Biographies of Informants and some Collectors C-D
Biographies of Informants, Performers and some Collectors (Traditional Ballads and Folk Songs)
North America (Arranged in Alphabetical order by last name)
[This section is for biographies of the important informants of Anglo-Saxon ballads and folk songs and is not all inclusive. Every collector had their best informants. Some informants by their reputations were visited by many collectors, and recordings were made in some instances. Some informants were recording artists in the 1920s and their songs were collected indirectly by the record companies.
The focus of this study is North America. At some point The British Isles will be included on a separate page.
There is little known about some collectors, for example, Fred High (MO-AR), John Stone (VA, under the auspices of the Virginia Folklore Society), Winston Wilkinson (VA, under the auspices of the Virginia Folklore Society).
R. Matteson 2015]
Informants and Some Collectors- North America
CONTENTS
Cansler, Lowman (MO) 1924- 1992 collector author "Boyhood Songs of my Grandfather"
Carlisle, Irene (AR) collector Ozarks; Thesis
Carson, Fiddlin' John
Carr, Susie (ME) 1862-1933 Also see Susie Carr Young- Informant for Flanders; Barry.
Carter Brothers
Carter Family- (VA) Recordings
Carver Boys
Case, Eva Warner (MO); Belden
Chandler, Anelize informant Sharp
Chandler Dellie (Norton)
Chandler, Dillard (NC) 1907-1992 Recordings John Cohen
Cheney, Thomas Edward (UT) author collector
Clark, LaRena (ON) singer (Fowke)
Clayton, Paul (VA) AKA Paul C. Worthington see Davis 1960; performer, collector
Cleveland, Sara (NY) 1905-1987 Recordings Patton
Combs, Josiah (KY) Collector; (also Elsie Combs EFSSA)
Couch Family (KY) informants; Roberts: Sang Branch Settlers.
Couch, Jim (KY) informant; Roberts: Sang Branch Settlers.
Coverly, Nathaniel (MA) printer
Cowell, Sidney (Hawkins) Robertson; (CA) 1903 collector
Cox, Bill performer
Crockett Family
Crummit, Frank performer
Daniels, Myra (VT) Flanders see also Elmer George
Davis, Arthur Kyle Jr. (VA) editor; author
Davis, Martha M. (VA) collector Virgina Folklore Society collector 1913
Delorme, Lily "Granny" (NY-VT) Flanders;
Detherow, W.P. (AR) Wolf Collection
Dobie, J. Frank (TX) 1888 collector, mostly western, cowboy songs
Donald, Mrs. Laura Virginia (VA) Sharp EFSSA
Driftwood, Jimmie (AR) Son of Neal Morris
Dunagan, Autn Mar (KY) Sharp EFSSA
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Mrs. Eva Warner Case. Mrs. Case gives the song Matthy Groves, from memory, "with the assistance of her mother and grandmother." "It was commonly sung," she writes, "in Harrison County, Missouri, as late as 1890. The settlers here were of Virginia and Kentucky stock, with a sprinkling of Tennesseeans, and many of the songs had been in the family at the time of their coming from England."
Communicated by Mrs. Eva Warner Case, 1916, from childhood memories in Harrison County, Mo.
Eva Warner Case 1914 Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Occupation: Teacher
Publication Title: Kansas City, Missouri, City Directory, 1914
Evaline (Evelene) L. Watkins
Birth Aug 1873 in Missouri.
Name: Evalene Watkins
Spouse: John Case
Marriage: 24 Dec 1893 - Webster, Missouri
Mrs. Eva Warner CASE (later Mrs. J.S. Lichtenberg of Kansas City) mostly remembered from her childhood in Harrison County, Missouri.
Miss Eva Watkins, and she married Mr. John Homer Case (Pres. of Case Canning Co. Marshfield) on 24th December 1993.
Eva was a daughter of John W. Watkins, a farmer residing near Elkland, and a great-granddaughter of the late Judge William Haymes a pioneer of Webster County, having settled there there in 1833.
It appears that Mrs. Case was a mother of 6 (5 of whom were boys), and an active worker in the Methodist Episcopal church and the Women's Christian Temperance Union and was a force for good in her community.
Her husband John Homer Case was born near Elkland, but the family came from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Case family was founded in America by 5 brothers from England who were Iron workers.
This information came from "Missouri- The Center State" 1915 by Walter B. Stevens
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PAUL CLAYTON (Worthington) was born in the great whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where at an early age
he became interested in ballads through the singing of his grandparents and relatives. By the time he was fifteen years old, he had acquired a guitar with
which to accompany himself, and started his first
series of radio programs. He has continued his programs
at most of his stopping-off places, and has
performed on radio shows in New York, Canada, Cuba,
and various countries in Europe, as well as having
given concerts in various parts of the United
States.
Largely because of his desire to absorb the
great southern tradition of folk music, he went to the
University of Virginia to study. His education has
been frequently interrupted by his desire to travel
and collect folk songs, and within a year after entering
school he decided to strike out for Europe in
order to come into first hand contact with British
Ballads. The result was an extended. hiking trip with
a guitar and pack on his back. Though he collected
numerous German, French and Spanish songs, the main
addition to his collection and repertoire was in
British balladry. He appeared in a series of Television
programs for the British Broadcasting Corporation
in which he compared British and American folk
Bongs. Before he returned to the United States and
school, he had found time to swap ballads while wash
ing dishes in the Lake Dietrict of Britain, collecting
waste paper in Paris, or during the course of street
singing in such places as Rome, Paris, Nice and
Florence.
After a year abroad, he returned to the University
of Virginia. He has since made several long hiking
and collecting trips through the far west and the deep
south as well as to Canada and Cuba. He has also
managed to acquire a college degree and is, at the
time of this recording, pursuing another. He has recorded
several commercial albums, including, for
Folkways, an album of BAY STATE BALlADS, FP 47/2. In
addition he has recorded some of the traditional songs
of his family for the private recording files of the
BEC and for the Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury
College, Vermont.
Included among his many activities involving Virginia
folksongs and ballads is the preparation of a
Master's thesis on rare Child ballads found in that
state. He is also editing, for publication by The
Folklore Press, a number of the songs and ballads he
has collected in Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina.
AN INTRODUCTION TO FOLKSONGS AND BALLADS OF VIRGINIA
By Paul CLAYTON
For a number of years I have spent much of my
time, when not travelling, in Charlottesville in the
foothills of the Blue Ridge of Virginia, and I have
had unusual opportunities to acquire a familiarity
with the great ballad singing tradition of Virginia.
Unquestionably one of the richest collections of folk
music in the United States is the material collected
by the Virginia Folklore Society, and it has been my
privelege to study with its archivist, Professor
Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., of the University of Virginia.
I have listened to and transcribed song texts
from hundreds of recordings of traditional singers
made by him in the 1930s, and I am, at this writing,
completing a thesis under his direction on some rare
Child ballads found in Virginia.
Anyone who has heard traditional singers must
feel, as I do, that even the most careful musical notation
cannot reproduce the feeling and character of
the original performance. I feel that I am, in some
ways, fortunate in being unable to read music, for it
has compelled me to learn songs at first hand,
rather than resorting to the more efficient (but less
traditional) mannsr of learning ballads from books.
Residing in Virginia has given me the opportunity to
make field trips for the purpose of collecting folk
songs directly from traditional singers, and I have
recorded many of these songs on my small portable
recording machine for my own file of folk music.
This album is an attempt to show some of the types of
songs to be found in Virginia where folk singing is
still a l1v ing thing.
The inclusion in this album of so few Child
ballads might be thought an oversight, but it is
purposeful. Virginia has a great nany of these
ballads, many of which were published in Traditional
Ballads of Vireinia, edi ted by Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr.,
and I am working with other persons under his direcc
lon in the editing of more Child ballads for eventual
publication, the whole body of which surely places
Virginia in the first rank as far as variety and nlmber
of versions collected.
However, the Virginia Folklore Society has not
published any non-Ghild material to date, although
Dr. Davis' index, Folk-Songs of Virginia, shows how
vast the collection is in that field. For this
reason I have recorded a greater number of the nonChild
folk songs to indicate the variety of material
to be found in Virginia. I should like to emphasize
that all the songs recorded in this album are SUrlg in
versions which have not been published and that none
of the material sung here is from the collection of
the Virginia Folklore Society. One day that vast
collection will be generally available to those who
love these songs. Meanwhile I offer some songs from
the great store of FOLKSONGS AND BALlADS OF VIRGINIA .
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An Index to the Field Recordings in the Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College
Middlebury, Vermont
When Flanders travelled to northern Vermont in 1935 to record songs of Myra Daniels, her brother, Elmer George, also offered to sing songs he and his sister had learned when children as well as songs he had learned in the woods while working as a lumberman. Elmer George became one of Flanders' most favored singers with a wide repertoire and an appealing voice.
Together, George and Daniels added 90 titles to the Collection between 1935 and 1954.
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An Index to the Field Recordings in the Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College
Middlebury, Vermont
In that year, Olney also recorded songs during June in New York State. In addition to songs of Tom Armstrong of Mooer's Forks, New York, she recorded songs of Lily Delorme of Cadyville, New York. Olney again recorded her on at least seven trips to that region between December 1941 and August 1944. Delorme contributed more than eighty titles to the Collection. In July 1942 Olney recorded songs in New Hampshire and northern Vermont. She travelled back to Maine in August and to Colebrook and Pittsburg, New Hampshire in September. In October and November she made recordings primarily in Vermont.
