[Johnny Ray's grandfather was Joseph Hicks. He's Dee Hick's cousin. The Tennessee Hicks do not appear to be directly related to the North Carolina Hicks/Harmon families.
Dee Hicks born in Fentress County in 1905. His father was Daniel "Dan'l" hicks (1868-1948), fiddler, balladier and hunter. Joseph, Dee's grandfather, was born on Sulfer Creek (in 1816) nine miles east of Burksville, KY, and came to Tennessee in 1817; paternal great-grandparents were John Hicks and Chrissie (Mills) Hicks, and maternal great-grandparents were Wylie Downs and Chrissie (Nobles) Downs.
Between the two of them, Dee Hicks and his wife Delta contributed 400 songs and tunes to the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture. It's not clear is there's a connection with the Hicks family from North Carolina but there doesn't seem to be one. Samuel Hick moved from NC to Tennessee but this was circa 1880.
R. Matteson 2014]
JOHNNY RAY HICKS
CROSSVILLE CRIMINAL
and other songs and stories of the Cumberland Plateau
When I first met Johnny Ray Hicks, I saw a fierce man. He had agreed to come sing at a festival in the Copper Basin in Southeast Tennessee. Johnny Ray got in about an hour before his time, walked up to me with his jaw set, stared at me
in his fierce way and said, “You didn’t tell me I had to come all the way to North Carolina.” I stared back at him, I suppose with my mouth open, not sure what to say. Then I saw a crack in his poker face, a twinkling in the eyes. I said, “North Carolina’s another quarter mile.” He let go with that great laugh of his. That was in the summer of 1995. For the next five years I asked him to perform every chance I found. He sang the old ballads the way they should be sung. He drew, from a seemingly bottomless pool, his songs, stories,
and tales. His audience was seldom large—
interest in these elder arts has waned—but
that made it better. He was at his best before a
small group, catching each with his eyes in
turn as he talked and sang.
This recording features songs and stories
from field tapes and formal concerts between
December 1985 and August 2000. I am convinced
we have only a sampling of his repertoire.
Bob Fulcher’s long work with Johnny
Ray likely got at most of his oldest ballads, and
probably brought out the majority of his Victorian
era songs, but I think we only have a portion
of his sacred repertoire and very few of
his mid-20th century songs.
The last field recording was made at his
home eighteen days before his death. It features
songs he had never before recorded and a
fine performance of the rarely heard English
ballad “Peggy Band.” At that last session much
of Johnny Ray’s fierceness had slipped away,
and the singing had a different quality, more
contemplative. We knew he had little time left.
At one point during that last day he turned to
me and said, “They ain’t none after me.”
– Brent Cantrell,
Knoxville, May 2007
JOHNNY RAY HICKS
Cumberland Plateau Ballads,
Songs and Stories
You’ve got hold of a strong character here,
Johnny Ray Hicks. He was fit and lean his
whole life, trimmed to sally through a world of
crosscut saws and copperheads. He spoke
resolutely and looked at you squarely. His bold,
deep voice was on some super male wavelength,
an evolutionary byproduct of sexual
selection. He’d face you with flat, thin lips and
a glare, which reconciled to a huge smile, so
big and deep that you couldn’t possibly resist
its charm.
Confidence and charm—those qualities were
unmistakable in his presence. They made him
one wonderful vessel for transporting the last
of the old songs to the end of the 20th century.
Born into one of the great ballad-bearing families
in North America, and raised more like an
earlier Appalachian generation than his own,
Johnny Ray drank from a boiling spring of
traditional knowledge. Among a dozen-odd
brothers and sisters, though, only Johnny Ray
internalized large pieces of the old musical culture.
Born in 1925, nothing ever pushed the old
style out of him altogether. Jimmie Rodgers
couldn’t displace it, though he almost did. The
Army and WWII and Roy Acuff didn’t send it
to oblivion. The churches had it down for while,
but it came back.
In the final years of his life, Johnny Ray
Hicks may have been the last robust singer of
the old style in Appalachia who had also lived
“the old way.” To the end of the 1990s, his
songs could carry you on broad shoulders, or
smack you in the face if you weren’t prepared
for their brute strength. While he didn’t have
the infinite repertoire of “a mighty singer” by
Hicks family standards, he sustained the lives
of many fine songs. He was the last exponent
of a manly ballad style, full of frontier bluster
as well as credibility. If a song was meant to
be comic, he ended it with a great laugh, or, at
least, that enormous and compelling smile. If it
was tragic, there was no cooing or closed-eye
business. Clear eyes and cutting tones.
Cultural evolution, devolution, or metamorphosis
aside, the bell tolled for a long era of
Appalachian ballad singing when Johnny Ray
Hicks died in August 2000.
Hicks Family
He usually called himself “Johnny Hicks.”
Just about all of his family called him “Ray
Hicks.” Quite a few associates called him
“Spade Hicks,” either for his love of gambling
or because of his swarthy complexion. I often
called him by his given name, “Johnny Ray
Hicks.” After all, the name “Johnny Hicks” still
belonged to his grandfather in the memory of
so many neighbors and kin, and another wild
hillbilly storyteller from western North Carolina
had already claimed the title “Ray Hicks”
among the aficionados of Appalachian culture.
The Hicks family of Fentress County, Tennessee
gained recognition in the 1970s and
1980s, as the remarkable story of Dee and
Delta Hicks became known through field
recordings of their unmatched word-of-mouth
repertoire of British Isles and early American
ballads and songs. The Hicks family had come
to the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee, to
Jamestown around 1817, when the village was
only a couple of houses. The Hicks family established
an impressive reputation lasting into
the 1970s as backwoods hunters and characters,
among the most “old-fashioned” people in
this remote region.
Dee Hicks (1906-1983) learned hundreds of
songs from his father Daniel Hicks (1868-
1948), a lifelong hunter and stockman on the
open range of the Cumberland Plateau.
Daniel’s oldest brother was Johnny Hicks
(1843-1935), a veteran of Tinker Dave Beaty’s
company of Independent Scouts, who fought
as guerrillas for the Union during the Civil
War. They received no pay or uniforms, only
ammunition, from the Union Army, but most
members, including John Hicks, received a
Federal pension following the war. Johnny
Hicks married after the war, and raised nine
children, including Johnny Ray’s father,
Mount Hicks.
