A personal 'song bag'

I sing to my infant daughter.  Granted, I am not the best singer, but I can carry a tune.  My grandmother claimed the same when she would sing a few verses of some of the old songs she knew, songs that had been passed down, or songs she remembered as a girl.  My grandmother was born in Coe, West Virginia, which is on the Webster/Nicholas County line.  She grew up in the Cranberry area (I cannot say where for certain as my grandmother took me to the property once as a child), far off the beaten track and amongst the trees.  She told me once that it was not until the government came into the area in the 1930s that roads were blazed through the forests.  The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) set up camp in Woodbine, and until then my grandmother knew only paths and a few old wagon roads through what is now considered the Cranberry Back Country and part of the Monongahela National Forest.

My grandmother's stories of growing up during the Depression up Cranberry way is another story for another time.

I digress.

My family is not overtly musical, but my grandfather played the fiddle and the dulcimer.  He would sing to me and my sister with the dulcimer only when begged.  The songs he sang were things like "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" (1952) and "Little Brown Jug" (1869).  My grandmother, on the other hand, would sing old standards, hymns, and hum tunes she could not remember what they were called or the accompanying words.  However, when I was going to Fairmont State College (now University), I lived with my grandmother and together we began listening to a lot of "mountain" music and classic country.  Time and again we came back to the Carter Family, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams Sr., but it was really the Carter Family that would stir memories for my grandmother.

The song "Wildwood Flower" was a particular favorite, but I guess that could be said of just about anyone growing up in the mountains.  The tune of "Wildwood Flower" was the first I learned to play on guitar (taught to me in the First Baptist Church in Cowen while my father was helping with some electrical work in the church).  The song itself was written in 1860 and has undergone a type of evolution as it has passed from person to person, played from one family's porch to another, until it was recorded by the Carter Family in the 1920s.





My grandmother and I would sing this song together, and to me, that is one of my greatest memories.  I sing it to my daughter now, and hopefully we will sing it together someday.

Another song that my grandmother would sing was "In the Pines" from the 1870s.  Doing a little research, I found it is also referred to as "Black Girl," and better known "Where Did You Sleep Last Night."  My grandmother sang "Little Girl, little girl" instead of the original "Black girl, black girl..."  My grandmother also included the stanza starting with "The longest train I ever saw..."  A simple search about the song on Wikipedia, places the origin of the song in southern Appalachia...wherever that really is...



I also sing quite a bit of Hank Williams to my daughter, simply because it is fun to sing...  My grandfather, my mother tells me, sang "Settin' the Woods on Fire" (1952) to her when she was a little girl.  I love this song, as it is nice lighthearted contrast to "In the Pines" and ballads I remember about various disasters, crimes of passion, etc.





The Smithsonian Folkways Project is a treasure trove to finding recordings of a lot of songs I have heard from my family and from family friends.  Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb have become favorites as of late.



My grandmother sang parts of this song to me, and it was not until recently that I read the story behind "John Hardy":



There is a wealth of music and music makers in West Virginia, and recently I have been listening to Hazel Dickens (a Mercer County native).  This song really sums up a lot of my feelings as of late: