnny, his sweetheart’s name Nellie Bly (or Nellie Blys), Alice Fly, Katie Fry, etc.
