7L. Careless Love Roud 422 (Reckless Love; Kelly's Love; Careless Love Blues; Times Ain't Like They Used To Be) (also Dink's Song)
Close-Up (poor resolution) of Careless Love; painting by Richard L. Matteson Jr. 2007
[This famous song from the American south has been adapted by a number of genres in the US and abroad. The song is identified by this stanza sometimes used as its chorus:
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
Oh look what careless love has done[1].
Although a number of floating stanzas have been attached to Careless Love and in some versions its identifying stanza and theme have been lost, this song/ballad was either derived from or has stanzas similar to the "Died for Love" Songs and in particular the "apron" stanzas relating to the maid's pregnancy as found in the British "Brisk Young Lover," "Alehouse" and "I Wish, I Wish" songs.
It's clear "what careless love has done." The maid is pregnant and bewails her pregnant condition. If she'd have listened to what mama said, she would be sleeping in Mama's bed[2]. Instead she must face the stigma associated with being an unwed mother- not a happy proposition either in Scotland or rural Appalachia. As in the Died for Love songs she faces the prospect of being abandoned. Here's a stanza sung by Miss Grace Hahn, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1941[3]:
Go hand me down my old valise,
And bundle up my dirty clothes,
And if my momma asks about me
Just tell her I'm sleeping out of doors.
Many of the standard Careless Love stanzas directly correspond to those found in the Died for Love songs. It's already clear that the "apron" stanza are related. Now consider these other stanzas from Mrs. Lillian Short, Galena, MO, 1942, Randolph C (in blue are corresponding lines from British versions):
Ain't this enough to break my heart, (3 times) [It's a grief to me]
To see my man with another sweetheart? [He takes another girl on his knee]
Now my money's spent and gone (3 times) [She has more gold than I]
You pass my door a-singing a song. [He passes the door but won't stop in]
Oh I love my mamma and my papa too (3 times) [I'd leave my mother, I'd leave my father]
But I'd leave them both and go with you. [I'd leave them all to go with you]
In 1917 Cecil Sharp collected the first extant version with melody in Appalachia (Kentucky). It was not included in the 1932 edition of "English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachian" but is found in his MS online. It's first stanza is taken from 7A Sailor Boy while the last two stanzas are the "apron" stanzas.
Careless Love- sung by Mrs. Relaford of Barbourville, Kentucky on May 9, 1917.
Papa, papa, build me a boat
Papa, papa, build me a boat
Across the water I will float.
CHORUS: Love, O love, O careless love
Love, O love, O careless love,
It's hard to love and can't be loved.
I'm going to Tennessee
I'm going to Tennessee
To see that girl that cannot see me.
CHORUS: Love, O love, O careless love
Love, O love, O careless love,
It's hard to love and can't be loved.
Mama, mama, hold your tongue,
Mama, mama, hold your tongue,
You loved the little boys when you were young
CHORUS: Love, O love, O careless love
Love, O love, O careless love,
It's hard to love and can't be loved.
Now I wear my apron pinned,
Now I wear my apron pinned,
They pass the door and won't come in.
CHORUS: Love, O love, O careless love
Love, O love, O careless love,
It's hard to love and can't be loved.
When I wore my apron low,
When I wore my apron low,
They'd followed me through rain and snow.
CHORUS: Love, O love, O careless love
Love, O love, O careless love,
It's hard to love and can't be loved.
In 1926 W.C. Handy copyrighted a version of "Careless Love" with folk lyrics as he presumably knew the song from his early days in Kentucky. Handy said in his Autobiography that he played the song in Bessemer Alabama in 1892 and that it had "since become popular all over the South."
Careless Love- W. C. Handy's folk lyrics, 1926
If I were a little bird
I'd fly from tree to tree;
I'd build my nest way up in the air
Where the bad boys could not bother me.
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
Love, oh love, oh careless love.
You've broke the heart of a a many poor girl
But you'll never break this heart of mine.
When I wore my apron low,
When I wore my apron low,
When I wore my apron low,
He always passed right by my door.
Now I wear my apron high,
Now I wear my apron high,
Now I wear my apron high,
And he never never passes by.
The first stanza is from "Little Birdie" a regional folk song while the last two stanzas are the part of "apron" stanzas. Handy published several versions, which will be covered later, but this version reflects the older texts found in the Appalachians in the 1800s. The relationship with Died for Love is much clearer in this version. John Jacob Niles in his 1932 article, "White Pioneers and Black" in The Musical Quarterly, quotes Handy's version and gives his father's version which probably dates back to the late 1800s in Louisville:
"The singers in the Southern Appalachians have odd rhythms, and they do repeat; but there is very little similarity between what they sing and how they sing it and what the Negro sings and how he sings it. Occasionally one finds the same verses sung in both. In practically every case it is a song that was originally a white man's song and has been adapted and sung over into the Negro idiom.
