Railroad Songs and Gandy Dancers

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Kelsey Anderson

Railroad songs were a genre created by laborers for the railroads in America. The origin of the genre is disputed and rather mysterious. We can all recall “I’ve been Working on the Railroad” (pre Civil War), but it is unclear if that is one example of the genres earliest pieces. Archie Green suggests in “Railroad Songs and Ballads: From the Archive of Folk Song” that “[the songs] welled directly out of the experiences of workers and were composed literally to the rhythm of the handcar. Others were born in Tin Pan Alley rooms or bars. But regardless of birthplace, songs moved up and down the main line or were shunted onto isolated spur tracks.”1 John Lomax had recorded many of these railroad songs. Here is an example of one: http://www.loc.gov/item/lomaxbib000326/ 2

These songs were created by workers to entertain and convey stories up and down the rails. The subjects of the songs, that are recorded, range from the erotic, basic railroad construction, and common themes like love and loss. The creators of the railroads songs included African Americans and many immigrant people. Unfortunately there are little to no record of the songs created by immigrants in different languages and today there is no way of rediscovering those songs. These songs created by African Americans and immigrants created a new slang term for these people called “Gandy Dancers”.

In the article “Country Music and the Souls of White Folk” by Erich Nunn, we get a sense of the effect that the Gandy Dancer’s music has had on country music, we are told, “In My Husband, Jimmie Rodgers, a biography of her late husband published in 1935, Carrie Williamson (“Mrs. Jimmie”) Rodgers presents Jimmie as a crucible in which the “darkey songs” he learned as a boy are transmuted by “the natural music in his Irish soul” into something distinctive and new.”3 The songs that Carrie writes on were created by the African American men that worked of the rails and influenced Jimmie Rodgers.

Gandy Dancers used their songs as a method of keeping rhythm for the laborers of the railroad and striking in time amongst the laborers. Here is a short snippet of a documentary done on Gandy Dancers: 4

Green, Archie. “Railroad Songs and Ballads.” Archive of Folk Song, 1968. Accessed February 26, 2018. https://www.loc.gov/folklife/LP/AFS_L61_opt.pdf.
Lomax, John A, Ruby T Lomax, and Arthur Bell. John Henry. near Varner, Arkansas, 1939. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/lomaxbib000326/. (Accessed February 26, 2018.)
Nunn, Erich. Country Music and the Souls of White Folk. Wayne State University Press.
Folkstreamer. “Gandy Dancers.” YouTube. June 23, 2008. Accessed February 26, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=025QQwTwzdU.

Lead Belly and folk music

Posted on November 16, 2017 by Grace Kenny

This video shows John Lomax collecting songs in the Louisiana from a black prisoner named Lead Belly. This video is a good representation of part of what went into collecting and preserving folk music. We also get a good look at the differences in power and how race plays into that.

John Lomax is known for his work in the field of folk musicology, and we can be grateful for his work. The Lomaxes have been recognized for their contributions. John Lomax influenced the repertory of folk music that helps define American folk music, and he also helped establish Leadbelly who, along with other artists, helped pave the way for future artists and genres such as rock music. Yet, it is important to remember the way in which the Lomaxes impacted folk music. Their goal was not only to preserve, but to popularize folk music, too. They specifically picked songs that matched this agenda. Once they were recorded, they were preserved and created into a history by design.

Once Lead Belly was released from prison, he continued working with the Lomaxes in order to advance his career outside of prison. Lomax’s praise of Lead Belly’s songs, can be heard in the video; “I never heard so many good negro songs.” Yet, Lomax often presented a romanticized view of the hardships that African Americans went through. Lomax made sure that Lead Belly would perform in his prison uniform, even during the time after his release. Lead Belly was also advertised as being dumb and violent, despite his gentle nature. The Lomaxes were able to get away with presenting a kind of folk music that they thought would beat the commercial tendencies of the time at the expense of black folk artists like Lead Belly.

“Leadbelly” in March of Time, Volume 1, Episode 2 (New York, NY: Home Box Office, 1935, originally published 1935), http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cvideo_work%7C1792710

Filene, Benjamin. “”Our Singing Country”: John and Alan Lomax, Leadbelly, and the Construction of an American Past.” American Quarterly 43, no. 4 (1991): 602-24. doi:10.2307/2713083.

