Memory Melodies- A Collection of Folk-Songs from Middle Tennessee- McDowell; 1947
[Included on this page is the Preface, Introduction and Index as well as my introductory notes on the McDowells. Flora Lassiter born circa 1890, married Lucien McDowell (b. 1884), both are from musical families. She is called Mrs. L.L. McDowell in the book and he is called L.L. McDowell. I've reproduced the entire text of the book, music will be added later. This book did not scan well- the type is faint and almost illegible in places. Warning- some of the raw text unedited may be present--I haven't had time to edit. This will be easy to spot, but the last 15 songs have not been edited. The song texts and music (upcoming) are attached to this page in the order found in the book. The songs are a mixture of dance songs, ballads, early country songs and popular ditties from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Cf. Folk Songs of Middle Tennessee: The George Boswell Collection by Charles K. Wolfe. Also Cambiaire's Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia Mountain Ballads.
R. Matteson 2014]
This is the fourth and last book by McDowells: Flora and Lucien: Memory Melodies- A Collection of Folk-Songs from Middle Tennessee Tennessee Folk Songs, published in 1947. It was written with her husband, Lucien McDowell. When he died in 1943 she hoped to add to it, but never did. She writes as a preface:
After the death of my husband, L. L. McDowell, I thought I would finish this manuscript which would have included several more of the songs we knew and loved. The effort brought such an upsurge of memories of the happy hours we spent in singing and working over these old melodies that I found the strain more than I needed to endure.
I am therefore, giving this work practically as he left it and hope to include the others in a later book of general folk lore indigenous to this section of middle Tennessee still so rich in song and story of our ancestors.
To those who may ultimately own these books, it is my sincere wish, as it would have been his, that you too, will cherish these songs of long gone years.
Sincerely,
Mrs. L. L. McDowell
I have not found a good bio on Flora Lassiter McDowell or her husband Lucien L. McDowell. Apparently when the Tennessee Folklore Society formed in 1932 in nearby Putman County, the McDowells became regular attendees. This was attested in 1952 when their son W. J. McDowell, addressed the Society in an open letter. He wrote: "I have grown up with the Tennessee Folklore Society and have attended almost all of its meetings."
This inspired Lucien L. McDowell to publish a gospel collection, Songs of the Old Camp Ground, Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, Inc. in 1937. I have a copy of that book from my grandfather. The McDowells had some correspondence with George Pullen Jackson who published a series on books of shape-note songs. The McDowells next published Folk Dances of Tennessee, Old Play party Games of the Caney Fork Valley. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edwards Brothers, 1938. Next Flora Lassiter McDowell published Tennessee Folk Songs by Cooperative Recreation Service, 1939.
They also published articles in the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin such as “The Play Party and Song,” Vol. 9 (May 1945): 3–8.
According to a family tree at Ancestry.com which may not be completely accurate, Lucien McDowell was born Sept. 1 1884 (d. 1943) to Andrew Jackson McDowell and Mary Roscoe. Lucien married Flora Lassiter; he passed away in 1943. His father was Andrew Jackson McDowell born in Smithville, Warren, Tennessee, in 1832 to Curtis McDowell and Margaret Jadwin. Flora's father was William (W.H.C.) Lassiter. Her grandfather was Elisha Lassiter, who was born about 1811 in North Carolina. He moved to Tennessee about 1830 and died 25 June, 1892 in DeKalb, Tennessee. He married Elizabeth 1813 – 1876. Their children were: Sarah E. Lassiter (1834 – 1939), Elisha J. Lassiter (1848 – ), *William Lassiter (her father b. 1850 – ), Charlotte Lassiter (1854 – ) and Robert A. Lassiter (1857 –). Robert, Flora's uncle, also made contributions.
Flora learned most of her folk songs from her father, William H. C. Lassiter and mother, Catherine E. Parker. Her mother's parents were Joseph A Parker 1828-1893 and Ceiley Elizabeth Clark b. 1839.
Most of the songs in this book are from the Caney Folk Valley area in DeKalb County, Tennessee. These songs were learned by Flora when she was a child in the 1890s and date back trough her family to the early 1800s in Tennessee. They were brought to Tennessee by the English and Irish settlers in Virginia and North Carolina.
Here's a brief excerpt from Tennessee County History Series about De Kalb County by Thomas G. Webb 1986:
DeKalb County, Tennessee, was established in December of 1837 by an act of the Tennessee Legislature. The county contains 317 square miles; it is between 25 and 30 miles wide from east to west and slightly less from north to south. With approximately 14,000 people within its boundaries, it is a comparatively small county in both area and population.
The southern part of the county is on a plateau, the Highland Rim, known locally as "the flatwoods." Here great level fields of soybeans and corn are harvested by huge combines and air-conditioned tractors. Smaller patches of tobacco are interspersed with fields of evergreens and fruit trees to give an air of prosperity to the area. It was not always so.
When Riley Turner moved to the flatwoods from the Caney Fork in 1890 his uncle Marion Love visited him, looked around, and said, "You'll never be able to raise your children here." The flatwoods did look discouraging then. They were usually burned off every few years, so that much of the land had only a few big trees mixed with head-high bushes. Corn did well to grow shoulder high and to produce a small nubbin or two. Most of the widely scattered houses were small and unpainted and had stick-and-dirt chimneys. When Zachariah Davis moved to Shiney Rock from Smith Fork in 1884 the house he bought from Jerome Mangum had such a chimney, much to the horror of his 11 -year-old daughter Nola, who had never before seen one. She had already cried half the day because she saw some of that spindly corn when they passed Tom Cope's place, and she was certain that the whole family would starve.