One example is my father's version of "Careless Love":
When you pass by my door I hang my head and cry,
When my apron string I bow
You pass my door and say hello
Buy when my apron string I pin
You pass my door and won't come in.
Don't never trust no railroad man,
He'll break your heart if he but can,
He'll take your love and go his way
Not meaning anything he say.
Some day my apron string I'll tie
And then I'll lay right down and die,
And you won't know 'cause down in Hell
The Devil's mean, he will not tell.
Unfortunately Niles is not an entirely reliable informant and tends to recreate his texts. Regardless, his father's version from northern Kentucky has the "apron strings" stanzas despite the corrupt mixture of text from at least two other songs. Niles attributes Handy's form of 3 repeated lines and a rhyming last line to the blues but clearly this is a folk form that predates or evolved into the 12-bar blues.
Another version from Kentucky that was sung in the 1920s was posted by famed Appalachian traditional singer Jean Ritchie on the Mudcat discussion forum:
CARELESS LOVE-- as sung by the Ritchie Family in Knott County, Kentucky in the 1920s
Love O love, O careless love,
Love O love, O careless love,
Love O love, O careless love,
You see what love has done to me.
Gone and broke this heart of mine,(3x)
It'll break that heart of yours sometimes.
Sorrow, sorrow to my heart, (3x)
When me and my truelove must part.
Once I wore my apron low, (3x)
I could not keep you from my door.
Now I wear my apron high, (3x)
You pass my door and go on by.
I cried last night and the night before, (3x)
I'll cry tonight and cry no more.
O how I wish that train would come, (3x)
And take me back where I come from.
Love O love (repeat first verse to close)
Ritchie added this note: Some of the other verses given above worked themselves in over the years since then, but these are our basic verses. In the '50's, I sang with and recorded Jeannie Robertson, in Aberdeen. To my surprise she had a song which had some of these verses, among others we didn't have. One of her "matching" verses:
O it's when my apron it bided low,
My true love followed through frost and snow;
But noo my apron it is tae my chin-
And he passes my door, but he'll nae spier in.
The song Roberstson sang in Lomax's London flat around 1952 was her version of Died for Love, titled "What a Voice." Ritchie immediately heard and understood the intercontinental textual connection. Robertson's version was recorded a short time later in October, 1953 for Hamish Henderson and can be heard online at School of Scottish Studies. Jeannie learned it from her mother, Maria Stewart and her daughter Lizzie also sang a version. "What a Voice" is one of the great versions of Died for Love.
There are other examples of the relatedness of Careless Love and the Died for Love songs family. This first example is from another Kentucky singer who sang Butcher Boy with the melody and form of Careless Love:
The Butcher's Boy- sung by Aunt Molly Jackson of Kentucky in September 1935; recorded in New York City by Alan Lomax. Transcription R. Matteson 2017.
In Johnson City where I used to dwell,
In Johnson City where I used to dwell,
In Johnson City where I used to dwell,
There lived a boy I loved so well.
He courted me my heart away
He courted me my heart away
He courted me my heart away
And now with me he will not stay.
[It's a] grief to me I'll tell you why,
There lives some other girl in this town,
There lives some other girl in this town,
There lives some other girl in this town,
Where my love goes and sits him down.
Aunt Molly's version of Butcher Boy with the Careless Love melody and form and be heard at Internet Archive (online) in the Kentucky Lomax Collection.
Here's a composite version of two other Died for Love family members Sailor Boy and Careless Love which was collected by my grandfather Maurice Matteson and Mellinger Henry. My grandfather was leading vocal music at Southern Music Vocal Camp at Banner Elk in the summer 1933 where he met Henry. Mellinger was a good collector but he couldn't write music, so he persuaded my grandfather to help him. That persuasion ended up becoming the first of my grandfather's folk music books, Beech Mountain Folk Songs and Ballads:
CARELESS LOVE- sung by Edward Tufts, Banner Elk, NC, July 15, 1933 from Beech Mountain Folk Songs and Ballads, M. Henry and M. Matteson.
"Captain, Captain, tell me true:
Does my Willie sail with you?"
No, oh no, he's not with me-
He got drowned in the deep blue sea."
Refrain: Love, O love, O careless love,
Love, O love, how can it be?
Love, O love, O careless love,
To love someone that don't love me.
Love, O love, O love divine.
Love, O love, O love divine.
Love, O love, O love divine,
Lucile, you know you'll never be mine.
Refrain
Hail that captain as he passes,
Hail that captain as he passes,
Hail that captain as he passes,
That's him, I have my Willie at last.
Refrain
The refrain and last stanzas are in the Careless Love form even though the last stanza is related to the Sailor Boy text. The 1st stanza and others like it are from "Sailor Boy," the presumed antecedent of "Deep Blue Sea":
"Captain, Captain, tell me true:
Does my Willie sail with you?"
No, oh no, he's not with me--
He got drowned in the deep blue sea."