JOHNNY RAY Hicks
In 1918, Mount Hicks (1881-1958) married
Evie Huling (1896-1975), a 23-year-old mother,
fourteen years his junior. With two children of
his own, Mount rented a house for his new family
in Gernt, a lumber camp on White Oak Creek
in Fentress County, and began hauling timber
to the sawmills. Johnny Ray Hicks was born
October 21, 1925 in nearby Cumberland Valley.
The family eventually took out to Darrow
Ridge, which they called “The Wilderness,”
eighteen miles from the closest community.
At age eight, Ray got into Zenith for a
small dose of coal mining experience as a
“chalk-eye:” “If you knowed a man good, why
he’d take you in, let you help load coal, get you
used to the mines, show you what they done,
and pay you a little.” Two years later he helped
his father at a sawmill, “rollin’ down logs and
rollin’ dust out from under the edger and the
main saw.”
While on Darrow Ridge, Mount Hicks lived
on property owned by Hugo Gernt, the son of a
German immigrant who had moved south from
Michigan to establish the town of Allardt in
1882, and to develop timber operations on the
northern Cumberland Plateau. Daniel Hicks
and Dee Hicks had also worked with similar
arrangements, harvesting a few crops and
timber from land “held in possession” for the
Gernts. Though they had the opportunity to
acquire land for themselves, they refused it to
pursue a less settled lifestyle, reducing their
obligations and expenses to a minimum.
Johnny Ray Hicks described life on Darrow
Ridge with great enthusiasm for the freedoms
and wonders of the Wilderness. They eventually
left the area to try town life, near Uncle
Johnny Hicks and his new wife. When that
failed to satisfy them, Mount moved the family
to an abandoned log camp, inside the boundary
of newly established Pickett State Forest. The
location allowed the eldest son, Gene, to enroll
in the Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the
State Forest, and to be close by the family.
Thompson Camp was established by Herb
and Id Thompson in the early 1920s to cut timber
on Stearns Coal Company lands. The camp
included a boarding house, where loggers were
fed, a small store, a few houses and barns. By
the mid 1930s it had been deserted and reoccupied
by opportunists who moved into the old
buildings. During the next three years, Mount
and Eva moved from one building to the next,
as others vacated the old places. “They just
loved to move. Every time a house got empty,
they had to get in it,” sister Nora recalled. Ray
put it this way, “they just moved from one
house to another, like a rabbit in the snow, just
jumped here and yonder…”
Indeed, they were squatting on State land –
sandy, droughty, woodland that supported them
as much through the natural production of wild
fruits, fish, and meat as they gained from brow
sweat. The CCC boys never challenged their
rights to this frontier. “I guess they knew it
would be a death sentence to run us out,” Ray
thought. Instead, they built a rock wall around a
spring for the squatter camp, and helped improve
their old road. Best of all, they dropped off
dinnertime leftovers after a day’s work nearby.
In 1942 Johnny Ray left home to be
a bulldozer operator and in 1944, with his
brother Gene, enlisted in the Army. He served
as a rifleman in France and Germany and
saw action in the Ardennes Forest.
Following the war, he was employed at a
shoe factory in Baltimore, Maryland, before
returning home to work in a brickyard near
Rugby. Later, he worked in sawmills and
dairies, trucked, and spread fertilizer for local
farmers, made moonshine whiskey, and worked
a crew cleaning oil spills in the small Plateau
creek. During that time he moved back into
“the Wilderness” to care for his mother and father,
constructing a new log house for them in
about 1957.
I first met Johnny Ray Hicks around 1980,
but our meeting was curt. He had been recommended
by Dee and Delta as the most likely
repository of the Hicks family version of “The
Turkish Factor,” a ballad known to the family
consistently as “The Turkey Factory.” Ray was
pleasant, but implied he didn’t sing much and
didn’t know the song. We talked through the
screen door.
After Dee’s death in 1983, I looked him up
again, because Hicks family members insisted
he was a great singer, and began recording his
songs and stories and seeking venues for his
singing. Through the rest of his life, Johnny
Ray faithfully sang at Pickett State Park’s Old
Timer’s Day every Labor Day. He started
singing at Fall Creek Falls State Park at least
once a year soon thereafter, and in the last three
years of his life, became a regular at the Laurel
Theater in Knoxville, where Brent Cantrell took
a strong interest in presenting and recording
his music. He reached many far-flung stages,
including the National Folk Festival and the
Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife.
As he so often proclaimed, Ray spent his
days as he pleased. He was a flea market entrepreneur,
an avid ginseng hunter, and serious gambler at poker. Before Christmas, he
usually gathered “pineys” (Lycopodium obscurum),
and, with his wife, Virgie, built wreaths
for the city markets, a cottage industry with a
hundred-year history in Appalachia.
Virgie Hicks, their son Jason, and
Virgie’s children from her previous marriage
were the family that surrounded Ray during
most of his last 20 years of life, as they encouraged
his singing, helped him through
sickness, and dealt with his rambling ways.
Ray was a rambling man, not afraid to find
his way through a strange land. He proved he
was unflappable as he accepted the serious
news of his cancer. He approached and met
death with clear-eyed dignity.
singing and storytelling
style
This album’s focus on Johnny Ray Hick’s
unaccompanied singing betrays my own prejudiced
actions as a cultural interloper. When
I first met Johnny Ray Hicks, he was a bit
suspicious of performing without the guitar
in his lap. As we sorted through his repertoire,
he usually offered guitar accompaniment
to every song, aiming at Jimmie
Rodgers’ approach, but, to my ears, it was
often unsuccessful—out of tempo and/or out
of key with his vocal line. He could not mold
the old songs to fit his guitar licks, though he
must have experimented from time to time
during the previous forty years. I encouraged
him to drop the guitar on many pieces and to
appreciate the simplicity and effectiveness of
his acapella singing.
Ray never lost faith that the world wanted
guitars, however, even as the outsider audiences
he encountered often responded with
disproportionate favor to his “traditional”
singing. He always kept one close by, and put
it into every program. Ray was smart enough
to please his audience, though, and so thoroughly
exposed to the unaccompanied style
that he couldn’t help but perform it beautifully.
It was almost too simple for him.
