Cambric Shirt - Gunning (MA) 1974 REC Wilson
[The Cambric Shirt sung by Sarah Gunning was recorded by Mark Wilson in Medford, Ma., on 5/7/74. Since she is from Kentucky, it's possible this version was learned there but it possibly is not traditional (see extensive notes on the session below which are vague, possibly intentionally vague about the source), I don't know. The Jean Ritchie/ Oscar Brand version I've deemed a cover and have not included it.
R. Matteson Jr. 2014]
Bio excerpt- Wiki: Sarah Ogan Gunning (June 28, 1910 – November 14, 1983) was an American singer and songwriter from the coal mining country of eastern Kentucky, as were her older half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and her brother Jim Garland. Although she made an appearance in the New York folk music scene of the 1930s, she was overshadowed by her older brother and half-sister. Rediscovered in the 1960s while living in Detroit, she played at folk festivals at Newport in 1964 and the University of Chicago in 1965.
15. Cambric Shirt - Sarah Gunning, vocal (Rec: Mark Wilson, Medford, Ma, 5/7/74). Roud 12, Child 2. Without a doubt one of the most enjoyable recording sessions I have supervised was the several day period that I spent with Jim Garland and Sarah Ogan Gunning, who were both already well known in the 'folk' world because of the 'protest songs' they had written when they lived in New York in the late 1930s. Brother and sister, they had been raised near Pineville, Kentucky and knew an enormous amount of traditional song. Sarah, who then lived in Hart, Michigan, had been invited to the big Smithsonian Festival in Washington and Jim had flown in from Washougal, Washington just for companionship. Rounder had already included several of Sarah's protest songs from the 1930s on their Coal Mining Women LP and on this occasion had paid Jim and Sarah's fare to come to Boston for a fuller recording. They asked me if I'd be interested in assembling another record of traditional materials from Sarah (in 1965 Archie Green had already put together a fine selection for Folk-Legacy (FL 26)). I wound up recording quite a bit of material from both of them over a period of several days. Along the way I learned much about the terrible labor troubles they had endured in Kentucky as well as hearing of their very interesting reactions to the urban 'folk scene' they encountered after they had migrated to New York's Lower East Side. As is well known, their half sister, the redoubtable Aunt Molly Jackson, had come north with the Dreiser Committee after the latter had visited Bell County in 1931 to report upon the miserable labor conditions. Not long after, Jim's friend, the young labor organizer Harry Simms, was shot by some company militia in Knott County and Jim himself was forced to leave Kentucky, coming north to speak about Simms' murder at labor rallies across the northeast. Settling in New York City, Jim eventually became good friends with NYU professor Mary Barnicle and recorded for her (many of these discs eventually wound up in the Library of Congress: Jim also assisted on some of her recording trips down into Kentucky). When it became evident that Sarah and her young family were literally starving to death in Kentucky, Jim and Mary drove south and brought them north (Sarah's husband Andrew Ogan had already become so ill from tuberculosis that he soon returned to Kentucky to die). Even in New York, her family conditions remained dire and Sarah lost one of her children to malnutrition there. Adding to her woes, Sarah herself contracted TB and lost one of her lungs. Under the urgings of the New York labor scene, Sarah composed her now celebrated radical songs of protest; their palpable anger reflects the very real miseries she and her family had suffered (although, by native personality, Sarah was more stoical than militant). The history and political intrigues of this period have been well documented: in a general way, within Bear Family's remarkable reissue collection Songs for Political Action and, in a book more specifically centered upon Aunt Molly and the Garlands, Shelly Romalis' Pistol Packing Mama (I find some of her attributions of personal motive strange, however).
All the same, Jim and his wife Hazel enjoyed their time in New York because of the lively intellectual stimulation it offered. Leadbelly lived just around the corner and Woody Guthrie was a good friend. Jim was very proud that a few of his songs (eg, I Don't Want Your Millions, Mister) had been taken up by the labor movement. He ran a short-lived radio show and formed a little family performance group that including Sarah. I don't believe that she was quite so enthusiastic about New York because of her continuing litany of tragedies, but her life greatly improved when she remarried Joe Gunning. When the war broke out, both families moved to Washington State for defense work. Jim and Hazel permanently settled there, while Joe and Sarah eventually moved to Detroit where they managed an apartment house. Hazel regretted leaving New York, but reported that Jim remained just as buoyant about his new western habitat as he had been about everything else in life.