Curiously, a MS was given to Lees McRae College's "Folk Songs from Appalachia" collection by Margaret Tufts (Neal) dated 1930 which is unmistakably the same version. Both have the corruption "Lucille" (2nd stanza, last line) which should be "To see and know you'll never be mine." The Tufts' version resembles the first "Careless Love" country recording made in 1926 by Mac and Bob (McFarland and Gardner), two blind musicians who met in Louisville in 1915.
* * * *
Naturally, different floating blues and folk lyrics became attached to Careless Love that are not part of the fundamental "Died for Love" songs. By the 1920s stanzas about pregnancy were often replaced[4] and other floating stanzas were added:
I wish that eastbound train would run
I wish that eastbound train would run
I wish that eastbound train would run
And carry me back where I come from
Times ain't like they used to be
Times ain't like they used to be
Times ain't like they used to be
Carry me back to Tennessee[5].
Careless love was widely recorded in the 1920s and 30s by early country music artists. Guthrie Meade[6] lists 23 different early country recordings made between 1927 and 1938. These "country" versions were characterized by floating "blues" or "abandonment" type stanzas with the Careless Love chorus. Other traditional versions were collected with different floating lyrics from lover's farewell songs as in this stanza from Perrow (MS of 1909, Mississippi Whites):
I'm going to leave you now;
I'm going ten thousand miles.
If I go ten million more,
I'll come back to my sweetheart again[7].
These lyrics are from "Ten Thousand Miles" a different song[8], with a similar sentiment. Careless Love is listed as Roud 422 and unfortunately a number of different yet similar songs[9] called "True Lover's Farewell" are also part of Roud 422. In its original British form, this is not a lament about "a turtle dove" or "lonesome dove" that "flies from pine to pine." Neither is it a lover's farewell song about a lover "leaving and going away." The original British form has the "apron" stanzas found in Died for love. Careless Love's floating stanzas and the identifying stanza's attachment to different songs have obscured its origin. In certain genres the origin is largely forgotten and it's an old blues or jazz song or a sad railroad song.
Although based on the Died for Love stanzas and theme[10] (a maid becomes pregnant and is abandoned by her lover), there seems to be no evidence that "Love, oh love, oh careless love," has ever been found in the UK. On Peggy Seeger's website it says:
'Careless Love' descends from an English song 'You've Been Careless Love,' and she sings it in 3/4 time or waltz rhythm. The result sounds quite different from the more familiar tune variants associated with early African-American blues tradition[11].
However, this antecedent version has not been found. I had concluded after a brief study years earlier which has been corroborated gain recently that the identifying stanza and sometimes chorus "Love, oh love, oh careless love" is solely of American origin and was joined to the "Died for Love" stanzas known by the English and Scottish settlers. Whether the "Careless love" stanza was of African-American origin, a "black rivermen's song" as sung on sternwheeler Dick Fowler between Cairo and Paducah, or whether it was adapted from its British roots by white settlers during their westward expansion-- is unknown.
According to Malcolm Douglas[12]: "The tune is basically 'The Sprig of Thyme', and 'Careless Love' frequently includes floating verses familiar from songs like 'Died For Love'; so its antecedents are essentially British, though re-made in America with new stylistic influences."
Careless Love is closely associated with my 7D, "Every Night When The Sun Goes In[13]." Its form is also similar to a blues with a repeating opening line culminating with a rhyming answering line. In both songs, what began as an Appalachian folk song eventually became known as a blues. From a pre-blues form in the 1800s it became an early jazz song which became a jazz classic. This early blues or jazz version was performed by Bobby Bolden and others around New Orleans early in the 1900s[14]. One set of Bolden's lyrics were communicated by Susie Farr[15]:
Ain't it hard to love another woman's man,
Ain't it hard to love another woman's man,
You can't get him when you want him,
You have to catch him when you can.
Bolden's stanza is similar in some ways to Guthrie's "Hard Ain't it Hard" (see also Blue Eyed Boy) another floating stanza. One source, Jazzmen, stated[16], "Among the blues Bobby Bolden had to play every night was 'Careless Love Blues'. . . " This was corroborated by Willy Cornish in an interview with Charles Edward Smith[17]. Other interviews with turn of the century New Orleans musicians like Wooden Joe Nicholas, and John Joseph makes it clear that Careless Love was played and sung around 1900 in New Orleans by many local musicians. W.C. Handy, whose relationship with the song has been a long one, suggested that the song moved south to New Orleans from the Ohio River area of Kentucky. The "Father of the Blues[18]" played a version of it in Bessemer, Alabama in 1892 and the Lomaxes called it "one of the earliest blues[19]." In 1921 W. C. Handy[20] wrote "Loveless Love," using the tune and structure of "Careless Love." In his autobiography Handy said[21]:
"Loveless Love is another of my songs of which one part has an easily traceable folk ancestry. It was based on the Careless Love melody that I had played first in Bessemer in 1892 and that had since become popular all over the South."
