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Put Me in My Little Bed
See Also: Birdie/Birdie’s Lament (Sequel to"Put Me in My Little Bed")
Old-Time, Breakdown. Kentucky, West Virginia.
ARTIST: Uncle Dave Macon- 1929.
Listen: Earl Thomas (instrumental) Birdie 1977
Listen: Wilson Douglas (Intrumental) Birdie 1973
Listen: Gladys Rice- Put Me In My Little Bed 1918
Listen: Uncle Dave Macon- Put Me In My Little Bed 1929
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes DATE: Late 1800’s
RECORDING INFO: Kessinger 78 RPM made for Brunswick in 1930, another early recording was made by the West Virginia band The Tweedy Brothers. Rounder 0037, J.P. and Annadeene Fraley - "Wild Rose of the Mountain." Rounder 0392, John Hartford - "Wild Hog in the Red Brush (and a Bunch of Others You Might Not Have Heard)" (1996). Baker, Kenny; and Joe Greene. High Country, County 714, LP (1968), cut#A.05; Bird, Elmer. Bumble Bee Waltz, Hurricane --, LP (1985), cut#A.04; Boone, Woodrow; and Roger Howell. Music in the Air, BearWallow 210, Cas (1993), cut#A.05; Case, Clyde. Old-Time Banjo Anthology, Vol. 2, Marimac AHS 5, Cas (1991), cut# 8; Dobbs Brothers and Mary Faith Rhoads. Dobbs Brothers amd Mary Faith Rhoads, Fret'n Fiddle JRC 860, LP (1978), cut#A.01 (West Virginia Birdie); Enloe, Lyman. Fiddle Tunes I Recall, County 762, LP, cut# 22; Fraley, J. P. and Annadeene. Wild Rose of the Mountain, Rounder 0037, CD/ (2000/1974), cut# 3; Hammons, Edden. Edden Hammons Collection. Vol Two, West Virginia Univ SA-2, CD (2000), cut#1.05; Hartford, John. Wild Hog in the Red Brush, Rounder 0392, CD (1996), cut# 2; Hollow Rock String Band. Hollow Rock String Band, Rounder 0024, LP (1974), cut#B.11; Murphy, Jeanie; and Scott Marckx. Time's Been Sweet, Murphy, CD, cut# 18a; Phillips, Doug. Seven Days at the Sawmill, Silver Circle SC 001, Cas (1992), cut# 9; Red Clay Ramblers & Al MCanless. Red Clay Ramblers with Fiddlin' Al McCanless, Folkways FTS 31039, LP (1974), cut# 9; Stover, Don. Things in Life, Rounder 0014, LP (1972), cut# 12
OTHER NAMES: "Put Me in My Little Bed"; “Birdie's Lament”(sequel); “Stand me on my little Head” (parody); “Pagent.“
SOURCES: Ballad Index; Folk Inded; Kuntz- A Fiddler's Companion; Brody's and Ford's versions are quite distanced from each other. Brody (Fiddler's Fakebook), 1983; pg. 43. Ford (Traditional Music in America), 1940; pg. 330 (Appears as "Put Me in My Little Bed"). Gennett 5635A and Gennett 6483 (78 RPM), 1925 and 1928, respectively, Tweedy Brothers (Charles, George, and Harry, W.Va. brothers who played twin fiddles and piano.);
Traditional Ballad Index Notes: Put Me In My Little Bed
DESCRIPTION: "Oh birdie, I am tired now, I do not care to hear you sing." The child asks the bird to go to sleeps, and requests, "come put me in my little bed." The singer recalls her mother telling her "never, never go astray"
AUTHOR: Words: Dexter Smith / Music: C. A. White
EARLIEST DATE: 1870 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: orphan bird death mother
FOUND IN: US(MW,So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Belden, pp. 279-280, "Put Me In My Little Bed" (1 text)
Roud #4339
RECORDINGS:
Leake County Revelers, "Put Me In My Little Bed" (Columbia 15292-D, 1928)
NOTES: Belden's notes to this song are confused. He claims that Spaeth refers to this song in Read 'Em and Weep -- but there is no such reference, at least in my copy. Spaeth does, however, mention the song in A History of Popular Music in America as one of several hits by C. A. White.
White seems to have had a thing about birds; his first big hit was "Come, Birdie, Come."