Johnny Ray liked to stand while singing,
with hands or fists on his hips, elbows out,
flared out in a blunt display. It gave him a
larger presence, in body language terms.
When he sat to sing, he looked at ease, but cut
his unblinking eyes around the room. He never
went very long without a cigarette.
Even in his most relaxed position, his voice
carried a tension characteristic of Appalachian
style. Long sustained notes poured straight
out, usually with little flutter, just an unwavering
strain, occasionally dropping a few steps.
Sometimes there was a full glottal choke, a
note ending in a sharp upward pitch, but Ray
used this ornament less often than many older
singers. His loud, penetrating voice cut
through fog and darkness, in the woods or the
church house. When he turned it up, he could
fill up a room like an opera singer.
In the territory where he rambled, Johnny
Ray Hicks was better known for his “talk”
than his music. He could be outrageously entertaining
or just outrageous. He told jokes
and tall tales, and was a compelling narrator
of trivial events, having mastered the commonplace
verbal crafts—credible impersonations
of his subjects and fluency in metaphoric
expressions. He used great timing and
feeling in all that he told.
It would be fair to say that Johnny Ray also
had the reputation for stretching the truth at
times. But he was so passionate, funny, believable,
and childlike when he enhanced an
episode from his past, he was given great leeway
by his peers and family.
His remembrances were often homilies, and
liberally spiced with stern statements, beliefs,
polemics, and laughter. At points, he came
close to breaking into Crockett-style pioneer
braggadocio, but he truly had more reserve
than the Almanac characters.
He was never a regular preacher, but he
had certainly preached in a few churches.
Encouraged by a little bit of alcohol and a
pure stream of faith, he once gave a scripturally
based tirade against witches at a
folk festival in Rugby, Tennessee. Ray despised
witches. It was harsh and scary to
the mild-mannered festival visitors, alienating
many, no doubt usurping any preconceptions
of Appalachian quaintness and
preciousness in favor of the savage mountaineer
stereotype. At a storytelling workshop
in a Cookeville library, he seamlessly
patched together his traditional tall tales
and Irishman tales with some pretty
rough jokes that shocked the Jack-Tale-fed
audience, and revoked his ticket to all future
sanctioned storytelling events. Ray
never precisely learned those cultural
boundaries.
Johnny Ray Hicks loved to laugh and
smile as much as anybody you ever saw.
But he mixed those jolly expressions with a
tough voice. He did not appear gentle, nor
did he seem extroverted. But he made himself
welcome in every company.
— Bob Fulcher,
Clinton, Tennessee
Crossville Criminal
"Crossville Criminal” is an original composition
by Johnny Ray Hicks. Although he sang
it without embarrassment, a family member
implied that the facts behind the case were
disturbing, so I avoided prying into them.
When I finally asked him, he told me, with a
hard look, “What do you think they’re gonna
do when you’ve got somebody sittin’ next to
you in an old tavern with a knife in their
back?” He often introduced the song by claiming
that he had sung it to a judge to get early
release from prison. He suggested that he had
done time in Brushy Mountain Penitentiary. I
assumed that it was connected to the
Crossville incident.
Several years after Ray’s death, I stumbled
across an unpublished manuscript, dated 1967,
entitled “‘Crossville Criminal’ By Patricia B.
Kirkeminde.” My mouth hung open. Mrs.
Kirkeminde had a very short but wonderfully
productive spell as a “ballad hunter” from her
Crossville home, uncovering the facts behind
“The Hills of Roane County” and recording a
rare example of the pioneer ballad “The Cumberland.”
Though she never met Johnny Ray
Hicks, she encountered his song in Crossville,
and followed through with an article submission
to Sing Out! magazine.
“In 1962 a young man, Johnnie R. Hicks,
wrote a $40 bad check which was cashed at
Gunter’s Grocery in Crossville. Mr. Gunter took
out a warrant against Johnnie.” Apparently Joe
Gunter launched his own investigation and
learned “that Johnnie was on a Greyhound bus
headed for Chicago.” Ray was arrested on
March 22, 1962. “At trial Johnnie pleaded guilty
and was sentenced on the 10th day of June 1963
to a year in the State Penitentiary with credit
for time spent in jail awaiting trial. While in jail
he wrote the ballad ‘Crossville Criminal.’ Johnnie
is said to have become repentant while in
jail and to have told Ol’ Joe that he might use
the song in any way he wanted to discourage
others from forgery.”
Gunter printed over 250 copies of the ballad,
and found a local singer to perform the piece
on his weekly radio broadcast from his grocery
store. Ms. Kirkeminde noted that requests for
the printed ballets came in from Ohio and
Florida, Nashville and Murfreesboro. She
closed her story, “Mr. Gunter told me that after
the young man left jail he “got religion” and so
his arrest had been a “good thing.” As she interviewed
the Circuit Court Clerk, however, she
found the discouraging news that Johnny Ray
had passed a couple more bad checks, but the
court believed that “he has left the area.”
In her unpublished submission to Sing Out!
she described the song as “not a ‘100%-dyed-inthe-
wool' folk song because the writer is
known and as it is of recent origin, but it’s
interesting and shows something of the
mountain philosophy.”
—Bob Fulcher
Johnny Ray Hicks on
“Crossville Criminal”
From his last interview, August 4, 2000
Brent Cantrell: Now you wrote “Crossville
Criminal” didn’t you?
Johnny Ray Hicks: Yeah, well they say a
drowning man will catch to a straw. That’s a
true song, what actually happened, just the
way it happened. I sung it to the Judge here
in Crossville one time. He’d done give me a
year and a day in Brushy, and the jailor
come over there and said, “Johnny I have an
old guitar there, said would you care to
come over there and sing the Judge that
song, he wants you to.” I said, “Why no, I
don’t care.” Went over there to sing it. When
we went down the stairs, he said “Would you
like to have a little drink afore you go?” I
said, “I don’t care.” He reached into his little
locked thing and got a half a pint and just
handed it to me. And I drunk it. And I went
on over there, and I sung that song, and,
uh, I was waitin’ on Long Chain then to
come after me, and he come on in there and
just unlocked the door. I said, “What are you
doin’?” He said, “The Judge just come over
here and told me there wasn’t anything
against you, just send you home – give you
a full pardon.”
C: So that song got you a pardon?
H: Yeah, and I’m here today. I just told the
truth about it, the way the whole thing
went, and some way or another it got to
him, I don’t know what happened.
C: Do you mind telling me what it was all about?
H: No, I don’t mind a bit to tell you. I spent, uh,
I stayed in jail 7 months and 14 days without
a trial. The Judge started up there one
time to try me, but had a heart attack and
died. So, then I had to wait again, you know.
And what it was about, I was over there
with a friend and me and him was out one
night, and he had a family, I didn’t have any,
that was before I was ever married or had
any children or anything like that, you
know. And ever little bit—I knowed he wasn’t
a working, I’d run over there to help him
make a run of whiskey, back down in Short
Mountain and all, I knowed him for a long
time, apparently a pretty good feller—he
kept comin’ up with some money all the
time. I didn’t know where he was gettin’ it,
but later I found out he was goin’ around
writing checks on people and cashin’ ‘em.
And I was with him so I was accomplice,
you know, to that, and instead of denying it
I just told the truth about it, what happened,
and that’s what I was tried for. And it cost
me 7 months and 13 days and liked to cost
me a year and a day in prison.
C: So, did you ever end up at Brushy?
H: No, never did see Brushy.
LIFE STORIES
From tape and video recorded interviews
Rich or Poor
Bob Fulcher: Were the Hicks in about the same
situation as most people in Fentress County
as far as what they owned in material possession?
Do you think they were less
wealthy or more wealthy, or about the same,
or what?
Johnny Ray Hicks: Well, it depends on what
you call wealth. Now the Hicks family was
good providers for their family. That meant
food, plenty to eat. The kind of stuff they
eat, old mountain food, and stuff like that.
As to money, back then they wasn’t a whole
lot of anybody that had money. You could of
stood ten men up, and you couldn’t of found
fifty cents on ‘em. If you worked a day for
somebody, they paid you in potatoes, or a
hunk of meat out of the smokehouse, or either
they’d come over and work for you, if
you had something to do to pay you back,
you know. But as fur as money, money wasn’t
mentioned, because they didn’t have it.
Now my grandfather, that we’re talking
about, he was an old Civil War veteran, he
drawed about $90 a month. Well, he was
considered a wealthy person. He could have
just about anything he wanted for that $90
a month. And of course he stayed at our
place. So that helped Dad out about buying
his seed and this that and the other. If he
put out his potato patch, and garden and
other stuff, and Dad had cows, two or three
cows at a time. Three or four head of
horses. I have seen Dad when he had a hundred
head of hogs. All running loose in the
woods. Now if he of had to of penned ‘em up
and fed ’em, Dad couldn’t of done that. But,
see, they had no fence law back then, and
you turn an old sow loose and she’d come up
with 10 or 12 pigs. And they eat hickory
nuts and acorns and stuff and got fat. And
we’d kill ‘em.
But as to bein’ wealthy in their way, they
would have any of ‘em told you they was
wealthy. They had good health most of ‘em.
They was stout people. They had plenty of
old rough grub to eat, and most of all, they
enjoyed life. They didn’t count it as a threat
or a dread, but it was an opportunity,
you know.
F: Do you think that was a common way of
looking at life back then?
H: Yeah. I’ve been to other families. Joe Hicks,
for instance, you know. If he had a good
mess of fish for super that night, and a
piece of cornbread, and good strong cup of
coffee, he didn’t care if he sat up and played
music half the night. Maybe not having
nothing for tomorrow. But he was just tickled
to death with what he had tonight, you
know. I don’t guess they lusted after a lot of
stuff, one thing. If you don’t see, if your
eyes don’t see, your mind don’t want. So they
had no television, no radio to hear about all
this other stuff, and the reality – they lived
in a little world of their own. And their mind
didn’t extend outside of that little world. So
they had no worries really. Today, we take
on the worries of the whole world, right in
our living room. And whether we know it or
not, subconsciously we worry about it, and
concerned about it. Well back then, we didn’t
have it. We worried about whether the corn
was gonna come up, when the hogs was
going to get fat, and if it was goin’ to get
cold enough at hog killin’ time that we
would’t have to worry about our meat a
spoilin’, worry about if the old hens’d laid
enough eggs to do us and if the fish was
goin’ to bite, and that was about it.
(January 24, 1986)
Hicks Family Music
Fulcher: Why do you think the Hicks more
than other families kept the music and
played the music?
Hicks: Well, there’s several reasons that they
did. They had a lot of time on their hands.
They wasn’t too well educated people in
books. Now I’m not saying they was dumb
people. They was very smart people in their
way. Mountain smart. And at that time there
wasn’t a lot of jobs to be got, so you mostly
raised your family on a little piece of ground
around with what animals you could catch
and kill and trap and fur, and stuff like that,
so they had a right smart of time on their
hands. Time to be at home with their family
of a night, the winter nights and things.
And there wasn’t anything really else to do,
except shell corn or peas or something. And
they’d have a dance or a music get together,
you know, and drag out their old fiddles and
guitars and things and all of ‘em have music.
Now they’ve got television to enjoy, they
got cars to ride. They got this that and the
other. The old Hicks generation of people,
they had their music. And that was their entertainment.
That’s all they had. Most of ‘em
didn’t even have a radio. (January 24, 1986)
Singing and Song Writing
Fulcher: What about when you sing a love
song, do you have – what is your feeling like
when you’re singing a love song?
Hicks: Well, some of ‘em, them old love ballads,
I sort of try to put myself in the perspective
of the person that made the song. There’s
got to be a feeling there. Yeah, a song back
then, it was either a song about a freight
train, or a good hobo, or a good bum, or
somebody that had had tragedy in love, or a
death, or something like that. All you can do
is try and put yourself in that person’s
place, you know. Then you have some feeling
about, you know, about the song.
Now you understand, you can get up
here, you can have two people. One of ‘em
can read a book, and to you it’s just words.
The other one can read the same book and
you get a real understanding of that book,
because they read it with an understanding
—a feeling. Other than just reading the
words that’s wrote down there. And so that’s
the way you have to go with a song.
F: The Hicks family has always been known
for making up songs, and you make ‘em up,
too. How do you make up a song?
H: It’s just a feeling that comes on ye. And if
you don’t have that feeling, you needn’t to
make a song, because you can’t make
one…See, if it was any problem to make
one, I wouldn’t be able to make it.