Handy's daughter Katherine recorded "Loveless Love" for Paramount in 1922 backed by Handy's Memphis Blues Band. She included two verses of Handy's folk version which he copyrighted in 1926. Other early versions of Loveless Love include Noble Sissle & his Sizzling Syncopators, Alberta Hunter, Billy Holiday, and Fats Waller (instrumental). Handy recorded a version, singing the song himself, in 1939 on the Variety label. In his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues[22], Handy recalled an early performance of Careless Love:
"In Henderson I was told that the words of Careless Love were based on a tragedy in a local family, and one night a gentleman of that city's tobacco-planter aristocracy requested our band to play and sing this folk melody, using the following words:
You see what Careless Love has done,
You see what Careless Love has done
You see what Careless Love has done,
It killed the Governor's only son.
We did our best with these lines and then went into the second stanza:
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm,
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm,
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm
-But there the song ended. The police stepped in and stopped us. The song, they said, was a reflection on two prominent families. Careless Love had too beautiful a melody to be lost or neglected, however, and I was determined to preserve it.
The song that W.C. Handy sang that was stopped by the police is known as "Arch and Gordon," an obscure folk song about a double homicide in nearby Louisville, Kentucky. One full version was collected from Mrs. Wills Cline in Louisville in 1956 and published in a 1960 edition of the Kentucky Folklore Record[23]. The prominent families were the Fulton Gordon family and the family of Governor John Young Brown, whose son Archie was gunned down in 1895 in Louisville by Gordon for having an affair with Gordon's wife, Nellie. After murdering both Archie and his wife, Gordon was convicted of justifiable homicide and freed nine days later. Handy must have played the ballad about 1896-- shortly after the murders. The song is a parody of Careless Love and unlike the other collected versions of "Arch and Gordon[24]" uses the Careless Love chorus. Handy's autobiography continues:
[. . .] Having created a vogue for Careless Love, which John Niles calls Kelly's Love in his book of folk songs, I proposed to incorporate it in a new song with the verse in the three-line blues form. That week I went to Chicago, and while there I sat in Brownlee's barber shop and wrote Loveless Love, beginning with "Love is like a gold brick in a bunko game." There I wrote the music and made an orchestration which I took next door to Erskin Tate in the Vendome Theatre. His orchestra played it over, and it sounded all right. A copy was immediately sent to the printers.
Without waiting to receive a printed copy, however, I taught Loveless Love to Alberta Hunter, and she sang it at the Dreamland cabaret. It made a bull's-eye. Before Alberta reached my table on the night she introduced the song, her tips amounted to sixty-seven dollars. A moment later I saw another lady give her twelve dollars for "just one more chorus." I knew then and there that we had something on our hands and the later history of the song bore this out."
A $12 tip today would be about $168 and her $67 total tips would be $938-- not bad for an evening's singing! Handy's "Loveless Love" is not traditional but he published the traditional text he knew in 1926. His daughter recorded a version of Loveless Love in 1922 that still had two mostly traditional stanzas from Handy's old version-- one of which was not included in Handy's "traditional" text (see above). One line "We'd fly[25] on wings like Noah's dove," is remarkably close to the first line in Dink's Song-- a coincidence? The version "Careless love Blues," as sung by Bessie Smith in 1925, featured a couple lines from Handy but featured new words by Spencer Williams and Martha Koenig. Handy had contributed 1) the folk text that he knew in 1892 in Bessemer; 2) a partial text of "Arch and Gordon" with the Careless Love chorus c. 1896; 3) "Loveless Love," an original text based on the form and tune in 1921; and 4) "Careless Love Blues," with new text from Spencer Williams and Martha Koenig-- loosely based on Loveless Love, 1925.
Blues and jazz singers and early country recording artists weren't the only ones singing Careless Love. The folk song had spread in different forms from its Appalachian roots and had moved through the Ohio River Valley west and then southwest down the Mississippi River. Evident that Careless Love had left the mountains and rural south before the 1880s is found in the following bawdy version collected by Vance Randolph from an elderly gentleman, Mr J.E. Webster of Groves, Missouri on April 8, 1948 who learned it around 1880[26]:
What will Mammy say to me
What will Mammy say to me
What will Mammy say to me
When I go home with a big bell-ee?
I'll tell her to hold her tongue
I'll tell her to hold her tongue
I'll tell her to hold her tongue
She loved pecker when she was young.
Although Webster didn't sing the words "careless love" its clear that this is a version and that the ballad had reached Missouri by the post Civil War era. Other early versions featured floating stanzas from "True Lover's Farewell" also found in the "Lonesome Dove"/"Ten Thousand Miles" songs and in the next example floating stanzas from Child 76 are found. The same "Who will Shoe" stanzas which are also found in the related 7F. "My Blue Eyed Boy" variants. This example was collected in 1909 for E.C. Perrow in Mississippi which he later published in the JAF[27].
