Listening Guides

Listening Guide 11.1

Listening Guide 11.2

Listening Guide 11.3

Listening Guide 11.4

Listening Guide 11.1
"Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" 2 beats per measure

iTune link = Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane

This is not a traditional folk song but a popular song composed by Will Hays in 1871, demonstrating once again that popular music was well known to southern musicians and performed by them in these early years. The lyric is typical minstrel fare: Sung by a blackface character, it is nostalgic and sentimental. The decaying plantation is a metaphor for the singer's own aging and loneliness.

Now I'm getting old and feeble, and I cannot work no more.
That rusty bladed hoe I've laid to rest.
Old Massus and old Missus they are sleeping side by side.
Their spirits now are roaming with the blest.
Things have changed about the place now, and the darkies they have gone.
You'll never hear them singing in the cane.
But the only friend that's left here is that good old dog of mine,
And the little old log cabin in the lane.

Chorus:

The chimney's falling down, and the roof's all caved in
Lets in the sunshine and the rain;
But the angel's watching over me when I lay down to sleep
In my little old log cabin in the lane.
Now the footpath is growed up that led us 'round the hill,
The fences all gone to decay.
The pond it's done dried up where we once did go to mill.
Things have turned its course another way.
Well, I ain't got long to stay here; what little time I've got
I'll try to rest contented while I remain,
Until death shall call this dog and me to find a better home
Than our little old log cabin in the lane.

    Fiddlin' John Carson's vocal style is typical of traditional country performers; he sings in a formal, church-delivered manner and does not act out the lyric or display emotion in his rendering. (Peer did not approve of Carson 's singing, but Brockman assured him that it was the style accepted by his audience.)
    Instead of playing a more subordinate accompaniment on his fiddle, Carson plays the melody as he sings it. He uses the melody of the verse as an instrumental introduction, as an interlude between verses and as an ending. He does not play a rhythmic accompaniment on the fiddle, and the only harmony is provided by the droning of open strings. The final fiddle passage ends rather abruptly in mid-verse; Carson, accustomed to playing longer stretches than a 78 rpm recording allows, was apparently surprised by the producer's cue to stop.
    Soon after John Carson's initial success, other companies began seeking country performers to record for commercial release. From the beginning, these musicians were aware of their race record status and the stereotyped perception of white southerners; and they accommodated the minstrel-show slant in marketing their product. They took on colorful names like Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers, Doc Bates and His Possum Hunters, the Fruit Jar Drinkers, and the Gully Jumpers. They sometimes dressed in straw hats and ragged clothes— rube costumes as they called them—and performed cornball vaudeville acts called rural dramas.
    At first, promoters had a hard time finding a name for the music, calling it old time music, hill country tunes, and the like. The name that became most common typified the hick image that was most often imposed upon it: hillbilly music.
    Gid Tanner (1885–1960) is a good example of these early country entertainers. Tanner was a hoedown fiddler and often performed with Riley Puckett, a blind guitarist and singer. They were popular entertainers on WSB in Atlanta and began recording for Columbia in 1924. By 1926 they added another fiddle and a banjo to form the Skillet Lickers. They not only recorded traditional fiddle tunes, ballads, and breakdowns but also ragtime, blues, and Tin Pan Alley songs.