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Folksingers and the Re-Creation of Folksong Author(s): John Quincy Wolf Source: Western Folklore,Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 101-111
The late W. P. Detherow (died 1962), of the Pfeiffer community near Batesville, Arkansas, is more difficult of analysis than some of the singers discussed above. He knew at least a hundred old songs, and he never deliberately changed any song that made good sense to him and fitted a proper musical pattern. I recall recording his version of a religious song containing
the words "His track I see and I'll pursue." The proper words are "I strike, I see, and I'll pursue." I checked his words with him and he was satisfied with them: to him they meant "I set forth, I am convinced, and I follow." I did not tell him what the original phrasing was. Detherow was a man of independent opinions, bold ideas, and frank expressions. An irrepressible letter-writer, he bombarded state and local papers with sharp comment on politics and current events. His readers occasionally tried to pin a "Red" label on him, but he was neither perturbed nor intimi- dated. Despite his unorthodox political and social ideas, he was once elected to the state legislature, where he served with distinction. The point I make is that he was not the kind of man who sits at home during his leisure hours and sings his repertory to a guitar, nor the kind who is so much enslaved to tradition that he is inhibited from editing his songs. I believe that the songs Detherow recorded were substantially true to the versions he heard in his early days and fixed in his memory, which was re- markably reliable. In those exceptional cases when his memory failed him, his native acumen and native command of words enabled him quickly to put together an arrangement that he felt was true to the spirit if not the letter of the original. Sometimes he remarked to me that it had been many years since he had thought of the song he had just recorded. But he never broke down more than momentarily in singing and never sang a song that he felt was incoherent or incomplete in meaning. Sometimes, in our recording ses- sions he would pause and ask me to stop the machine. For a few moments his lips would move silently as he worked out a stanza, and, when he was satisfied that it was substantially acceptable, he would proceed. Detherow was not a student of folklore, but he was well aware that it should be studied and enjoyed. He was particularly fond of play-party songs and believed that if these songs should be properly presented over radio and television, a tide of play-partying would sweep over the country. He also felt that the Negro "yells" were entitled to revival and popularity. Because he felt that the songs he knew were important in their historical setting as well as in their meaning to the present, he refrained from deliberate and unnecessary revisions in both words and music. Most of the changes that he made resulted from lapses of memory, of which he suffered few, and were conscientious and intelligent attempts at restoration and not clever "improve- ments" of his own making. But he was no slave of tradition: he made such changes as common sense demanded, so that his songs always made good sense, were completely free of meaningless sounds and phrases, and were consistent in melodic structure. As in the case of other singers, his treatment of song stemmed from the fabric of his mind and personality.
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Folksingers and the Re-Creation of Folksong Author(s): John Quincy Wolf Source: Western Folklore,Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 101-111
Any folklorist who is familiar with Jimmy Driftwood's albums should know that he edits his songs freely and inevitably. Song has always been his life. He started picking guitars when he was five, began playing a fiddle when he was six, and added a banjo when he was eight. When I first saw him in 1941 at a Stone County Folk Festival at Blanchard Springs, Arkansas, he was on the program to demonstrate backwoods musical instruments. By profession he was a history teacher and taught in the county schools of the Ozarks, most of the time in his own village of Timbo. But he lived in song. As a growing boy he memorized his father's one hundred and twenty-five songs, added those of his mother and grandparents, and eagerly learned those of his neighbors (by this time the right of possession so respected by his father was being forgotten along with the passing of the hey-day of fiddle, guitar, and five-string banjo, and of the older generation of singers). "He knows every song that was ever sung in Stone County," a resident of the community told me, "and he knows all the old folks." By 1950 the songs he knew num- bered well into the hundreds, and the versions of the more familiar ones were numerous. At this time he did most of his singing to his wife and two boys, his hound dogs, his pupils at school, and now and then his neighbors. And he sang the best versions that he knew or could contrive, sometimes by a combi- nation of lines and stanzas from several versions. Moreover, he found it very easy to compose. Words and music came to him without effort. His subjects and style were in the folk tradition, which was a part of him. He composed songs about historical events and characters and sang them to his history classes. For years he traveled through several south- ern states selling educational materials, and wherever he went he turned local color, local legend, and local character into song, which he sang to please himself and his small circle of local admirers. His father tells me that Jimmie has probably made up at least a thousand songs. It is this interest and this skill which prompted J. E. Windrow, of George Peabody College, to write that if there were no tall tales in song Jimmie would invent them,2 and that led Alan Lomax to remark to me that he is "America's bard in the old sense of the word." It is inevitable that a man with such a command of folksong, such com- pelling interests in folk music, and such unusual talents in composition should tend to re-create traditional materials. It is no happy accident that he framed from sketchy folk materials that national anthem of the backwoods- SCover Notes for Jimmie Driftwood, Tall Tales in Song (RCA Victor LPM-2728).