CARELESS LOVE (From Mississippi; country whites; MS. of R. J. Slay; 1909.)
I'm going to leave you now;
I'm going ten thousand miles.
If I go ten million more,
I'll come back to my sweetheart again.
Love, oh, love! 'tis careless love {twice)
You have broken the heart of many a poor boy,
But you will never break this heart of mine.*
I cried last night when I come home {twice)
I cried last night and night before;
I'll cry to-night; then I'll cry no more.
Who will shoe your pretty feet?
And who will glove your hand?
Who will kiss your red rosy cheeks?
When I am in that far-off land?
"Pa will shoe my pretty little feet;
Ma will glove my hand;
You may kiss my red rosy cheeks,
When you come from that far-off land."
Besides Missouri and Mississippi a unique traditional version of Careless Love had made its way to the Brazos River in Texas by 1908. In its original form[28] this peculiar version probably just had the apron stanzas, which were reported by Francis Lee Utley in 1962[29]:
Along the Brazos River Lomax found Dink, a Negro woman busy washing her man's clothes. Encouraged by a bottle of gin, she sang the sobbing refrain of a woman deserted by her man:
When I wore my apron low,
Couldn't keep you from my do'
Fare-you-well, O honey, fare-you-well!
Now I wears my apron high,
Sca'cely ever see you passin' by.
Fare-you-well, O honey, fare-you-well!
Now my apron's up to my chin,
You pass my do' an' you won't come in.
Fare-you-well, O honey, fare-you-well!
"Dink's Song," will be covered in detail as my 7La. and has been widely recorded and discussed. Another important version was collected in Mississippi about 1909 by Howard Odum, who published it in his article "Folk song and Folk-poetry as found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes" [The Journal of American Folk-lore No. 43, 1911]. "Kelly's" is an obvious mishearing of "Careless":
42. Kelly's Love. In "Kelly's Love" the note of disappointed love is sounded:
|: Love, Kelly's love, :| (three times)
You broke de heart o' many a girl,
You never break dis heart o' mine.
|: When I wo' my aprons low, : | (three times)
Couldn't keep you from my do'.
|: Now I weahs my aprons high, :| (three times)
Sca'cely ever see you passin' by.
|: Now I weahs my aprons to my chin, :| (three times)
You pass my do', but can't come in.
|: See what Kelly's love have done. :| (three times)
See what Kelly's love have done.
|: If I had listened to what my mamma said, :| (three times)
I would a been at home in mamma's bed.
About the same time, nearby along the Louisiana-Texas border area, an African-American singer nicknamed Leadbelly learned a similar version which was recorded much later in 1948 at his last sessions (Folkways) on his 12-string guitar:
CARELESS LOVE- Sung by Leadbelly in 1948, learned in Louisiana and/or Texas in the early 1900s.
[Instr.]
[spoken] This is what a girl sings to her boyfriend:
[sings] Can't you see what that careless love has done,
Can't you see what that careless love has done,
Can't you see what that careless love has done,
You made me love you, now your girl friend done come.
When I was wearin', my apron so low,
When I was wearin', my apron so low,
When I was wearin', my, apron so low,
I couldn't keep you, away from my door.
Now when my apron up under my chin,
Now when my apron up under my chin,
When my apron, oh Lord up, under my chin,
You would pass my door and but you won't come in.
Can't you see what that old careless love will do,
Can't you see what that old careless love will do,
Can't you see what that old careless love will do,
It can mistreat you, your mama and papa too.
I love my mama and my papa too,
You know I love my mama and my papa too,
I love my mama and I love my papa too,
But I left them both to go along with you.
[inst.]
Goodbye, goodbye, baby goodbye,
Goodbye, goodbye, baby goodbye, (spoken: she don't want to see him no more)
Goodbye, goodbye, if I never see you no more,
You know you drove me away from your door.
Although Leadbelly's recollections of where and when he learned his songs aren't accurate, it's likely he learned the song when he was young-- he says "a young boy." What's amazing is-- Leadbelly's "Careless Love" still clings tenaciously to its British roots. In the 1920s the folk verses associated with its British antecedent would change. In 1928 two new influential traditional recordings were made by African-American singers. Both featured 2nd generation singers playing a guitar and showed new stanzas influenced by regional blues. Lonnie Johnson (b. February 8, 1899) of New Orleans played his version of Careless Love as a fingerstyle blues. He had previously won a recording contract with Okeh in a 1925 blues contest and became one of their leading artists from c. 1926-1929. When the depression hit-- it slowed sales although he continued recording for Okeh until 1932.
CARELESS LOVE- Sung by Lonnie Johnson of New Orleans, Louisiana, Nov. 16, 1928.
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, love, oh careless love
You have caused me to weep, you have caused me to moan
You have caused me to lose my happy home.
Don't never drive a stranger from your door,
Don't never drive a stranger from your door,
It may be your best friend knockin', on your door,
Then it may be your brother, you will never know.