The Preservation of Black Slave Songs: An Interview with Billy McCrea

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Rebecca Callbeck

Throughout history, many oppressed people have not received documentation or enough accurate documentation regarding their culture and other aspects of their lives. Especially in musicology, documentation can be scarce and inaccurate. For many sources that scholars depend on, it is crucial to think critically about the presumtions and backgrounds of those who created them. However, it is also important that we preserve the resources and works that we do have. Sometimes it is better to have semi-accurate interpretations of music and culture than nothing at all. Even biased information can provide insightful information about who created it. One effective way to avoid misrepresenting people is to interview and accurately preserve their traditions.

Billy McCrea in Jasper, TX 1940

In this recorded interview with ex-slave Billy McCrea, McCrea elaborates about his experiences as a slave working on a Steamboat as a cook. Upon request, McCrea sung the steamboat song, “Blow Cornie Blow” for the interviewer John Avery Lomax.

Blow Cornie Blow

“I think I hear the captain call me, blow cornie blow.
I think I hear the captain calling, blow cornie blow.
A blow cornie blow.
Blow cornie blow.
A blew it cold, loud and mournful.
Blow cornie blow.
I think I hear the captain??? –blow cornie blow.
They carried lo-o-o-o-ong onto bend.
Blow cornie blow.
They soon will be to the landing corner.
Blow cornie blow.
De captain hand me down my ???
Blow cornie blow.
Oh, blow boy and let them hear you.
Blow cornie blow.
Oh, blow loud and ???
Blow cornie blow.
Oh, blow loud just so he can hear you.
Blow cornie blow.
I think I hear the captain call you.
Blow cornie blow.”

He explained that he and “the boys” would tote salt from the boat to a warehouse while singing. Upon hearing McCrea sing, it is tempting for scholars and students alike to want to notate “Blow Cornie Blow.” This stems from a western presupposition that written forms of preservation are more superior, accurate or long lasting than preservation through oral tradition. Is written preservation of oral tradition inherently problematic? Because scholars notated slave songs using a western notation system, they were limited because they could not capture all of the musical nuances and emotions of the slave songs. Notating slave songs is useful to provide context to people who were more familiar with European music, but what is problematic is imposing western traditions on slave songs and adapting them. Many slave songs were published with harmonies that were not originally sung. This act of “fixing” or refining slave songs to conform to a western ideal of beauty contributes to the erasure and inauthentic representation of black folk music. Many debates regarding notation must address the issues of preservation, authenticity and erasure of tradition.

Eileen Southern’s book, The Music of Black Americans: a History, recalls a quote from Frederick Douglas remembering the songs as “they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish…The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness.”

Interviews like McCrea’s are so important regarding of preservation of history and prevention of erasure of people, or distortion of their stories. Lomax’s work positively contributes to the study of slave music because he gives voice to the people whom we draw from in music and culture.

Works Cited

Lomax, John Avery, et al. “Interview with Uncle Billy McCrea, Jasper, Texas, 1940 (Part 1 of 2).” The Library of Congress: National Jukebox, 1940, memory.loc.gov.

Southern, Eileen. “Chapter 5 Antebellum Rural Life.” The Music of Black Americans: a History, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, pp. 177–178.

The Timeless Light of the “Midnight Special”

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Cole

When John and Alan Lomax visited the Louisiana State Penitentiary of Angola, Louisiana in July of 1933 they were in search of folksongs. Little did they know that they would instead come across a musical star, whose treatment of a popular prison song would transcend the boundary between folk and pop styles. The musician was Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, and the song was “Midnight Special”.

Angola, Louisiana prison compound. Leadbelly in the foreground.

Angola, Louisiana prison compound, July 1933. Leadbelly in the foreground.

Born in the late 1880’s to the oppressive cotton fields of Louisiana, Ledbetter feared only one thing: failure. It was from this determination that he received the nickname “Lead Belly”, as he could outwork, outfight, and out-sing anyone who dared challenge him. “I wants to be the best – the king” he would say. He even went so far as to call himself “The King of the Twelve-String Guitar”, a talent that he used to exploit the Texas prison system he entered in 1917 on a thirty year sentence for assault. He famously used his musical talent to garner the attention of Texas Governor Pat Neff, who pardoned and released Ledbetter from prison in 1925.