man, "The Battle of New Orleans." His firsthand knowledge of Ozark folk- song is so wide and his days have been so full of song that it would hardly be possible for him to sing most of the songs he knows in complete fidelity to any particular source. He could perhaps approximate fidelity in the songs that he learned from his parents and grandparents. Yet he told me in the summer of 1963 that his sons say he doesn't play certain fiddle tunes as he did a few years ago and have convinced him, to his surprise, that he changes even these traditional tunes. Success as a nationally known folksinger does not seem to have changed his attitude to folksong or his manner of singing, but has, in fact, given him greater respect for the old and genuine. But inevitably the songs he sings will continue to evolve even as he will continue to create and re-create
Driftwood, Jimmy
Folksingers and the Re-Creation of Folksong Author(s): John Quincy Wolf Source: Western Folklore,Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 101-111
Neal Morris, of Mountain View, Arkansas, father of Jimmie Driftwood, was born into a home in which parents and grandparents all were singers. It is, therefore, not surprising that he knows about a hundred and twenty- five folksongs, which he sings to his guitar, and that he has for fifty-five of his seventy-six years been known as one of the best singers of Stone County and surrounding area. His neighbors are fond of saying that he can outsing his son Jimmie. When I asked him the direct question about folksingers editing their songs, he answered as though he had given some thought to the question-
as undoubtedly he had. "No," he said, "a singer doesn't deliberately change his songs. He may forget a word here and there and put in other words, but if he remembers a song as his parents sang it, he will not change it." That Mr. Morris was making an accurate statement about his own practice is shown by some of my recordings of his songs. For example, when I was transcribing from my tape the words of the "Nightingale Song," I heard what sounded like this: "Play 'the old concorfit' and I'll make the violin ring." The unusual phrase occurs twice. I wrote an inquiry about it to him and re- ceived no reply. A few months later I paid him one of my frequent visits. "Yes," he said, "you heard it right, but I'm not certain about the word or what it means. 'The old concorfit' could be the name of the piece he played." In another song I was uncertain about a word, which he told me was "sugged." He was not sure what it meant, but he had not seen fit to substi- tute. When a singer is so faithful to tradition that he retains unique words or phrases that have uncertain meanings, we may conclude that he has some basis for believing that folksingers do not deliberately change the words of the songs handed down to them. But the matter does not end there. Mr. Morris said: Certainly, singers do change songs. Changes can't be avoided because of the very nature of folklore and the way the songs are passed along. You let a man teach his four children a song. When he is gone and the children have been separated for a while, there'll be four versions of the song, even though they try to sing it just like their father-unless, of course, the five sang the songs together a lot. Even then, time will bring changes. As for me, I change my songs as little as anybody. When I was younger I had a typographical memory, and I have always tried to sing the songs as I heard them. Now here is another angle: In the old days, a folksinger respected the other singers of his community and did not borrow or steal their songs. If he sang them at all, he did so when he was by himself. (There is a considerable amount of evidence that this custom was not peculiar to Mr. Morris's community. For example, C. C. McKown, writing in the New York Times from Glenville, West Virginia, June 30, 1957, reported that the villagers would not sing "A Few More Months" for a visitor, but directed him to Frank Kennedy. " 'It's Uncle Frank's song,' they said.") But if a singer left the neighborhood, said Mr. Morris, those who knew his songs would try to sing them. The situation was somewhat different if a stranger came into the community. He might sing a song that was new to the people, and they wouldn't sing it as long as the stranger was around. But they would try to remem- ber it, and when he left, one or more singers would try to put it together, but they might have to do some patchwork, so the song would be changed up, maybe a
good deal. And different versions of the same song would go along side by side in the same neighborhood. Mr. Morris allows himself greater liberties with the melody than with the words. In the tape recordings of his songs which I have made through a period of several years, I notice a number of minor variations in melody, and I incline to think that he is likely to vary the musical phrases in some of his songs almost every time he sings them.
--------------------------
THE ISAIAH THOMAS COLLECTION OF
BALLADS
BY WORTHINGTON C. FORD
A word on the printers of these ballads is called for,
if only to place on record some particulars on their little
known careers. Nathaniel Coverly of Boston was
married by Rev. Charles Chauncy, November 2, 1769,
to Susanna Cowell. She was baptized in the New
Brick Church, Boston, August 20, 1749.^ It is a
'In the "Joumal of Joseph Valpey, Jr., of Salem," recently published by the Michigan
Society of Colonial Wars, may be found a number of original ballads, written by him
when in Dartmoor Prison. They indicate a possible source of such material, and a
study of like records might add to our knowledge of the subject.
'Boston Reoord Commission, xxx. 66.
1923.] Ballads in the Isaiah Thomas Collection 51
somewhat unusual occurrence in our formal records,
but on declaring their intention to marry, December
13, 1768, it was "forbid," no cause being assigned.*
In 1770 the first title printed by Coverly is found and
from 1770 to 1774 he was in Boston, living so quietly
as not to draw upon himself the attention of authorities
or his fellow townsmen. He had nothing to ask of the
former and the latter never sought him for a town
officer. He was obliged to leave Boston when occupied
by Gage and his troops, and removing to
Chelmsford set up a printing press in the south part of
the town. There he formed a publishing connection
with Elisha Rich, a baptist teacher and also a blacksmith
by trade, who was ordained in October, 1775,
over the baptist meeting of Chelmsford, continuing
to serve until December 15, 1777. Rich turned occasionally
to poetry and besides some ballads called out
by the events around Boston, Coverly published for
him "The Number of the Beast found out by spiritual
Arithmetic," (1775), and "Poetical Dialogues calculated
for the Help of Timorous and Tempted Christians"
(1795). Remaining in Chelmsford for about
two years Coverly was in Concord in 1776, returned
to Boston in 1779 and until 1785 printed there by
himself or in partnership with Robert Hodge. He
then set up in Plymouth, where he printed the
"Plymouth Journal," and later in Middleborough,
operating in each place for about two years, when
in 1788 the call for Boston induced him again to
set up his fortunes in that town.* It is more than
probable that this success was not encouraging, for
he issued matter of little importance, except for a
reprint of Robert Cushman's Sermon at Plymouth—
the third edition of that work, which is found with
titles dated 1785 and 1788, the earlier being the true
'Boston Record Commission, xxx. 428.