F: What about the songs that Daniel Hicks
made? Why do you think that he got interested
in making songs?
H:Well, Uncle Daniel wasn’t interested in nothing
– only that. And hunting. So he had to
have at least two interests. Huntin’ was the
other one. He was sort of a jolly funny kind
of an old feller anyway. So that kind of a
person would kind of be different at making
a song than I am. But he was a jolly old
feller, and he just made ‘em up. About
everything. He could see a person with a
broke down wagon, and he’d make a song
about it. And they loved to make songs on
their neighbors, them old country people
did, anyhow. That’s where Dad—Dad was
pretty bad for that his self. To make songs
on his neighbors. They didn’t care.
F: Do you remember any of those?
H: Yeah, that un I was telling you about, Elbert
Branum, you know. About “a pension don’t
last many seasons; I know what I’m talking
about.”
See Dad had heared Elbert talking about
that. He saw him in town. He said, “Mount,”
said, “I was drawin’ a pension,” said,
“They’ve cut it out,” said, “ I just don’t know
what we’re gonna do,” said, “I told Sara Ann
I’d come to town today and see if could get
a little lard.” Said, “We’re just right down on
it.” And was talking to Dad about it, you
know, and Dad come back to the house and
made a song about it. The old crane lived
right down on the old railroad, the old
smoke log train run right by his house, you
know. And they was a song back then somebody
sang about the old train, she rocks and
she tottles, you know, and Dad just used
that lyrics to make that un on Elbert.
F: Would you sing some of that one
for me?
H:Well a pension don’t last many seasons
And I know what I’m talking about.
I had one and lived pretty easy
But now they have left me without.
Oh the old train she rocked and she tottered
As we set down to break bread side by side
And the fish that I’d caught wasn’t seasoned
For I couldn’t get no lard, though I tried.
I told Sara Ann I was going to preachin’
That I’d preach to the people or die.
She said they would pay me attention.
For I couldn’t be a preacher and lie.
F: Did your Dad sing it for Elbert?
H: No he didn’t sing it for Elbert, he sang it
for us. I sang it one time, sung for Elbert.
Dad liked to of killed me, when I was little.
He come over there one time, come ahuntin’.
He was a queer kind of a feller anyhow.
Walked in there and set down. I was
amessin’ around in there. I was always
doing something I had no business adoin’.
And I said, “Uncle Elbert, have you heard
that new song Dad made?” “Noo,” Uncle Elbert
said, “I ain’t.” I said, “I’ll sing a little of
it for you.” I cut in on it. I sung it, until
Mom and Dad got in there and got ahold of
me. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to sing
it. (January 24, 1986)
Grandpa Johnny Hicks
and Singing
Fulcher: What do you remember about your
grandfather John singing. When would
he sing?
Hicks: My grandfather wasn’t bad to sing at
all – he wanted to hear somebody sing. I
ain’t for sure that grandpa could sing. But
he dearly loved it. He’d tell my mother. He
called her Eva. He was about eighty-someodd
years old and wore a big ol’ black hat,
“Eva! Come in here and sit down and sing
me a song.” She’d say, “Grandpa, I’ve got the
dishes to wash, and these kids to take care
of. I ain’t got time to sing a song.” “Alright!
Ding it! You got the bigs on ye. Alright. I’m
agoin’ to the Burg” – he called going to
Jamestown “goin’ to the Burg.” “I’m agoin’
to the Burg in a month. Ding my picture, I
won’t get you nary big red handkerchief!”
And he liked for her to sing that old freight
train song about “ All around the water
tank.” And when she’d get to the part where
he said “My pocketbook was empty,”
Grandad’d say, “Heh! Ding it! I wonder what
he done with his ding money?!” He was a
good jolly old feller, but I don’t remember
him singing but a one or two songs.
(January. 24, 1986)
Church Singing
Fulcher: Have you stayed interested in music
through the years or have there been periods
when music hasn’t meant as much to
you?
Hicks: There was for about 12 years that I
didn’t sing the old hillbilly songs. I sung sacred
songs… They’d have me in all the
churches and sang sacred songs for ‘em.
Not that I was any preacher or anything.
But I knowed a lot of old sacred songs, and
they knowed that I could sing ‘em. And they
wanted me there singing ‘em. .. But then I
got out of that, and when I did, of course,
why there was the old mountain music
again, I just commenced to playing that…
F: What were the songs that you sang most
often during that period?
H: Oh, they was hundreds of ‘em. One of ‘em
was that un, “Tears Will Never Enter the
Kingdom,” “Streets of that City,” “Smile
With Me, I’m Going to Rest,” “When I’m
Homesick for Heaven,” and that “Sunset and
Evening Star,” “On the Other Side of Jordon.”
They’s thousands of ‘em…
F: Did you ever sing from a songbook during
that period?
H: No. Never did sing out of a songbook. Just
what the group singers done, was sung out
of a songbook. Then they called me, they
called, “Now we’re gonna have special
singing by Johnny Hicks.” Then they’d
have me to come up for “special singing,”
you know.
F: When you sang, did, uh, the congregation
join in if they knew the song?
H: No. Hardly ever on a special singing. Once
in a while they would, if I was singing a
song that they all knowed. I’d asked ‘em
sometimes to join in and help me sing it,
and they would.
F: When you sing a religious song as compared
to singing a love song is there any
difference in the way you put yourself
into it?
H: Oh yeah. There’s quite a bit of difference.
You have to have a spiritual helping on sacred
songs or, you know, it's just words. You
have to feel what you’re singing. That’s what
they call me – a spiritual singer – that’s what
they call me. They said just as many in the
congregation could sing beautiful songs that
was done properly and good, but just the
minute I started singing, the tempo
changed, they could feel it, you know.
(January 24, 1986)
Grandpa Jim Huling
Johnny Ray Hicks: “My other grandpa, he
was bedridden for fifteen years, he was a
circuit ridin’ minister. He sung me a lot of
old songs. He’d keep a little candy, ya know,
and I’d go sit down by the bed. He’d sing
me those old songs like that "Sunset and
Evening Star." He’s the one I learnt that
one from.
Brent Cantrell: And what was his name?