To the north and east the flatwoods break off sharply to steep hills and hollows leading down to the beautiful blue green waters of Center Hill Lake. Here until 35 years ago the Caney Fork River twisted and looped its way between steep hills and towering gray limestone bluffs, its rich bottom lands producing 100 bushels of corn to the acre year after year without fertilizer.
The western section of the county, in the Smith Fork valley, was about as fertile as the Caney Fork area. In both places there were prosperous farms with large barns and big white houses with wide porches. Here lived the gracious people who could invite friends home from church to eat dinner. Things were less prosperous out on the ridges and far up the steep hollows where cedars grew thick on the limestone rocks. Here it was hard to grow even a small crop of corn, and the best way to make money from it was to make it into whiskey. Quite a few people were engaged in this business, even though all making, selling, and drinking of whiskey was illegal after 1909 in Tennessee.
During most of DeKalb County's first century the people of the Caney Fork and Smith Fork had both more time and more money to spend on education, clothes, houses, horses, etc. than did the people of the flatwoods. It might be expected that some would consider themselves superior to those who lived in the flatwoods section. This naturally led to feelings of resentment; from the beginning there has been, and still is to some extent, a feeling of antagonism between "Under-the-Hill"(as the Liberty-Alexandria area is known) and the Smithville area. This antagonism was increased by political division and especially by the Civil War. In the last two decades, however, it has decreased to a considerable degree.
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INTRODUCTION
Memory Melodies- A Collection of Folk-Songs from Middle Tennessee- 1947
[Songs from Flora McDowell]
This is essentially the private song, collection of Mrs. L. L. McDowell , who has lived all her life until now in the western foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. The section in which her house is located, including the drainage basin of a small river called the Caney Fork, was settled about the year 1800 by people from Virginia and North Carolina.
The settlers were of almost pure pioneer ancestry, including both English and Scotch-Irish strains, but having no other nationalities represented. For nearly one hundred years there was little change in the population except a gradual increase in number due to a relatively high birth rate. Shut in by rugged mountains and gorges, having no industries except farming, remote from the routes of trade and travel, and neglected by most of the social and economic agencies of a rapidly developing nation; the people of this little isolated valley preserved until the present century a traditional musical culture which has elsewhere been long overlaid and abandoned. The valley of the Caney Fork probably has the richest, treasure of folk music to be found in America.
Many of the songs contained herein are remembered by Mrs. McDowell from earliest youth; probably from the singing of her mother and father, W.H.C. Lassiter and Catherine Parker Lassiter; though in many cases her memory does not establish the fact that her parents were the ones from whom she learned them. Most of the songs thus remembered are not written down anywhere but in this book, Other songs are written in long-hand on scraps of paper of many kinds; some in Mrs. McDowell's own handwriting and others in the writing, of those who have furnished them.
It is customary among the people of the hills to thus write down the words of traditional songs; not, usually copying them directly, but writing them from memory for each other. Mrs. McDowell early in life began collecting these "ballads", and has a very large collection of them.
The manuscript for this book was prepared by her husband, who also remembers the majority of the songs. The tunes are wholly traditional, no written music being available for any of them except in the case of such tunes as were sung in identical form in other parts of the United States; where they may have been written down. Every melody in the book is a transcription, within the limits of the conventional musical symbols and the ability of the writer, of the actual singing of living people in the territory where the songs were written, though some of the singers have died since the melodies were obtained from them.
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INDEX:
Page
The Lowlands of Holland 1
The House Carpenter 2-3
Jackie Frazier 4-5
Six King's Daughters 6-7
Lord Lovell 8-9
Fair Eleanor and The Brown Girl 10-11-12
Sixteen Come Sunday 13
Barbara Allen 14-l5-l6-17-18
The Irish Lady 19-20
Hangman! Hangman! 21-22
The Brisk Young Farmer
An Old Love Song
My Good Old Husband
The Butcher Boy
As I Walked Out
The Forsaken Girl
The Girl I Left Behind Me
The Rover
Sweet Jane
The Orphan Girl
Awake! Awake!
The Broken Heart
Johnny
Rolla Trudum 47
The Shuckin' of the Corn 48
Jack O'Mckee
The Old Wife
Miss Julie
Time Enough Yet
Broken Vows (Blue Eyes)
Meet Me in the Moonlight 59
Pretty Fair Maid
Blue Eyed Stranger
See Me Cross the Water 63
Old Rosin the Bow 64
The Good Old Man 65-66
Frog Went A Courting 67-68
Chasing the Reynard 69-70
Paper of Pins 77-72
Billy Boy 73-71
Grandma's Advice
When I was Single 78-79
The Jealous Lover 80-81
The Farmer's Boy 82-83
Beat the Drum Slowly 84-85
The Boston Burglar 86-87
Arkansas 88-89
The Braswell Boys 90-91-92-93
Jim Bobo 91-95
Old Charley 96-97
Sourwood Mountain 98-99
Pretty Polly 100-101
Blue Eyed Boy 702
Sweet Bird 103-101
The Sailor Boy's Request 105-106
The Blind Girl 107-108
Nobody's Darling 109-110
Too Late 117-112
Never Court But One 113-114
Once I Loved You 115-116
I'll Be All Smiles Tonight 117 -118
Sweet Sixteen 119-120
He's Gone Back On Me 127
The Drunkard's Lone Child 122
When The Roses Bloom Again 123-724
The Ship That Never Returned 125-726
Lucy Love 127
Don't Go Out Tonight My Darling 128