«He is in the census of 1790, with seven in his family—five males and two females. He
was living on Back (now a part of Hanover) Street, on which street Zachariah Fowle
printed, 1751-1754.
52 American Antiquarian Sodety [April,
year of publication. In 1795 Coverly is found in
Amherst, New Hampshire,, where he set up the first
newspaper of that region, "The Amherst Journal and
New Hampshire Advertiser," beginning January 16,
1795, and running until January 9, 1796, completing
fifty-two issues, when it was succeeded or absorbed by
the "Village Messenger" of the same place. On
April 24, 1795, Coverly announced that he had taken
as partner his son [Nathaniel], the firm being known as
Nathaniel Coverly and Son. They did not confine
themselves to the newspapers but also printed some
pamphlets.
Wells in his "History of Newbury, Vermont,"
states that:
In 1794, Nathaniel Coverly, Jr., came here from Salem,
Mass., and started the first printing office in the Connecticut
valley, north of Hanover, in a building since burned. It
stood on the other side of the road from the dwelling of the
late Miss Swasey, at the Ox-bow. He did a considerable
amount of printing, including a few small books, in a creditable
manner. . . He carried on a store for the sale of
books and stationery in the front part of the building, the
printing office being at the rear. In 1796, probably in May,
he began the publication of a newspaper called the "Orange
Nightingale and Newbury Morning Star." . . . This
paper was short-lived for want of funds and patronage, and
Mr. Coverly closed out his business here and returned to
Salem.i
The only file located, that in the Harvard College
Library, runs from May 19, 1796, the second issue to
September 4,1797.
There is probably some confusion here. It is possible
but not probable that the son set up business in
1794 in Newbury, but he was certainly in partnership
with his father at Amberst after April, 1795, and in
1796 the firm of father and son were at Haverhill, New
Hampshire. The son did establish a newspaper at
Newbury in 1796, and that year is the more likely to
have been the time of his going to that place. Yet in
•Page 243.
1923.] Ballads in the Isaiah Thomas Collection 53
March, 1796, the two began to publish "Thé.Grafton
Minerva, and Haverhill Weekly Bud," at Haverhill,
New Hampshire, a paper which ran for forty-six
known numbers (January, 1797), printed a part of the
time by Nathaniel Coverly alone. This journal was
no more self-supporting than their earlier ventures and
in 1798 and 1799 both partners were printing in Medford,
and in the latter year at Salem, where they remained
certainly until 1803^ The son was taxed in
Salem in 1802. He had married at Boston, February
10,1800, Eunice Johnson of Andover.
In 1805 the father was printing in Boston on
Federal Court which ran from Union and Hanover
Streets to the Mills, and the son is given at No. 55,
Hanover Street. They do not appear to have had
fixed abodes and from the town directory may be
gathered the following items :
FATHEK SON.
1806 Printer, 6, Orange Street Printer, Russell Street
1807 Printer, 52, Orange Street
1808 Printer, 52, Orange Street Russell Street
1810 Printer, house Lendell Lane Printer, house. Milk Street
1813 Printer, High Street Printer, house. Milk Street
1814 Printer, High Street Printer, house. Milk Street
1818 Printer, house, 16, MilkStreet
1820 Printer and bookseller. Milk
Street
1821-23 Pamphlet shop, Milk Street
1825-28 Eunice Coverely, pamphlet shop, 16, Milk Street
1829 Eunice Coverly, pamphlet shop, 40, Milk Street
The father seems to have dropped out between 1814
and 1818 and the son probably died about 1823, having
already passed from being a printer (he again ventured
into journalism with "The Idiot," Boston, 1818-1819)
to a seller of pamphlets, to which business his wife succeeded
in 1824. Nothing further is known of them,
and no wills are found in the Probate Office.
iBentley (ii. 298) had the curious record: "A. [N?] Coverly, Bookseller, printer, &o.,
just appeared here and vanished away."
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From Dillard Chandler- The End of a Song, 1975 on Folkways
The film The End Of An Old Song'll be available from Brendon Films or from John Cohen.
My name is Dillard Chandler, and I was born in Madison County (NC). Number 10 Township, in an old log building. When I was a boy it we really a rough go in these hills. There wasn't any way you could get back in here with a car. You had to walk foot logs down out of here. When we were little old kids we went to school at the fork of the creek. Several times I went out of here to school and the foot logs would be waited away - we couldn't get there.