Careless love, look how you carry me down,
Careless love, look how you carry me down,
You caused me to lose my mother and she's layin' in six feet of ground,
Careless love I can't let you carry me down.
Careless love, you drove me through the rain and snow
Careless love, you drove me through the rain and snow
You have robbed me out of my silver and all of my gold
I'll be damned if you rob me out of my soul.
You've worried my mother until she died,
You've caused my father to lose his mind,
Now damn you, I'm goin' to shoot you and shoot you four, five times
And stand over you until you finish dyin'.
Johnson's version entered tradition and was later covered by "Champion Jack" Dupree, an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist/singer, Big Joe Turner, Janis Joplin and others. Johnson's violent and exaggerated lyrics are typical of the blues and created a new direction for Careless Love far away from its roots. A second influential traditional version was recorded by Lulu Jackson, an African-American singer who recorded a number of sides for Vocalion in June, 1928. Her guitar work is a simple accompaniment to back her pure, lilting voice. Lulu Jackson's name was likely a pseudonym. It's possible she, like Eva Taylor (Hattie Taylor of the Pace Jubilee Singers) who also recorded Careless Love, was a gospel singer and changed her name to record blues. Both Taylor and Jackson sang nearly identical texts but I've credited Jackson with the song since she recorded it five months earlier.
Careless Love- sung by Lulu Jackson on June 21, 1928 in Indianapolis IN on Vocalion 1193.
1. You see what careless love will do? (3x)
Make you kill yourself and your lover too.
2. You caused me to weep you caused me to morn, (3x)
You caused me to leave my happy home.
3. Don't never drive a stranger from your door, (3x)
Or you'll surely reap just what you sow.
4. There's many a poor girl led from home
But you can't turn a hard heart like my own. (3x)
5. You passed my door and you wouldn't come in, (3x)
Now you see what careless love will do.
Jackson's lyrics have the common moralizing "Never drive a stranger" stanza and her version also strays from the "apron" stanzas of the British folk song. Her version was covered by Eva Parker (Hattie Parker) later in 1928 (end of November for Victor) and Lee Wiley in 1934. It's identified by the "Kill yourself and your lover too" answering line in the first stanza. Many subsequent blues versions have borrowed from the Handy versions and/or these two influential early blues versions.
* * * *
About the same time in rural white America the song identified with Died for Love was being changed by popular "early country" recording artists. The Careless Love chorus and the "apron" stanzas were sung in the 1920s by the Ritchie Family in Knott County, Kentucky. Their version (see text above) exemplified the standard version of the Southern Appalachians and was fairly close to the early African-America versions-- so close that it's easy to assume that the identifying chorus "Love, oh Love, oh careless love," is indeed of African-America origin[30]. On October 12, 1926 came the first of two dozen early country recordings[31] which would influence not only future country recordings but tradition as well.
From Vocalion 5125, recorded in NYC. Mac (Lester McFarland) and Bob (Robert A. Gardner) met at the Kentucky School of the blind in 1915. This version is dominated with stanzas from 7A. Sailor Boy.
Careless Love- sung Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner of Kentucky on October 16, 1926.
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
Love, oh love, how can it be?
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
To love someone who don't love me.
"Captain, captain tell me true,
Captain, captain tell me true,
Captain, captain tell me true,
Does little Willie stay with you?"
"No, oh no, he's not with me,
No, oh no, he's not with me,
No, oh no, he's not with me,
He got drowned in the deep blue sea."
Love, oh love, oh love divine,
Love, oh love, oh love divine,
Love, oh love, oh love divine,
To see and know you'll never be mine.
Tell that captain as he passes,
Tell that captain as he passes,
Tell that captain as he passes,
Tell him I found little Willie at last.
Mama, mama, yonder he goes,
Mama, mama, yonder he goes,
Mama, mama, yonder he goes,
With a Stetson hat and a suit of clothes.
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
Love, oh love, how can it be?
Love, oh love, oh careless love,
To love someone who don't love me.
This has been covered by a number of "early country" versions including ones by Puckett and Stoneman. It also has influenced tradition and may be an antecedent of the "Deep Blue Sea," a folk song recorded by The Carter Family in 1929. The next version sung by the "Minstrel of the Appalachians" introduces the "railroad" stanzas but keeps the original theme with "apron" stanzas:
CARELESS LOVE- as published by Bascom Lamar Lunsford of Buncombe, North Carolina in 1929.
It's on this railroad bank I stand,
It's on this railroad bank I stand,
It's on this railroad bank I stand,
All for the love of a railroad man.
How I wish that train would come,
How I wish that train would come,
How I wish that train would come,
And take me back where I come from.
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
See what careless love has done.
When my apron strings will bow,
When my apron strings will bow,
When my apron strings will bow,
You'll pass my door and say "hello."
