Don't You Cry Little Baby O Brother Where Art Thou
Putting A Face up on Folksong Sources: The Story of Annie Brewer'south Lullaby A common "folk song" has a surprisingly tangled story behind it. How did Annie Brewer'southward version of a lullaby become a well-known folk song that supposedly belongs to united states all? Does it really vest to Brewer's heirs, to the folklorist who put a microphone in front of her in 1937, or to the library it sits in? Most of us have at least a basic understanding of the idea that jokes, slang terms, plant nursery rhymes, expressions and songs sometimes filter downward on peak of u.s.a. like cultural volcanic ash. We don't know where "Liar, liar pants on fire" or "London Bridge is falling down" came from or why we know what they are, though this procedure in the 21st century is less connected to the distant past. A number of melodies and songs, similar "Yankee Putter," are 18-carat widely distributed folk songs, though they probably spread far more than now by sound recordings than by ane person hearing another person sing them. For the about office, we can't accurately trace songs backwards to figure out how they spread around or where they originated, merely a handful of very well-known "folk songs" have left enough footprints that we tin can follow at to the lowest degree parts of their travels. One of those is the simple children's lullaby, "Hush, Little Baby," where papa is going to purchase the baby a mockingbird, a looking glass, a diamond band, a cart and balderdash, a billy goat, or a canis familiaris named Rover. We know most nothing about what information technology did before virtually 1920, just since 1937 it has left all sorts of tracks. Let'south try to understand what made that song surface from the huge puddle of songs to take a similar form inside the heads of large numbers of people. For such a simple niggling song, it raises all sorts of interesting issues and questions. Folk Song Collecting Especially in the first one-half of the 20th century, chasing the relatively new idea of the "archaic survival" of songs from the past in the memories of illiterate and rural people, dozens of bookish and self-appointed folksong collectors excitedly rounded up a large number of American and British Isles folk songs using whatever tools they could. Sparked by the footing-breaking publication of the ten volumes of " English language & Scottish Popular Ballads " by Francis Child beginning in 1882, the collectors were greatly empowered and assisted by the apply of cylinder recording machines that conveniently showed upwardly in the 1890s. Thomas Edison developed his "phonograph" machine, that only weighed about 30 pounds, using blank wax cylinders that could capture close to four minutes of sound via the ear-trumpet horn that could be used for playback or recording. Information technology became a new sport to travel around rural areas with ane, befriend the local people and try to capture some important or exciting music. Dorothy Scarborough, Mellinger Henry, Lawrence Gellert, Natalie Curtis, Cecil Precipitous, Howard Odum, Due east.C. Perrow, John Jacob Niles, John and Alan Lomax and others did extensive collecting. The results of their efforts are still important and relevant, especially because what they recorded were 18-carat things that real people really did. More haphazardly than systematically, working either independently or with a library or academy, these "songcatchers" nerveless, labeled, transcribed and archived the songs they found into a number of individual and public collections. They as well put some of the songs into books and curated record albums, often editing, consolidating and modifying them equally they saw fit. Though the goal was to locate, document, archive and share what they found, a sizable clamper of this orally-transmitted folklore that was supposedly being historic for its power to spread around amid the people, was instead deliberately moved into quite different data streams. This had the event of disturbing and profoundly altering the actual transmittal processes, and instead of being passed on from a neighbour or family member, these songs took a very different route into all the people who subsequently learned them. In an attempt that spanned roughly two generations, for the most part ending with my own, dozens and possibly hundreds of artificially-inseminated folk songs, collected from scattered individuals, were put into the bloodstream of American folk music in a type of Jurassic Park experiment. Led by John and Alan Lomax, and involving Charles Seeger, Robert Gordon and a band of enthusiasts centered in and around the Archive of Folksong at the Library of Congress, they organized an effort to inject hand-picked "folk songs" into public consciousness, and likewise into elementary music curriculums beyond the land. These songs were deemed superior to the European ones that had long been used in music education, which was probably truthful. The children liked them better and learned them faster, and it seemed appropriate for more of the music they were learning in school to be American folk songs. Though many were not commonplace or widely-known songs, they became merely that for the children who absorbed them via this information pipeline. Folksingers, both professional person and amateur, also began learning and performing many of these songs, and on the heels of the Folk Smash of the 1950s, they blasted them all over the globe by way of vast numbers of record