Arkansas- D.B. Clark before 1898
[This version, dated before 1898, is one of the earliest on record. here's some info from the encyclopedia of Arkansas:
The story, which the ballad relates in first person, has its protagonist—known by several names, including “Sanford Barnes” and “John Johanna”—leave his home, most frequently “Buffalo town” or “Nobleville town,” to seek employment. He hears of job opportunities in Arkansas, sets out by railway, and arrives in an Arkansas community, variously identified as Fort Smith (Sebastian County), Van Buren (Crawford County), Little Rock (Pulaski County), or Hot Springs (Garland County). There he meets a “walking skeleton” who conducts the narrator to the state’s finest hotel. One night in these accommodations convinces him to leave Arkansas immediately. His host, though, persuades him to take a job draining some land. Several weeks of hard labor in an ague-producing climate subsisting on the poorest rations (“corndodgers” and “sassafras tea”) have the narrator claiming, “I never knew what misery was till I came to Arkansas,” a refrain for several of the ballad’s stanzas. In some versions, he prefers marriage to a “squaw” in Indian Territory to life in Arkansas.
The earliest printed text of this song may be that which E. C. Perrow published in Journal of American Folklore in 1913. The earliest sound recording is probably the one by Kelly Harrell and the Virginia String Band, done in a studio in Camden, New Jersey, in 1927. One of Vance Randolph’s Ozark consultants, however, suggested that he knew the song from the 1890s. Writing in Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Robert Morris proposed an earlier origin date, in the 1870s.
R. Matteson 2014]
ARKANSAS
1. My name is Sandford Barnes,
I came from Buffalo Town,
I've trav'l'd this wide world over,
I've roamed this wide world 'round;
I've had my ups and Down is life,
And better days I saw,
I never knew what mis'ry was
Till I came to Arkansas.
2. 'Twas ln the year of eighty-two; in the merry month of June
I landed in Hot Springs one sultry afternoon
There came a walking skeleton and handed me his pew,
Invited me to his hotel; the best in Arkansas.
3. I followed my conductor up to his dwelling place,
Desired and starvation were written in his face;
His bread it was corn dodgers, his beef I couldn't chaw,
And that is the kind of hash I had in the state of Arkansas.
4. I started out next morning to catch the early train;
He said I'd better work for him; he had some land to drain.
He gave me fifty cents a day, my washing, board and all,
He said I'd be a different man when I left Arkansas.
5. I worked six weeks for this galoot, Jess Herald was his name
Six feet seven in stocking feet, and slim as any crane;
His hair hung down like rat tails beside his lantern Jaw,
Tho photograph of all the gents that's raised in Arkansas.
6. He fed me on corn dodgers as hard as any rock,
My teeth began to loosen, my knees began to knock,
I got so thin on sassafras tea I could hide behind a straw,
You bot I was a different man when I Left Arkansas.
7. Farewell to old swamp angels, the cane brakes, and the chills
Farewell to you, and sassafras tea and to corn dodger pills,
If ever I see this land again I'll give to you my paw [1]
For it'll be through a telescope from here to eternity.
This song, was written (words only) by Mrs. Otis Miller of Smithville, Tennessee though it was remembered almost completely as above by L.L.McDowell , who recalls distinctly hearing lt sung by D.B.Clark before 1898. Mr. Clark still lives in White County Tennessee (1940). The music is written from the memory of L. L. McDowell. The song was much sung in the Caney Fork territory during the last years of the century, though it is not here insisted that the song ls a folk song in any other sense than by reason
of oral transmission in the territory where found.