But when my apron strings won't pin,
When my apron strings won't pin,
When my apron strings won't pin,
You'll pass my door an' won't come in.
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
See what careless love has done.
It's caused me to weep it's caused me to mourn,
It's caused me to weep it's caused me to mourn,
It's caused me to weep it's caused me to mourn,
It's caused me to leave my happy home.
What do you think my mama'll say,
What do you think my mama'll say,
What do you think my mama'll say,
When she hears I've gone astray.
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
See what careless love has done.
Lunsford's version still remained close to its roots but in many songs the typical country stanzas about railroad cars, hobos, and losing your lover replaced the "apron" stanzas. A good example is found in the 1934 version by Asa Martin, who teamed up with Fiddlin' Doc Robert's son for this ARC recording:
"Careless Love" by Asa Martin, James Roberts recorded on 8-29-34.
[Freight train sounds]
Two old freight trains side by side,
Two old freight trains side by side,
Two old freight trains side by side,
Don't know which one I want to ride.
Used to be a brakeman on a train, [3x]
But now I'm wearing a ball and chain.
[solo]
See what careless love will do, [3x]
Make you hate your mama and papa too.
When I had money she would go, [3x]
Follow me through the hail and snow.
But now money's spent and gone,[3x]
And I'm just a hobo traveling on.
Love, oh love, oh love divine,
Love, oh love, oh love divine,
You broke the heart of many a poor boy
But you'll never break this heart of mine.
Asa Martin's last stanza even has the modern blues ending. These diluted country versions mixed with some of the original stanzas persisted into the 1950s (see Anita Carter's version with Chet Atkins). By then a new form of country music had evolved from its traditional roots-- bluegrass. Here's one of the earliest bluegrass texts[32]:
Careless Love- played by Bill Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys as recorded March 30, 1946 live on Grand Ole Opry with Earl Scruggs, banjo.
Love oh love oh careless love,
Love oh love of careless love,
Love oh love, how can it be?
You love someone and don't love me.
How I wish that train had come, (3x)
And take me back where I came from
Take back me to Caroline, (3x)
To see that girl I left behind.
Love oh love oh careless love,
Love oh love of careless love,
Love oh love, how can it be?
You love someone and don't love me.
Monroe's chorus remains true to the "Died for Love" roots but the rest resembles the early country versions of Asa Martin, Jimmie Tarlton and Clarence "Tom" Ashley. However, it can't be expected that a women's song about a careless pregnancy would not be reworked by the male singers of early country and bluegrass music.
Conclusions
From its British roots in the 1700s[33] Careless Love has become a blues, country, jazz, bluegrass and folk standard. In this short study no attempt has been made to include and listen to every possible version of Careless Love. The focus is on traditional versions and important early versions.
At least two versions titled Careless Love-- the 1929 harp instrumental by Slim Barton with Eddie Mapp and the 1933 vocal by Four Southern Singers are curiously versions of "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain." The Four Southern Singers have a stanza with "Careless Love" in it but its not the same song. The parody by Norman Woodlieff, "I Fell In Love With a Married Man" which was recorded in 1929 has entered tradition and traces of it were found in a version of Careless Love sung by Ora Payne in 1968. Georgia White's parody titled, "Tell Me Baby" for Decca in 1936 is "Careless Love" with new lyrics. Her new chorus which is now a stanza begins: "Lordy, Lord, Lor how can it be?" A version of the previously mentioned parody, "Arch and Gordon," sung by Handy in the last years of 1800s, is found in my footnotes (see footnote 23 below). For more information on the related, Dink's Song (my 7La), see that appendix.
Careless Love is a traditional song whose identifying chorus, "Love, oh love, oh careless love," originated in the America south by the mid-1800s. The early areas of dissemination suggest the identifying chorus is of African-America origin. From the Ohio River Valley, Careless Love was taken down the Mississippi River where it was found in New Orleans by the later part of the 1800s. Detailed evidence of its origin is wanting but is supported in theory by Wheeler (steamboat workers aided in dissemination) and W.C. Handy who knew a version in Bessemer, Kentucky in 1892 and thought Careless Love traveled from Kentucky to the deep south. This dissemination is supported by collected versions in the early 1900s from African-Americans and rural whites in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Careless Love has become one of the most popular and widely recorded songs with the "Died for Love" stanzas and theme.
R. Matteson 2017]
________________________________________
Footnotes:
1. The "Careless Love" identifying stanza is taken from memory.
2. A floating stanza also found in Careless Love.
3. From Ozark Folksong IV by Vance Randolph, version A
4. It's unlikely this change was brought about due to censorship by the record companies. It's more likely that male vocalists did not like singing a first person dialogue about their aprons being low.
5. Country Music Sources by Guthrie Mead, Dick Spottswood and Douglas S. Meade. A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music. Chapel Hill: Southern Folklife Collection, University of North Carolina, 2002.