After we got big enough to go to work, we had to get out and look out for ourselves, get jobs, logging job, at that time. I just went out to work, that's one reason I didn't get no education. I quit reading or anything, I just forgot what I did know about education.
I can go to any plant now, or any employment office for a job. They ask me for High School Education. Ya see when I tell I've got none, they tum it off. When it comes to education, I'm out of the box. I just have to tum and walk off, look out for something else.
We 're at my home now, and I just like to be at home some time. Times I really like to be alone, and think things over that I don't want to talk over with people, When I get out and maybe take a drink or something, get to worrying, get something on my mind, I just take a notion to singing.
The first singing that ever I heard was old timey meeting songs, and these old songs like I sing, and these frolic, where they get together and pick and sing and drink a little.
Maybe a 'Jamie makin' or maybe a com shuckin', maybe a gallon 'hid in the com pile. They'd go ahead and shuck into
that - pick the banjo, have a dance.
There ain 't no rhythm to the music I do. I've always
heard it called a love eong. juet a natural love lOng. Ain't
nothin· to it. no rhythm, nothing to dance through - it',
juet an old timey love 8Ong. J u, t old flat love 8Ong.
Wen I ain't been in love for ten or fifteen years. I just
decided there weren't much to that. When I take a notion
for a woman I get her, ju, t KO to town and order 'em up. I
go there and pitch me a woman once or twice a month.
I ju, t do like ~ do, like I been ~0ing.1 julll go out and
work. 1 do IUch work as taking up shrubbery, re«tting,
and tranepillitit'll, yard work and aJch as that. I've worked
most of my day, up around Asheville. I know anything
about grading or '&truction work of any kind. I've helped
build every street around Beaver Lake, and helped build the
lake. And I helped build th ie one at Skyland. Well, there',
lawyen, dodol'8 and all kind, of people that lives around
there. There 'a weD·to-do people that live, in thoee bouee&.
One thblg come on to my mind; I never was a man who
ever had eo much crave for money in my life. I never did
worry about it, only julll enough to live off of, to eat or
IIOmething. I wae talking to a IMly. I asked her if n felt
liIe'd ever get rich. She said, "No, I don't expect to utd I
don't want to. That would be that much more worrying on
me than what I've already gOL" I told her I wae glad to
know it, that I wu in the same shape she was. That looka
pretty hard in a way, but. don't study about that becauee
they 've HOt education and they can get good jobs which •
can't; they eut make enough to where they can save a little,
and I can't.
There's a good many of them uound here in the same
ehape that I'm in. I don't have any hard feelings about it. I
know I've Kot to make it eome way,ljuet make it the beet I
can. Enjoy life the beet I can.
My addrese would be Route 3, but I'm alway, here and
yonder, and I don't ever fool with any mail. I ain't even got
a box here. But thie ie my home; I get my mail at Poet
Office at Skyland. I can't never read no how. I ain't never
put up noboL
I'm always in the AahevilJe area. If I ain't there, I'm on
my way to Ket there. One year ago I went to my f"et
COUsln'L We went a eanging, and I looked up at the Roan
Mountain.
Whot do you meon you .ere off a n'Wi,..?
Sanging. gin8anging, in the mountams, just diging
ginaang. "'sjust a weed, ain't another Uke it. It 'a stuff they
U8e for medical. You dry it and eeD it.
The only kind of musc I know anything about is old
baD'de. Juet learning lOngs from IOmebody elee that I've
heard sing 'em. I 'ain 't never took up the habit of einging
new lOngs - I do ling eome once in a while. I'd rather hear
the old lOng' than the new one' that come out. The way
they're lUng and the way the music ill ... in the new lOngs
- they do it 10 fancy that it ain't got the right eound.
There are a lot of people around here that doe' sing the
old way. 1 ean't sing the lOng' like they're wrote down in
the book&. They've chan~ the old lOngs 80 that I can't get
up and sing in the church or in a singing clue becauee
they 've got the words changed in the book and cmee
they've not got the lame tune to them. I ju, t sing like I
alwaya &lng, 80 I can't sing with em.
You Ii. but by your .. 1f?
Yeah. Now Uoyd Chandler, me and him can ling
together. And Den (Norton) we could really sing together.
but we can't get together anymore.
Lloyd Chandler: Dillard's father wa, my uncle. He wu.
a wonderful man, he had a wonderful voice - but that
voice ha' cea.eed. But as the Bible sayl, ''Thel1: ie hope
of a tree after it', cut down - that the stump will
bring forth tender sprouts!" Dillard iI one of thOle
sprouts - from hie father. He ie also a linger, and it
will be carried on and on, I hope as long AI time gDe'
on. Thoee old lOngs I love 10 weU that my mother and
my uncle 1IIng. I remember my mother singing thoee
old 80ngI when she was spinning yarn to make cIotheL
Of a night now I can hear her in my mind. I'm 71
yean old, and I can remember when I was five yean
old, of her snging. Dillud', father was a great linger,
You could hear him a mile when the air was right and
CUT'fing the: voice. It's strange to think that a
voice like that i. ment now.