Listening Guide 11. 2
"Soldier's Joy" 2 beats per measure

iTune link = Soldier's Joy

"Soldier's Joy" is a traditional English fiddle tune performed by Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers. The form is typical of most fiddle tunes: It is in two sections, verse/chorus, with the first part in a lower fiddle register than the second. The two-part form alternates with a vocal based only on the melody of the verse.
The recording opens with a spoken introduction by Tanner, fashioned after the way he would announce tunes on the radio. The verse to the tune begins immediately with Tanner and fiddler Clayton McMichen playing more or less in unison. The vocal and guitar accompaniment are supplied by Riley Puckett.
We can only speculate as to how much the fiddlers adhere to the traditional melody of "Soldier's Joy," but the lyric is definitely rural South. Fiddlers often added lyrics to fiddle tunes to break the monotony of long dance sets. The lyrics were often nonsense or based on the most mundane of subject matter—in this case, the price of pole beans or "Grandpapa sittin' on a sweet 'tater vine."
Toward the end of the performance, the fiddlers move from a constant sixteenth-note rhythm to a strident doo-whacka-doo gallop on the verse. Unlike the recordings by fiddlers John Carson and Eck Robertson, who merely stopped when the recording ran out, the Skillet Lickers play a slick "shave and a haircut" ending

Listening Guide 11.3
"Wildwood Flower" 2 beats per measure

iTune link = Wildwood Flower

"Wildwood Flower" was recorded by the Carter Family in 1928 at Victor Studios in Camden, New Jersey. It features Sara Carter as vocalist accompanied by Maybelle Carter on guitar. "Wildwood Flower" came from a nineteenth-century parlor song called "The Pale Amaranthus." You will notice the archaic style of the lyric.
     Sara Carter's vocal style is typical of traditional mountain singing and hails back to the vocal practice for rural English balladry. Her vocal sound is unadorned by the coloration of a vibrato and is very nasal in quality (the country "twang" you have perhaps heard about). There are also the distinctive elements of Appalachian pronunciation that affect Sara's vocal delivery, such as in the line "wavy black hair." "Hair" is pronounced "har"; and Sara chooses to hold out her note, singing through the "r" sound, which gives her vocal timbre a constricted quality on to the more open "a" vowel sound, rather than holding. The style is reserved and formal, intentionally holding back a dramatic or emotional delivery of the lyric, no matter how tragic, religiously fervent, or otherwise compelling.
     The most celebrated feature of this recording is Maybelle Carter's guitar playing. Her accompaniment and instrumental verses between Sara's sung verses are the most imitated in country guitar and are the goal of all fledgling players. Maybelle picks the melody on the lower strings and strums the accompanying chords and rhythms on the upper strings with a downstroke. To achieve this effect of two guitarists (one lead and one rhythm), Maybelle must quickly alternate between picking and strumming without sacrificing smoothness or continuity in either, a goal she accomplishes most successfully.
     The form is strophic, a succession of verses with no chorus or contrasting formal material. Sara and Maybelle alternate vocal and instrumental verses. The verse is actually 16 measures long, four phrases of four measures; but the Carters add an extra measure after the first, second, and fourth phrase, extending the verse length to 19 measures. This practice of giving the singer a little extra time to catch a breath for the next phrase would carry over into bluegrass.

Listening Guide 11. 4
"Waitin' for a Train" 4 beats per measure

iTune link = Waitin' for a Train

This recording was made in Atlanta in October 1928. It features a bowed string bass, Hawaiian slide guitar, guitar, muted trumpet, and clarinet, playing in a relaxed, jazzy, Dixieland style. This type of presentation demonstrates Rodgers's and Peer's tendency toward commercialism, a tendency quite distinct from the more traditional presentation and repertoire of the Carter Family. "Waitin' for a Train" was indeed Rodgers's most popular recording.
    This piece begins with Rodgers's vocal imitation of a train whistle, half whistled and half yodeled. The band then enters with the introduction. Note the role and sound of each instrument. The guitar provides the rhythm; the Hawaiian slide guitar provides a fuller sound with slides and sustained chords, "padding" the texture of the band. The muted trumpet and clarinet are reserved for an instrumental section between verses and do not provide padding or fill-ins during the vocal.
    The lyric is about being a hobo, wandering along the railroad line. Contrasting with the "God, Mom, and home" lyrics of the Carters, Rodgers portrays himself as a wanderer and a misfit, down on his luck.
    Rodgers's vocal style is relaxed and wistful, lazily sliding from one pitch to the next and frequently employing blue notes, demonstrating that he was as much a white rural blues singer as he was a hillbilly singer.