6. Both stanzas from Tom Ashley & Gwen Foster 'Times Ain't Like They Used To Be' recorded on 8 September 1933 in NYC and issued as Vocalion 02554 in December 1933.
7. Published in a series of three articles titled Folk Songs from the South by E.C. Perrow c. 1915 in the JAF.
8. This English ballad is also known as "Farewell" and "Turtle Dove."
9. The ballad in footnote 7 ("Farewell") is one of several songs lumped in Roud 422 from the "The True Lover's Farewell" family.
10. There are obviously Died for Love songs in the UK but I'm not aware of any that use the Careless Love stanza or ant derivatives with the Careless Love stanza.
11. The notes are found at a Peggy Seeger website: http://www.peggyseeger.com/listen-buy/love-call-me-home/love-call-me-home-notes
12. Posted on Mudcat forum in September, 2008. Douglas is referring to the general tune of Roud 422.
13. See "Every Night" on this website
14. Buddy Bolden's performances of Careless Love have been dated as early as 1896 but by his own account were around 1900-1906. See various jazz books like "Voices from the Heartland: A Cultural History of the Blues," page 314 by William Brook Barlow - 1983 for accounts.
15. Early Twentieth-Century Brass Idioms: Art, Jazz, and Other Popular Traditions by Howard T. Weiner - 2008
16. The Jazzmen quote is from: "Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues" by Vic Hobson 2014.
17. Ibid, same page.
18. One of Handy's attributes and the name of his autobiography.
19. In Folk Song USA (1947), John and Alan Lomax call it "one of the earliest, if not actually the first, blues." See also Handy's autobiography: Father of the Blues (New York: Macmillan, 1941).
20. According to Handy in his autobiography: "That week I went to Chicago, and while there I sat in Brownlee's barber shop and wrote Loveless Love, beginning with 'Love is like a gold brick in a bunko game.' " The date must have been in 1921 by Handy does not give a date.
21. "Father of the Blues: An Autobiography" (New York: Macmillan, 1941)
22. No date of this performance was given but it must have been shortly after the murder transpired-- since the police stopped the performance.
23. From D. K. Wilgus, “Arch and Gordon,” Kentucky Folklore Record 6 (1960): 51–56.
24. The details and text were reprinted in American Folk Songs: A Regional Encyclopedia; Norman Cohen - 2008:
On Tuesday, April 30, 1895, Gordon surprised his wife and Arch Brown in flagrante delicto— specifically, in bed at Lucy Smith's establishment. Gordon shot several times, wounding Brown in the left arm. Brown rolled out of and headed for the dresser Gordon emptied his pistol into Brown, and Brown shot Gordon twice. Gordon grabbed Brown's gun and shot him with that. Then Gordon shot his wife, who had attacked him. She stumbled out the door and died on the back porch. Police apprehended Gordon a few blocks away. Gordon was tried and convicted of justifiable homicide and freed on May 9. Folklorist D. K. Wilgus collected two fragmentary versions of the ballad in Kentucky in the 1950s, but it has not turned up elsewhere.
Arch and Gordon - collected in 1956 from Mrs. Wills Cline; printed 1960 in Kentucky Folklore Record.
1. When Archie went to Louisville, (3x)
Not thinking he would be killed
2. Arch say Gordon I didn't mean no harm, (3x)
When Gordon shot him in his right arm
3. When Gordon made his first shot, (3x)
O'er behind the bed Arch did drop.
4. Hush now Guvnor, don't you cry, (3x)
You know your son Arch has to die.
5. You see what sportin' life has done, (3x)
It has killed Guvnor Brown's only son."
25. This is derived from a folk verse Handy knew: "If I had wings like Nora's faithful dove," also found in the opening of "Dink's song."
26. From: Vance Randolph (Ed G.Legman) "Blow the Candle Out: Unprintable Ozark Folksongs and Folklore" Vol II, University Arkansas Press, 1992, p 647.
27. From E.C. Perrow's "Songs and Rhymes of the South" The Journal of American Folk-lore - page 147, 1916.
28. Both John and Alan Lomax added stanzas to existing versions and did not document the original text. The original text might be as presented by Utley with just the "apron" stanzas found in Died for Love.
29. Utley wrote a series of articles about Noah and an article about the appearance of Noah and Noah's arc in folk songs.
30. My theory is that the "Careless love" chorus is of African-America origin spread by black rivermen throughout the Ohio Valley before the Civil War.
31. Most of the recordings, some by the same artists, are given in Guthrie Meade's Country Music Source. They date from 1926 to 1938.
32. Some argue that the bluegrass genre began several years later with the Stanley Brothers rendition of "Mollie and Tenbrooks." Others believe it started when Earl Scruggs joined the Foggy Mountain Boys.
33. The apron stanzas date to the 1700s but the antecedents of Died for Love and their extended family date back to the 1600s-- the earliest antecedent being lutenist Robert Johnson's c.1611 ballad “A Forsaken Lover's Complaint.”