How do fHOple f eel about different people litwitw the
10"8" differently'!
There ain't no difference in the einging or music of
them. Yau got to sing them in the lame tune that it', made
to be lUng in.
What about fhe different way, of decol'Otirw the 10"8' - the
melody tu~ or throwilv the voice hiP? 1 kno. you do if
differently from lOme people around here.
I wouldn't know how that comes around. There iI a
difference, but - it just appears in your voice. It',just the
way you throw your voice.
Do you do it on purpo.?
No. That ain't the idea about it. For instance, you get
him to sing two or three songs, and then
Halen to me ling, and you lee it'ajuet the outcome of your
'mice, 80meway or other, that just appean in a different
way. I can't undentand that myeelf.
I don't stay here all the: time • • juet come in here
IOmdimes, stay a week or two, go on back out 80mewhere
and go to work - get me a room in town.
At the end of Hoover', Administration, I went in debt
to buy this place, HOt me a mule and a cow. They kept
cuttin'me down on my little okl 'baccer aUotment. Cut me
down to 1/10 on the place, and that wouldn't pay the
fertilize biD, 80 I quit fooling with 'baccer. So I went to
wying little boundrie, of wood. and worked mytelf out of
debt
How u farmUw Ground hen?
If you can get to raieing 'hIccer, fanning is pretty good.
If they cut you out, you're cut out. You can raiee 'maten,
but 'bucer ia your biggest go. But now 'maten ie the
bigge,tgo.
I ain't gardened none for rnyldf in a right nart bit,
nothing mOl1: than, help other~people. 1 haven't done no
fanning in a right /mart bit. Fannin' 11 ffhen you put out a
big crop - fIVe or si1 . cre ... A sarden ie like you want to
can your own food at hOlRe, aD kind, of different thinge in
it; you'd have beans, 'tatera., peu and 'matel'8 and aD kinds
of vegetable, together.
You can go anywhere in dkee mountaiN and knock
you off a little place - cut qff the timber, plant you lOIne
com and beane -ana duff, and eee, the beetle, won't bother
your beanl 'for that year - maybe not two or three year&.
When. they do go to wurking your beans, you change
around and HO IOmeplace elee a lot away frorn, where you
HOt YOu{ beans, and ci«r you another little 1pOt. Let the
firet one grow back up, and tend the new one for two or
three yeara; no beetles will bother you. If you ju,t tend it
that much, your lOil won't start washing away. The rootlof
the tree' you just taken out are Jtill in the ground. Your
mountain lOil washe, away when your ltump' rot Oltt and
quit aproulinfl;.
I .. ay in the mountain, the biggeat part of the time,
that'a where I wu raieed. The furtheat I wu ever .way from
home 'till I went to Chicago (Univ. of Ch;cago Folk
Fe,tival, 1967) waaat Fort JacklOn (NC!) when I went into
aemce. I wu diacharae4 at Fort Jack80n - I couldn't ttand
the overleu examination. There', not many placea eiOIt by.
that I've not been - like Tenneeeee, South Carolina, and
Georgia. ,I've work¢ on louincjob, at all thOle placet.
I relDy like to fann, bat after thil 'bIccer buline., I
just quit foolin' ;,nth it ..:: went off to working on Public:
Job~ Been about eeven yearuince I farmed any . • juet took.
rile a notion to come back hOlllC!, mike me a larden _ come
back in and stay awhile. I've been studyin' about comins in
back hOlrle and stayi,.. Th.ie job bumne_, I aiR't a.gonna
fool with it 'any more.
Can you mob dny A:ind of a Iivi,.. bocA: in herer
WeD, the only living that a man can make iI fanninc.
There'l not much to that here in theee hill, - I've juet been
ltud~,about it. The way the land lay" you can clean up
thle land here. But "'~n you KO ahead and farm it, the land
is gone - it washes away in a year or two. It 'a gone on
down the coyntry 80mewherei to 80me other country _ to
the levelland.
I've been.nudying.about it - try to manage 80meway to
put in a lake here, soing into th~ filh bueine .. Got plenty
of land, pIent)' of ,water. There', more (living) in that than
anything I've found he.re in theee ~ou,!hina. Right on and
on ~t wou)d J;w: ~~ in ~0rteY., p'cop1e e,oming in fl..rut'll
and camP~ I ~UIY li:ke touriata. There wu a I~y "it'll
about the bed pl.cc, to put in lake' for touri,ta. She wu
ukin& me the best thing to do to bring in money to
Madilon Count,.. The best thing I know for Madison
County would be for them aD to put it into a touriet place.
Whot would f/lGt do 10 the life of'hepeople who 1iue here?
Only ilJ"t help 1hem !lUt.
John Cohen iI G member of fhe Putnam Slri,. County Band .nd the New Lo" City &mblen. In .ddilion, he u.
teacher, filmm41ter. writer, fII1Ut, collector and foUclor'iIf - and 0 member oftlae Si,.. Out' AdtlUrory Boord
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[LaRena Clark] MARIUS BARBEAU MEDAL AWARDED TO A TRADITIONAL
SINGER
In 1985 the executive of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada
decided to institute a Marius Barbeau medal to be awarded to a person
who had made an important contribution to Canadian folklore. That year
the medal went to Edith Butler, the well-known Acadian folksinger. The
following year it was given to Father Germain Lemieux, whose remarkable
collection of Ontario’s French-Canadian lore has been documented
in numerous books and forms an important archive at the University of
Sudbury.