The most delightful aspect of our recording session, beyond the astonishing bounty of the traditional material that each knew, lay simply in the pleasure of watching the two of them interact. Both possessed very amiable senses of humor but Jim approached his songs in an utterly ebullient spirit, sometimes mixing ingredients into his family songs that he had picked up elsewhere along life's path. Sarah, in contrast, was one of those singers who had learned most of her songs from her cherished mother and could reproduce these childhood materials with pinpoint accuracy. So it was amusing when Jim would offer me some song and Sarah would then comment in her droll manner, "Well, I guess some people puts those things in there, but our mother always sang it this way ..." But there was never a speck of rancor in any of this: just an affectionate brother and sister who understood each other's foibles very well. As it happened, an elderly Mary Barnicle then lived part of the year in Wellesley and I drove Jim and Sarah over to see her. I didn't stay long, not wishing to intrude upon their first reunion in many years, but it was touching to witness the same easy going affection amongst the three of them.
It was a pity that Jim's great talents couldn't have been put to greater use, as he greatly enjoyed, without being in the least obnoxious, participating in the wider 'folk music' scene (he was very proud, for example, that Pete Seeger had recorded several of his compositions on American Industrial Ballads). He had recorded a large body of material for Moe Asch of Folkways records who then refused to issue it, preferring instead to release an album by Jim's daughter Betty (he also commissioned Jim to record other musician's material in Bell County in the middle 1950s; I would love to know what happened to those tapes). At the time, I could only manage to include a few of Jim's duets with Sarah on her LP and then, a few years later, several of Jim's performances on scattered Rounder projects (an LP of 'blaggardy' songs (Rdr 0141) and a CD for children (Rdr 8041)). So I am gratified to finally be able to include more of his songs here: I only wish that Jim had lived long enough to see them released.
After our recording session, I commissioned Jim to write a portion of the liner notes for Sarah's record. What he first mailed in was a little stiff (as often happens when a good conversationalist attempts formal prose), but he had also been working on a partially completed autobiography that proved absolutely fantastic, so we eventually interwove the manuscripts until we were able to tell Sarah's story in a very satisfying way (I intend to rerelease a supplemented version of her old LP in Rounder's new Archive Series as soon as I can manage). I urged Jim to work further on his manuscript, but my own life temporarily fell into shambles a year later and I was unable to maintain our correspondence. Fortunately, Bess Hawes continued to encourage Jim in his writing and, soon after his death, Julia Ardery did a superb job assembling the manuscript as Welcome the Traveler Home. It is surely one of the most endearing books written about traditional music. My only regret is that there were so many intriguing aspects of Jim's life remaining that he hadn't managed to cover in his manuscript. If Jim hadn't died so soon (1978), I would have attempted to probe his vast well of folklore further. Sarah herself passed away a few years later, in 1984.
Perhaps the listener can glean a bit of Sarah's warm personality from the explanation she offers of this song's significance (or lack thereof). The esteemed folk song scholar Norm Cohen made the following interesting observation after listening to a mockup of this project:
One of the passages I most enjoyed when I listened to the CDs was Sarah Gunning's comment about some song that obviously had a few lines of nonsense. I felt this was a powerful antidote to the folklorists who struggle to read a deep subconscious meaning into such texts.
I might enlarge upon this remark by observing that I've generally found that the majority of traditional musicians can provide quite pointed and detailed explanations of why they happen to like a particular song or instrumental piece and it is often patronizing to presume that some other explanation need be given. In its original Child ballad context as The Elfin Knight, this song told a narrative story, but in most modern versions, its essence has been reduced to a poetic, tit-for-tat taunt. A good note on the ballad's background can be found in Palmer, Folksongs Collected by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Some excellent recorded versions: Tom Newman, MT 311; Sarah Cleveland, FL 33; Annadeene Fraley, JA 58.
Go buy for me a cambric shirt and make it without a needle or thread
And wash it out in yonder's well where well never sprung and rain never fell.
And hang it up on yonder's thorn where thorn never growed and root never sprung.
And every grove go merry by time and you shall be a damsel of mine.
Now you have asked me questions three and I will ask a few of thee
Go buy for me an acre of land between the sea and the sea sand
Plow it all up with an old buck's horn and sow it all down with culpepper corn
And reap it all up with a peafowl feather and tie it all up in an old stirrup leather.
And when you get your day's work down, come and get your cambric shirt.
And every grove go merry by time and you shall be a true lover of mine.