H: Uncle Jim Huling. James Huling was his
name. (August 4, 2000)
Wild Food
Hicks: Well, boys that was what we eat. And we
eat chinkapins, and there was grapes
growed down there, them possum grapes,
you know. We eat them in the fall of the
year, eat every one of them. We lived about
like a bear. Now it’s the truth. We looked
forward to gooseberry and chinkapins and
possum haws, you know, like I was talking
about. There is a little branch right over
here, back of this over here...
Fulcher: In back of the log house?
H: Yeah, there was another big field back over
here, and back of that run a little old
branch over there, and it was just full of
possum haws, and there never was a possum
that got one of ‘em, we eat ‘em before
they got there.
F: Did ya’ll ever have like a meat house to put
your wild game in or would it go in the pot?
H:We put it in our belly when we got it. But
we was ready for it. It got cooked and eat
right then. We’d even go out here, there was
old sage fields back over here, all over in
here, and we’d hunt patteridge nest and
pheasants nests, and never thought that
maybe they’d been a settin’ on ‘em or they
wasn’t. We brought ‘em in and boiled ‘em
and eat ‘em, buddy. Now you take when a
grown man with five children and his wife
or six children and his wife works all day,
ten hours, for a dollar, don’t think he won’t
eat what he can get ahold of. Cause he sure
can’t buy it with it. And that’s what Dad
done. He’d dig one of these root cellars for a
dollar. Dig it with a mattock and shovel.
(August 14, 1993)
Whiskey
Hicks: Dad raised twelve children like that,
back there on the ridge, was big, stout, well
people, none of ‘em was ever on dope, noth-
ing like that. There was whiskey there, but
wasn’t no alcoholics. Dad didn’t say nothing
after us boys got bigger if we wanted to
take a drink of whiskey, we took a drink of
it. He told us what it’d do for us if we got
drunk on it. So we just drunk it. I made it
all my life nearly.
Fulcher: You’ve made some good whiskey.
H: I’ve made some good. They’ve come from
Michigan to get it. Take ever bit I had, but
just as soon as they’d let me—find out I was
gonna have a run—there’d be a car setting
right there from Michigan and get it or
Ohio or somewheres. It’s good stuff.
(August 14, 1993)
Thompson Camp
Fulcher: Nobody was charging rent?
Hicks: Nobody was charging nothing. If they
wanted to go out to the barn and tear half
of it off burn it for heating wood, there was
nothing said about it. It was just a wild
place down in there, and them houses happened
to be there. And people lived in ‘em
and nobody paid any rent, there was nothing
heared about any rent. We didn’t even
know that people charged for rent back
then. I guess the first rent that we ever
paid in my life, let’s see where was it, we
moved to town a little while, paid a little
rent on an old house up there. In
Jamestown. But other than that, we never
paid no rent nowheres. (August 14, 1993)
Darrow Ridge
Hicks: They eat just natural stuff, they just
eat what they raised, they knowed what it
was, it didn’t hurt ‘em, they eat all they
wanted, they eated all the fish they wanted.
They found out right here lately that this
hypertension that’s so bad, you know, kids
hyped up that can’t be still at all...Wild
meat’ll cure that. Squirrels, just feed him all
the squirrels and rabbits and pheasants,
stuff like that, he wants – it’ll take care of
that. See, they eat all that they wanted all
the time. That’s all they had. Now when we
lived on the ridge, Dad had a hundred head
of hogs loose in the woods. We had two regular
milk cows and Dad had six or seven
more cows, horses. Mom had over a hundred
head of chickens a year. And we had all the
eggs that we could do anything with, and
milk and butter and taters of both kinds,
she canned up over 200 cans of stuff every
year and put in the root cellar. And we had
apples put away, and we just lived like a
king, you know, and had all the time we
wanted to do anything with, we wasn’t
pushed for nothing. Paid no house rent. The
Gernts come down there and told Dad, said,
“Mount” – they called him “Mont [phonetic]”
and they thought the world of him. And
these boys out here of Gernt’s thinks I’m
their brother, they just treat me like a
brother, you know, cause they stayed there
half the time at my place. And their daddy’d
come down there, go hunting with Dad, you
know, and stay there, fool around all the
time. And there was 50 acres of our old
home place down there that, you know, that
wasn’t a lot, one’s place, about 50 acre. And
one day Mr. Gernt come down there and
said, “Mont,” he said, uh, “We been friends a
long time.” He said, “It wouldn’t make you
mad if I’s to do you a little favor would it?”
Dad said, “Why not, I don’t reckon it would.”
Said, “I never have been mad at ye.” Hugo
said, “Well, what I want to do, Mont, is just,
measure this off,” said, “it’s fifty acres of it
here,” and said, “I want to make you a present
of it, just give it to you.” Dad said,
“Hugo,” he said, uh,” I don’t believe I want
it.” Hugo said, “Why don’t you want it,
Mont?” “Well,” he said, “The way it is, Hugo,”
he said, “I can live here as long as I want to,
cain’t I?” “Why” Hugo said, “You know you
can.” “Well,” Dad said, “I’ve lived here a long
time, I can cut anything here I want to, and
live here,” and he said, “if you’s to give me
that, Hugo,” he said, “here I would be tied up
apayin’ taxes and stuff on that.” And he
said, “The way it is, I ain’t ahavin’ to pay
none.” “Well,” Hugo said, “Mont, I see your
point.” Said, “No hard feelings done,” said,
“just stay here as long as you want to if it’s
the rest of your life.” Dad said, “That’s what
I figured on doin’.” (August 14, 1993)
Music and Old Ways
Fulcher: Why did you stay interested
in it?
Hicks: I stayed interested in it because it was
part of my life. It was just as much a part
of life as eatin’ was. And I liked it. And I
growed up with it, and it’s something you
don’t just shake off…. It can be very valuable.
It’s as good for you as a good dose of
medicine. You set down of a night, you’re
nervous, you’re tired, you don’t feel like goin’
to sleep. You set there and tell a few of
these old stories, sing a few of them old
fashioned songs, and get your mind back on
when this country was first formed , how
the people lived, how they done, and by the
time you get through, you’re rested, and
you’re nerves are settled and you’re ready to
go to sleep.
F: Now in Washington you are going to find a
lot of people interested in Tennessee and
these things that you do. Why do you think
that a million people are interested enough
to come down and enjoy this?
H:Well, it seems to me, after me talking to
these college kids and things, it seems to
me like they already know they is something
else different from what they’ve got.
