Isaac Garfield Greer (1881-1967)
by Arthur Palmer Hudson
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 81, No. 321 (Jul. - Sep., 1968), pp. 258-259
ISAAC GARFIELD GREER (1881-1967)
AT CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, on November 24, 1967, died, at the age of eighty-six, Isaac Garfield Greer, one of the last, best, and most genuinely traditional North Carolina folksingers. He had his middle name, he said, from a Yankee general who
once boarded in the Greer home, was kind and gentlemanly to the inmates, lived to be the twentieth President of the United States, and was assassinated in the year in which Mr. Greer was born. Ike Greer was born and raised at Zionville, Watauga County, North Carolina,one of the chief regions of the provenience of ballads and songs in The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore and, proximately, of some of the best ballads in More Traditional Ballads of Virginia (see A. P. Hudson's review of the last-named in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXIX:3, 353-356). This was also the home of Frank Proffitt, a friend of Ike Greer's and a fine ballad singer and folk-instrument maker, who died in 1965. Ike Greerw as a student at The University of North Carolina (class of 1910) when C. Alphonso Smith, then a professor there, was beginningt he great work of collecting t he Child ballads traditionally known in America.
For Professor Smith he sang the old ballads he had learned from his folks in Watauga County, and was told: "Go back, Ike, and collect all you can, because the day is coming when the balladsa nd folksongs you know will be taught as music and literaturei n every college and university where the English tongue is known" (tape recording made by A. P. H., in The Arthur Palmer Hudson Folklore Collection, University of North Carolina Library;a lso, Betty Bolton, "Music of His Life Played on His Heartstrings, "Biblical Recorder, November 20, I965, p. 9).
After years of teaching, notably as professor of history and government at Appalachian State College, Boone, where he did much collecting from his mountain-bred students, Ike Greer had a distinguisheda nd useful career as an administrator o f child welfare, chiefly in orphanages maintained by the Baptist Church. About fifteen years ago he moved to Chapel Hill as an executive of the Business Foundation of The University of North Carolina.S oon thereafter,N orth Carolinap hilanthropistsa nd the "graduates" of his orphanages (numbering among them an All-American football player, judges, Army and Navy officers, teachers, preachers, bankers) helped him to build and furnish an elegant home across from Gimghoul Castle on the highway leading into Chapel Hill. There, beloved by the citizens of Chapel Hill and of North Carolina, he lived a busy and useful life, in frequent demand as a speaker and singer. Among the honors he held were the presidency of the North Carolina Folklore Society, of which he was a charter member, and an honorary Doctor of Laws conferred upon him by Wake Forest College
(now University).
Doctor Greer, as he liked to be formally addressed, was not a folklore scholar, and he published almost nothing. But he was a perambulating anthology o f North Carolina folklore, comparablet o his contemporary", The Minstrel of the Appalachians, "Bascom Lamar Lunsford, of Buncombe County.
Ike Greer's two main interests, children and folksong, were orally expressed. A few years ago he reckoned that he had made 452 public addresses, over the state and the nation, in which he sang the old songs he had learned in Watauga and elsewhere in North Carolina. He was often accompanied by the dulcimer, played by his first wife. These songs, interspersed by anecdotes a bout them and by various o ther memorable and amusing kinds of folklore, were what people came to hear, whether they were Baptist Sunday School children, Friends of The University o f North Carolina L ibrary, members
of a learned society, collegians, or service men.
His repertoryo f the old songs was large and varied. He said he "interpreted" them. What he actually did was to sing them as he had learned them traditionally, without frills, and unself-consciously. He liked "The Gypsy Laddies" and "Sweet William"
("Earl Brand"). He relished "Sourwood Mountain" and "Down in the Valley." He sang "Tom Dula" (insisting on this spelling) as he said he had learned it from one of Tom's
pals who had fought in the Confederate Army with Tom and had seen him hanged at
Statesville in I868-ninety years before The Kingston Trio got hold of the song. One
of his studentsa t Appalachianc onfidedt o him, he said, that she was a granddaughtero f
Ann Melton, the other woman in the triangle. He trolled out the doleful "Frankie
Silvers," which he did not believe that Frankie had made up and sung on a gallows at
Morganton in 1833. He was sentimental about "The Little Mohee" and "The Pretty
Quadroon." He sang "Palms of Victory" and the other white spirituals nobly. Once,
when he sang a comic Irish ballad, "Paddy and the Barber," which he had gotten from
an Appalachiang randdaughtero f an Irishwoman,a distinguishedN orth Carolinaj udge
in his audience told him a story about it. While the judge was holding court in one of
the Great Smokyc ounties, the session was disturbedb y an old banjo-pickera nd singer
who was bawling out the song in the courtyardb elow. "Mr. Sheriff,"o rderedt he judge,
"go down and tell that old fool to shut up." When the sheriff returned and business
resumed so did the song. "Mr. Sheriff, didn't you tell that old fool what I said ?" Replied
the sheriff, "Yes, your Honor, but he said, 'You go back an' tell the jedge to 'tend to
his business and I'll 'tend to mine'." Another of Ike Greer's stories was about an admiral
of the Pacific fleet in whose flagship quarters Greer entertained the admiral and a party
of his friends. The songs took the admiral back to the long sea watches of his early
days,w hen the old songs, rememberedfr om his childhood,h ad solacedh im.
Ike Greer has been fairly well recorded in print and sound. Many of his songs appear
in The Frank C. Brown Collection (words and music). He recorded many for the Folk
Song Archive of the Library of Congress. Several, with anecdotes, taped by myself, are
in the APH Folklore Collection. A few months before he died, friends at Chapel Hill
got a reel of recordings from him for the North Carolina Folk Music and Folklore
Archive. It is said that he bequeathed his collection to Appalachian State.
Memory of Ike Greer will be fragrant with the recollections of childhood and the
music of old songs.
The University of North Carolina ARTHUR PALMER H UDSON
Chapel Hill, North Carolina