It was in this same spirit that he was brought to the Lomax’s attention in 1933. Incarcerated once again for assault, Ledbetter sufficiently wooed the Lomax’s that they convinced Louisiana Governor O.K. Allen to pardon Ledbetter. Thereafter, he worked as John Lomax’s chauffeur and relocated to the Northeastern United States, often traveling to Washington D.C. to record for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress.

Volume I of the LOC Lead Belly collection.

Midnight Special as it appears in “The Leadbelly Songbook”

Midnight Special by Lead Belly, Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200196310/

Volume I of the LOC collection is titled “Midnight Special”, and though it contains memorable treatments of many classic folk-tunes, the titular song is Ledbetter’s most famous and influential adaptation. Thought to originate among prisoners in the South, the refrain of the song references a passenger train of the same name, the light of which shone into cells as it passed by:

Let the Midnight Special shine her light on me, Let the Midnight Special shine her ever-loving light on me.

If the “ever-loving light” of the train landed on a prisoner, the inmates believed that man would soon be set free.

When Alan Lomax first recorded Ledbetter’s version of the song he attributed the authorship to Ledbetter. However, this is fundamentally untrue. In addition to the fact that it was a popular prison song, it had been recorded commercially by Sam Collins as the “Midnight Special Blues” in 1927. His version seems much more like an extemporaneous performance of a folk song, while Ledbetter’s is a precise arrangement of the melody, harmonic progression, and guitar accompaniment.

In this vein, it may be fair to say that Lead Belly didn’t write the song, but did ‘compose’ a version of it that achieved mass popularity and lasting influence in the public conception, as heard in versions by Creedence Clearwater Revival….

…. and ABBA.

While both versions seem to emerge from Ledbetter’s arrangement, the ABBA version is particularly notable due to its seemingly contradictory nature: why is a Swedish pop group performing an African American prison song? According to the official ABBA website, this song was performed as part of a medley of American folk songs on a charity record the group contributed to in 1975. The artists carefully selected songs that “were in the public domain as far as copyright was concerned” in order to avoid composer royalties. Despite this, the site recognizes Ledbetter’s “distinctive arrangement of the song that made it truly famous” as the inspiration for this version.

To conclude, “Midnight Special” exemplifies a major problem regarding folk music and its chronicling: differentiating between the folk song and popular versions. When do we lend credit to individuals and their renderings? How do we identify legitimate folk versions? While these questions may be difficult to answer, they ought to be considered as we examine popular reactions to folk music.

Hammering Out “Our Singing Country”

Posted on March 3, 2015 by sison

Alan Lomax playing guitar on stage at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, N.C.

[1]

John Lomax and his son, Alan, set out for one of the most ambitious tasks attempted in American folk song history: To travel thousands of miles and collect recordings of as many songs as possible in order to preserve them in the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song. Early in their travels, they came upon a black guitarist and singer named Huddie Ledbetter. He would later be more commonly known by his nickname, “Leadbelly.” The Lomaxes were very impressed with his repertoire of folk songs as well as his virtuosic skill as a twelve-string guitarist. As a result of his four year imprisonment in the Louisiana’s Angola Prison for murder, he was cut off from hearing the popular music of the day. For the Lomaxes, he was a prime living example of the folk tradition they were seeking out and sought to bring his voice to the American public. After employing him as a driver and servant, they brought him to New York in order to record and promote his “pure folk” sound.

Leadbelly, three-quarter-length, profile, facing right, lifting car out of snow, at the home of Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, Wilton, Conn.