They’s a longing there, it’s just in all human
beings, I think. Maybe some of ‘em way
deeper than others. But I believe it’s all
there. I believe it’s a part of creation.
F: You say, “there is a longing.” What do you
mean?
H: A longing for something. Like you get education,
you know, and you’ve got the city,
you’ve got big new cars, all kinds of money,
but you wake up of a night and you think,
“Well there’s something missing. This ain’t
all a satisfyin’ me.” You’ve got that longing
for it even though you’ve never heard it,
maybe. But you know they’s something else.
It’s satisfyin’, it’s soothin’. It’s something
that money won’t buy and you just can’t get
it that a way. (June 22, 1986)
Song Notes
Johnny Ray Hicks’ wide repertoire included
English ballads going back to least the 17th
century, early American songs and ballads,
sentimental songs of the Victorian era,
popular music of the early and mid-Twentieth
century, and compositions by Johnny Ray and
other members of the Hicks family. This
production focuses on his older and his more
traditional material and particularly on unaccompanied
songs and ballads. Johnny Ray always
performed some songs acapella, but more
often preferred to accompany himself with
guitar. In most cases we have chosen the unaccompanied
versions.
The original recordings vary considerable
in quality. They were recorded over a period of
fifteen years on cassette, on reel tape and on
digital audio tape. Although his voice sometimes
falters in recordings made just a few
days before his death, in some cases these
were the most complete recorded versions.
— Brent Cantrell and Toby Koosman
1. Little Rosewood Casket was published
in 1870 by Louis Goullaud and Charles
White. It’s been in wide circulation since,
with early recordings by George Reneau and
Sid Harkreader. Recorded August 4, 2000, at
Johnny Ray’s home, Clarkrange, Tennessee.
2. Little Wiley was composed by Mount
Hicks, Johnny’s Ray father. Wiley was Mount’s
first cousin. Recorded October 23, 2000 at the
Laurel Theater, Knoxville, Tennessee.
3. Barbara Allen (Child 84) is one of the
most widely collected of the English ballads.
Samuel Pepys mentioned it in a 1666 entry
in his diary. We consider this a near perfect
performance. October 23, 1998, at the Laurel
Theater.
4. Crossville Criminal Johnny Ray
composed this in 1963. It is based on a
personal encounter with the justice system.
See the main text for more information.
August 4, 2000, at home.
5. Pretty Polly is also known as “Across
the Blue Mountains” with versions collected
in Virginia. March 25, 2000, at the Laurel
Theater.
6. Irishman's dog with a courting
tale (story) One of Johnny Ray’s large
stock of Irishman tales. October 23, 1998,
at the Laurel Theater.
7. Long Chain Charlie is a fragment of
a prison blues. West Virginian Bill Cox
made a popular recording in 1934.
June 11, 1984, at home.
8. Wayfaring Stranger This popular
and well known hymn was first published in
1819 by Ananias Davisson in his shape note
collection, Kentucky Harmony. October 23,
1998, at the Laurel Theater.
9. Blind Girl's Plea is the Platonic Ideal
Form of the classic Victorian tragedy, dating
from the last half of the 19th century—
some sources say 1860s. It achieved considerable
popularity and wide distribution in
Tennessee with at least ten variants identified
in the Boswell collection. The great
Ozark ballad singer Almeda Riddle, whose
mother was from Middle Tennessee, said it
was the first song she learned. Early
recorded versions include performances by
Riley Puckett and Knoxville’s Charlie Oaks.
March 20, 1999, at the Laurel Theater.
10.Wild and Reckless Motorman
(with guitar) (Laws G11) Also known as
“The True and Trembling Brakeman” and
“The Dying Californian,” this song commemorates
a 1915 mining death, reportedly
composed by a worker named Jenks after
removing the brakeman’s body from the
wreck. December 18, 1985, at home.
11. Grandpa and Foxhound (story)
This one is about Uncle Johnny Hicks,
Johnny Ray’s paternal grandfather. October
23, 1998, at the Laurel Theater.
12. Willow Garden (Laws F6) Also known
as “Rose Conley” the song was first documented
about 1917. G.B. Grayson recorded it
in 1927 and through him it entered the
bluegrass repertoire. The tune consistently
used was popular among Irish immigrant
singers of the 1920s. August 4, 2000, at
home.
13. Dandoo (Child 277) is also known as
“The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin” and
dates from at least the first decade of the
19th century. December 18, 1985, at home.
14. My Dad is Sleeping (with guitar)
Johnny Ray linked this song in his mind to
the late Victorian “Mother Old and Grey.”
October 23, 1998, at the Laurel Theater.
15. Old Charlie Cecil Sharp (English Folk-
Songs from the Southern Appalacians, 1932)
identified a version, “The Horse’s Complaint,”
in Virginia in 1918. “The Drunkard’s
Horse” was collected in the Ozarks by
Vance Randolph in the 1920s. A variant titled
“Barefooted In Front And No Shoes On
Behind” was recorded by Warde Ford in
1939 and is available at the Library of Congress
web site. Luke Brandon, Jr. also sings
“Old Charlie” – he learned it from his
grandfather in Rockwood, at the foot of the
Plateau. December 18, 1985, at home
16. Sow Took the Measles and Died
in the Spring A fragment of a “tall
tale” song with fairly wide distribution in
the South. It was identified by Harvey
Fuson (Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands)
in Kentucky in the 1930s and by Randolph
in Arkansas. June 11, 1984, at home.
17. Paul's Vision appears to date from the
mid-twentieth century. It has been recorded
with various attributions as “Paul’s Ministry,”
with the earliest being by Kitty Wells
and Early Upchurch. March 25, 2000, at the
Laurel Theater.
18. Chihuahua (story) About a failure of
cross-cultural communication. October 23,
1998, at the Laurel Theater.
19. Burglar Man (Laws H23) A popular
song from the 1880s, everything hangs on
the punch line. The song was quite popular
during early recording sessions with Dave
Macon and Riley Puckett both recording
the song in 1924 and Henry Whitter,
Ernest Stoneman, John Carson, and Frank
Hutchison following before the decade was
out. March 20, 1999, at the Laurel Theater.