In 1987 the executive awarded the medal to LaRena LeBarr Clark, a
remarkable traditional singer who has a repertoire of some five hundred
songs. Although many of these are not what are generally thought of as
folk — vaudeville, music-hall, and American popular songs — she
learned them all orally, from members of her family, and most of them
show interesting variations from the originals.
LaRena’s unusual background makes her repertoire particularly
interesting. Nine generations on LaRena’s father’s side have been born
in Canada. The LeBarres were French colonists who came out to Acadia
early in the eighteenth century. Her grandfather, John Edward LeBarr,
moved to Ontario from Grand Anse, New Brunswick, and married Martha
Ann Moore who was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock.
John LeBarr obtained a land grant near Lake Simcoe and built a
cedar-shingled house on the shores of the Black River at Pefferlaw, near
Beaverton, Ontario. There he and his wife raised fourteen children, one
of whom was LaRena’s father, Benjamin LeBarr. In 1917 LaRena was
born in the house her grandfather built.
Her maternal great-grandfather, Edward John Watson, came out to
Canada from northern England early in the nineteenth century and married
Margaret Landau, the child of an Indian woman and a French fur
trader. Their son, LaRena’s Grandad Watson, married Annie O’Neill,
the daughter of George O’Neill, an Irish Catholic who was an early
settler in Pefferlaw. Thus LaRena’s ancestry mingles English, Irish,
French, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Indian strains, and her repertoire
benefits from this mosaic.
Most of her English songs came from her Grandad Watson, most of
her Irish songs from her grandmother Mary Anne Moore LeBarr, and
most of her Canadian songs from her father.
LaRena’s life as a child was particularly suited to the learning of songs.
Her grandfather and her father were hunters and guides, working in the
woods and rivers of Northern Ontario, and as a child she often went with
her father when he was hunting or fishing or following a trap-line. In the
evenings at home the family’s main pastime was singing.
She knows nine Child ballads, of which her versions of “Fair Annie”
(Child 62) and “Lord Gregory” (Child 76) are the only versions so far
reported in Canada. She has some seventy British broadsides, including
several not previously reported in North America. Some of her old
English songs are either unique or very rare: “The Old County Fare,”
“Thyme, ’Tis a Pretty Flower,” “The Rifle Boys,” “The Banks of Inverness,”
“I Once Loved a Lass,” and “Rattle on the Stovepipe.” She also
knows several Ontario lumbering songs that are quite uncommon: “Fine
Times in Camp Number Three,” “The Roving Shantyboy,” “Hurry Up,
Harry,” and “The Raftsmen’s Song.”
In addition to minstrel, vaudeville, and Irish music-hall songs, her
repertoire includes songs from the American Civil War, the Boer War,
and World War I, a number of children’s play-party songs, and an
unusual song version of a widespread neck riddle which she calls “King
Henry Has Set Me Free.”
LaRena performed at various folk festivals and sang for many different
groups. She has been interviewed on radio and television, and a number
of articles about her were published in the 1960s. She composed many
songs which she sang along with her traditional family groups. She has
made nine records, and some of her songs have appeared in books, and
been performed and recorded by contemporary singers.
The surprising wealth of her repertoire has enriched our Canadian
folklore heritage and fully entitles her to receive the award named for
Canada’s great pioneer folklorist.
other sources: LaRena Clark’s (1929-1993) unusual background makes her repertoire particularly
interesting. Nine generations on LaRena’s father’s side have been born
in Canada. The LeBarres were French colonists who came out to Acadia
early in the eighteenth century. Her grandfather, John Edward LeBarr,
moved to Ontario from Grand Anse, New Brunswick, and married Martha
Ann Moore who was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock.
John LeBarr obtained a land grant near Lake Simcoe and built a
cedar-shingled house on the shores of the Black River at Pefferlaw, near
Beaverton, Ontario. There he and his wife raised fourteen children, one
of whom was LaRena’s father, Benjamin LeBarr. In 1917 LaRena was
born in the house her grandfather built.
Her maternal great-grandfather, Edward John Watson, came out to
Canada from northern England early in the nineteenth century and married
Margaret Landau, the child of an Indian woman and a French fur
trader. Their son, LaRena’s Grandad Watson, married Annie O’Neill,
the daughter of George O’Neill, an Irish Catholic who was an early
settler in Pefferlaw. Thus LaRena’s ancestry mingles English, Irish,
French, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Indian strains, and her repertoire
benefits from this mosaic.
Her mother was Mary Francis Watson, and her great-grandfather, John Watson, was a factor for the Hudson's Bay. LaRena's mother, Mary Frances Watson, was the daughter of Edward John Watson and Annie O'Neill Watson