[2]

However, in order to make Leadbelly’s music palatable to the public, it seems some edits had to be made. Take the work song “Take This Hammer,” which can be found in the Lomaxes’ collection Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads from 1941 shown here:

“Take This Hammer” as it appears in Our Singing Country

[3]

Library of Congress Recording of prisoners at Florida State Prison singing “Take dis Hammer”

Now compare it to the transcription found in The Leadbelly Songbook, as transcribed by Jerry Silverman in 1962 and recorded by Leadbelly in the 1940’s:

“Take This Hammer” as it appears in The Leadbelly Songbook

[4]

As you can see, the general notes and rhythms are still the same, with some added notes in Leadbelly’s performance. However, in the Leadbelly version, the controversial verses about the “captain” calling him a “nappy-headed devil” and grabbing his gun are omitted. Also, in Our Singing Country, “Take This Hammer” is considered to be a highly rhythmic song that was sung when a slave worked in a gang in order to synchronize the dropping of axes and to “…make the work go more easily by adapting its rhythm to the rhythm of a song.” (citation) In the field recording, which lacks the dropping of picks but is conveyed through the “wahs” of the men singing, the tempo is considerably slower than when Leadbelly sings it.

If the Lomaxes wanted to accurately portray the pure folk tradition in this song, they would have sent the Florida State prisoners to New York to record it how it would have been performed. But no one would have bought the record or even bothered to listen to it. Instead, they realized that in order for the dying folk tradition to be kept alive they had to bring the style into American popular music. Unlike the folk song preservers of the past, they respected the black musical tradition and wanted it to be accessible to white audiences without losing too much of its authenticity. In doing so, the Lomaxes brought folk music to the American popular music sphere and created a new musical tradition.

1. “Alan Lomax playing guitar on stage at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, N.C,” Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Lomax Collection, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/item/2007660160/ (accessed 3/2/15).
2. “Leadbelly, three-quarter-length, profile, facing right, lifting car out of snow, at the home of Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, Wilton, Conn,” Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Lomax Collection, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/item/2007660303/ (accessed 3/2/15).
3. John A. and Alan Lomax. Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads. (New York, Dover Publishing Inc., 2000), 380-381.
4. Moses Asch and Jerry Silverman, The Leadbelly Songbook. (London, Oak Publications, 1962), 45.

A “Southern Mosaic” – The Lomax Collection

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Brandon Cash

“Students with Miss Jovita Gonzales, St. Mary’s Academy, San Antonio, Texas;” Lomax Collection

“Five musicians and a singer performing at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, North Carolina;” Lomax Collection

At a first glance, the Lomax Collection has little to no obvious thread connecting the images. When looking at the portfolio we see a variety of individuals from different ethnic backgrounds including African Americans, Mexicans, Cajuns, and Whites. Some photos include elements portraying music in some fashion (a microphone, a musical instrument, or a description stating the individuals are musicians) but other are simply candid snapshots of life down south. It then occurred to me that it is quite possible that the lack of commonalities in the photos may have significance after all.

“Cajun girl near Crowley, La.” Lomax Collection

The Lomax Collection, which has been digitized by the Library of Congress, is a collection of 400 photographs collected by John, Alan, and Ruby Lomax as the sought out sound recordings from the American south between 1934 and ca. 1950.¹The Lomax team was collecting these recordings for the Archive of American Folk-Song, established by the Library of Congress in 1928. The Lomax family went in search of a variety of musical examples from ballads to the blues and field hollers to work songs in settings ranging from small towns to church congregations to prison cells.²and along the way took snapshots of the places and people that they encountered. That is what is so unique about this collection of photographs. They almost came together by accident.

“Stavin’ Chain playing guitar and singing the ballad “Batson,” (fiddler also in shot), Lafayette, La.” Lomax Collection

The beauty of these recording journeys that John, Alan, and Ruby Lomax took is that in addition to a wealth of primary musical sources, we now have this “Southern Mosaic” of photographs that display the American South in the 1930s and 1940s. From the collection as a whole we are able to see the diversity of the South both culturally and musically. Images of Hispanic school girls sings are placed next to White bands performing at music festivals. A picture of a Cajun girl happens to share a gallery page with “Stavin’ Chain” as he jams on his guitar. These situations that appear so individualized, when put side by side, actually paint a picture for those willing to look for it. So often the history of this time period that permeates textbooks and classrooms are the negative truths about our nation’s past, but these 400 photographs that have become the Lomax collection show a unique view of how rich the South truly was.

1 “Lomax Collection.” Library of Congress. Accessed March 1, 2015. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lomax/.

2 “Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip.” Library of Congress. Accessed March 1, 2015. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html.

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