20. Pretty Mohee (Laws H8) This story of
exotic love is found in many versions
throughout the United States. The first
documentation dates from the 1840s. Buell
Kazee, Riley Puckett, Ernest Stoneman and
Bradley Kincaid all recorded versions in the
1920s. August 4, 2000, at home.
21. Peggy Band appeared in several 18th
century printed collections in Ireland, but
has rarely been collected from oral sources.
Another outstanding example was recorded
by Mike Yates in 1978 from Norfolk,
England singer Walter Pardon. August 4,
2000, at home.
22.Short Life in Trouble (with guitar)
was first recorded by the Cumberland
Plateau duo Dick Burnett and Leonard
Rutherford in 1926 with G.B. Grayson and
Henry Whitter recording it in 1928. The
song was found with considerable variation
and wide distribution in Middle and East
Tennessee in the 1930s. Charles Wolfe (Folk
Songs of Middle Tennessee) presented a version
titled “The First Thing I Owned Was a
Pistol” collected in Montgomery County
that he felt dated from a 1920 Cheatham
County source. October 23, 1998, at the
Laurel Theater.
23. May I Sleep In Your Barn
Tonight Mister makes its first appearance
in recordings by George Reneau and
Charlie Poole both made in 1925. Ernest
Stoneman recorded it a few months later.
August 4, 2000, at home.
24. Bill Staples (Laws H1) Also known as
“The State of Arkansas,” and “Bill
Stafford.” Kelly Harrell recorded it as “My
name is John Johanna” in 1927. The song
shows up in Edwin C. Kirkland’s Knoxville
Collection, got from Columbus Popejay in
1937. His version had an Irish protagonist.
A related family of songs in Ireland describe
comically a miserable farm laborer’s
life forced “to plough the Rocks of Bawn.”
Johnny Ray’s cousin Dee sang it. It first
shows up in print in 1906 from Missouri.
October 23, 1998, at the Laurel Theater.
25. Arkansas Boys Why are there so
many songs that make fun of Arkansas?
We don’t know. This one shows up with several
titles including “West Virginia Gals” –
it was recorded under that title by Al Hopkins
in 1928. Clayton McMichen and Riley
Puckett also recorded it that year as “The
Arkansas Sheik.” A version appears to have
been on the minstrel stage as early as 1841.
December 18, 1985, at home.
26. Wild Bill Jones (Laws E10) Johnny
Ray said, “That one happened to be one of
my old favorites you know – I liked to sing
it. Back then, I drunk quite a bit. I never let
it knock me outta work or anything like
that, but always had me a bottle somewheres.
And I’d get to drinkin’ and I’d sing
old Wild Bill Jones or some of these other
ones.” August 4, 2000, at home.
27. Way Out on the River (Laws O17)
(with guitar) A much naturalized American
variant of the widely distributed “Sixteen
(or Seventeen) Come Sunday” documented
since the 1790s. December 18, 1985, at home.
28. Knoxville Girl (Laws P35) A British
ballad in origin, the unfortunate girl has
been thrown into the rivers of Wexford,
Oxford, Linsborough, and Lexington, but
today is best known even in Britain from
the 1959 recording of the Louvin Brothers
sometime based in the eponymous town.
Earlier recordings include unissued sides
by Riley Puckett in 1924 and Gid and
Arthur Tanner in 1925. Doc Roberts
recorded it in 1928 and the Blue Sky Boys
in 1937. By way of exculpating his hosts,
Johnny Ray explained to a Laurel Theater
audience that the murder took place in
Knoxville, England. August 4, 2000,
at home.
29. Mule and Sweet Taters, (story)
About the misadventures of the family’s
mule. March 20, 1999, at the Laurel Theater.
30. Old Bangham (Child 18) Found in the
repertoire of the Hicks family and many
other Appalachian ballad singers, this song
is a particularly good vehicle for Johnny
Ray’s deadpan “fierceness.” The song is
also known as “Wild Hog in the Woods” and
“Sir Lionel.” September 10, 1999, at the
Laurel Theater.
31. Hills of Roane County was probably
written by the protagonist, Willis Mayberry,
about 1915. Mr. Mayberry was a section
hand in Kingston, Tennessee and apparently
killed his brother-in-law who had
stabbed him for some unknown reason. He
was condemned to prison and sentenced to
the State Penitentiary in Nashville on the
banks of Cumberland. See Patricia Kirkeminde’s
article in the Tennessee Folklore
Society Bulletin (March 1964) for more
information. December 18, 1985, at home.
32. Groundhog is a fragment of this exuberant
and well distributed discourse on the
culinary delights of groundhog. It was first
recorded in 1924 by Land Norris. December
18, 1985, at home.
33. Muddy France appears to have been
brought to the Plateau by Bill Cromwell, a
brother-in-law of Dee Hicks. Mr. Cromwell
served in Europe during the First World War
and told Bob Fulcher that he got the song
from his sergeant. August 4, 2000, at home.
34. Golden Willow Tree (Child 286)
first shows up on a broadside in England in
the 1680s as “Sir Walter Raleigh Sailing in
the Low-Lands.” Edwin Kirkland recorded
seven versions in the Knoxville area during
the 1930s. The song is also known as “The
Golden Vanity.” March 20, 1999, at the
Laurel Theater.
35. Sunset and Evening Star draws on
a number of previously published sources.
The first couplet comes from Alfred Lord
Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” published in
1889. The second stanza is from Charles
Wesley’s “A Charge to Keep I Have” dating
from 1792 and is traditionally sung in East
Tennessee as an additional verse to the
New Harp Of Columbia #188 bottom,
“Boylston.” The third and fourth stanzas
are from “There’ll be no Sorrow There,” by
Mary S.B. Dana, which was published as
early as 1859 and achieved widespread
popularity during the Civil War. All the
stanzas have been changed slightly, and
the whole is certainly greater than the
parts. “Sunset and Evening Star” is one of
the most powerful songs in Johnny Ray’s
repertoire. He learned it from his grandfather
Jim Huling. March 20, 1999, at the
Laurel Theater.
Recorded by Brent Cantrell – tracks 1-4, 6, 8, 11, 12,
14, 18, 20-24, 26, 28, 30, 33; Bob Fulcher - tracks 7,
10, 13, 15, 16, 25, 27, 31, 32; and Louis Gross - tracks
5, 9, 17, 19, 29, 34, 35.