Spaeth claims that this song was the forerunner of the more popular "Put My Little Shoes Away." - RBW
Notes on C.A. White from Music for a Nation:
C. A. White (1829-1892), whose birth date puts him among the contemporaries of Stephen Foster, published his first songs in 1867. His hit of 1869, "Put Me in My Little Bed," established him as a major songwriter. White, like Foster and Millard, was a songwriter of serious aspirations: many of his songs are written for vocal quartet throughout (as was Foster's "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming"). He even made several attempts at opera. As half-owner of the music publishing firm White-Smith and Co., he had a ready outlet for his songs: but it was his songs that supported the publishing firm and not the other way around. White did not scorn writing for the popular stage--indeed he wrote a song for the pioneering African-American stage production Out of Bondage--but his principal audience was the parlor singer. White's major successes include "Marguerite," "Moonlight on the Lake," "When 'Tis Moonlight," and "The Fisherman and His Child." His earlier hit "Put Me in My Little Bed" is also present in the form of arrangements, answer songs, and parodies.
NOTES: Under "Birdie" Meade references "Put Me In My Little Bed" in 1870 by C.A. White and Dexter Smith as the origin of the fiddle tune "Birdie." All the versions of "Birdie" Meade lists are fiddle or instrumental solos.
"Put Me In My Little Bed" was a major hit for C.A. White, who wrote the music, with words written by Dexter Smith. See: Birdie Version 2 for the lyrics to "Birdie's Lament," a parody of "Put Me In My Little Bed."
Put Me In My Little Bed- C.A. White and Dexter Smith (first of three verses)
Oh Birdie I am tired now
I do not care to hear you sing
You've sung your happy songs all day
Now put your head beneath your wing.
I'm sleepy too as I can be,
And sister when my prayer is said.
I want to lay down to rest,
So put me in my little bed.
A related version titled "Birdie" was in the repertoire of West Virgina fiddler Henry Reed. Here's some information:
"Birdie" is a rag-like country tune well-known in West Virginia. But Henry Reed's three-strain version of it seems to have come about from conflating the customary strains of "Birdie" (appearing here as the third and second strains, in that order) with another tune sometimes called "Fourteen Days in Georgia" (here the first strain). The unusual phrase structure as well as the key of C signal connections to the amorphous but characteristic class of tunes here described as "rags." They seem to be of late nineteenth-century or turn-of-the-century origin and presumably have African-American associations, but they are not all derived from the ragtime repertory of popular music at the turn of the century, and they perhaps provide a glimpse into the country rags of folk tradition which may have preceded and certainly coexisted with the ragtime genre in cosmopolitan popular music.
John Hartford notes: Birdie (Elmer Bird - John Hartford Music, BMI)
From the 19th century song, PUT ME IN MY LITTLE BED composed in 1870 by C.A. White and Dexter Smith. It's like the state fiddle anthem of West Virginia. Clark Kessinger played it, the Tweedy Brothers played it travelling around with a piano in the back of a truck. J.P. Fraley say Ed Haley "owned" in and Elmer Bird got us playing it. J.P.'s version can be heard on Rounder 0037.
Notes from Kuntz: "C Major. Standard. ABB. "Birdie" has been called "the state anthem" of West Virginia. Charles Wolfe (Mountains of Music, John Lilly ed., 1999) lists this as one of the West Virginia-Kentucky fiddle tunes learned by Kanawha County, West Virginia, fiddler Clark Kessinger (1986-1975) while growing up in the Kanawha Valley. John Hartford (1996) traces this tune to a hit song composed in 1870 by C.A. White and Dexter Smith called "Put Me in My Little Bed"; Alan Jabbour gives the composers names as White, Smith and Perry of the same date." (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc). The lyrics here appear the be a parody of the chorus of “Birdie's Lament”, which was a sequel (same melody) to “Put Me in my Little Bed” (Words by M. S. Crawford ; music by Geo. T. Evans Publication Year: 1872). The chorus of “Birdie's Lament” begins- “Oh Birdie Hush! You worry me…”. A parody of "Put me in my little bed" entitiled “Stand me on my little Head” by A. H. Rosewig was published in 1873.
Put Me In My Little Bed- Uncle Dave Macon
Listen: Uncle Dave Macon- Put Me In My Little Bed 1929
[I'm a singing this song especially for a little ten year old boy- Paul]
Oh Birdie I am tired now
I do not care to hear you sing
You sang your happy song all day
Now put your head beneath your wing.
CHORUS: Come sister come, kiss me goodnight
For I my evening prayers have said.
For I am tired and sleepy too
Oh put me in my little bed.
[banjo]
Oh mammy what did mother say
When she to Him was called away
She always taught me to be true,
And never never go astray
CHORUS:
[banjo]
But since she's called away to Heaven
And left us here to live alone.
There's trust in Jesus she has taught us
And meet her in that heavenly home
CHORUS:
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