albums, concerts, books and radio or idiot box broadcasts. Millions of Americans, including very young children, had dozens of these songs implanted in their memories, put there by music teachers, camp counselors, and "folk era" recordings. None of usa in our lives ever heard the "original" field recordings of these folk songs, or were even told that they existed. You or I could have used those to larn the songs if nosotros had access to the recordings, but instead we got the songs by mode of an intermediary step where they were repackaged into songbooks with piano annotation, and sung with guitars or banjos by educated more often than not-white, middle-grade people, or delivered past school teachers reading arrangements at their pianos. A few authentic rural performers, both blackness and white, managed to exist heard in performance or on recordings doing more or less original versions, but the vast majority of the transmission of "folk songs" to the listeners came from 2d or 3rd generation "sources." Perhaps the assumption was that nosotros all had the right to get to Washington, D.C. and go into the Library of Congress archives and look at or listen to any original source material was there, and maybe that meant we did have access to information technology. "The Erie Canal," "Cherry River Valley," "Skip to My Lou," "Streets of Laredo," "Shenandoah," "She'll Be Comin' "Round the Mountain," "Habitation on the Range," "Clementine," "Cindy," "On Top of Old Smoky," "I Ride An Erstwhile Paint," "This Old Man," "Quondam MacDonald Had A Farm," "I've Been Working on the Railroad"– and many more than such songs became office of the cultural inheritance of our country– not just past natural processes, simply greatly assisted past the efforts, perceptions and choices of a small number of very motivated white people who felt that they were on an of import mission. (I can't find bear witness that whatsoever non-white people were a significant function of that folk song squad, though an African-American vocaliser and guitarist named Leslie Riddle was a key cistron in the song collecting efforts of A.P. Carter for influential early recordings fabricated by the Carter Family.) More than fifty years ago, versions of these songs were permanently stuck into my caput, as well as those of untold numbers of other people of a similar age who were also exposed to them. Maybe because I am a musician I have a better memory for them than almost, and thus more of a feeling that vital real estate in my mental hard drive was loaded with a bunch of questionable songs before I had any idea what was going on. I sound a fleck like an anti-vaxxer here, and I am honestly non sure whether or not it would have been ameliorate to just let the backer marketplace fill up up anybody'south heads with music when they are young, which it has certainly done extensively without anyone's permission or blessings. I don't go a sense that people born later about 1960 had nearly as many of these songs embedded into them, unless they had older siblings or parents that passed them on. As schoolhouse music education has shrunk and changed, that function of the pipeline has not been doing much in recent decades, and young children today no longer appear to be learning most of these same songs. Some are being re-written and turned into copyrightable material by publishers, though as far equally I can tell, a handful of stalwarts remain in gimmicky elementary school music instruction. My kids recognize the melody for what I know every bit "Skip to My Lou," merely not the words I am familiar with, though luckily for them they don't know "Clementine," unless a modernistic YouTuber or meme creator has recently re-used that melody for something. Earlier the late 1940s, virtually no ane knew these folk songs or versions of them except the families or neighbors of the folklorists' sources, withal within about thirty years they had been turned into artificial bedrock in our collective folksong landscape. Because this is getting tangled, and many of you are busy, I'll tell you my conclusion now: Instead of the collectors hiding, copyrighting, manipulating and profiting from the songs in the archives, I wish that we the people could get gratis and like shooting fish in a barrel admission to the original collections ourselves, so we tin decide what songs we like or which ones we want to acquire. The thought that nosotros accept been spoon-fed these somewhat-doctored versions of folk songs is bad enough, merely to never get to hear the field recordings is worse, and to have been given a rather phony folk heritage and a bunch of Dolly-the-sheep genetically-engineered songs is intolerable. Allow'due south look at a well-known example, in hopes yous'll better understand why this is bugging me. 19 years earlier Lomax found Brewer, folklorist Cecil Abrupt nerveless two other variants of the song, that had markedly dissimilar tunes and words, both used "Papa" not "Mama." One was collected on August 23, 1918 from Lucy Cannady of Endicott, Virginia, ("Hush piddling minnie and don't say a give-and-take, Papa's going to buy you a mockingbird/ It can whistle and it tin sing, it tin practise most anything...") and another from Julie Boone of Micaville, Due north Carolina, on Oct 8, 1918 ("Hush up, babe don't say a discussion...If information technology can't whistle and information technology can't sing, Papa's going to buy y'all a diamond band..." The song certainly seems to behave similar a widespread folk song, though it bears a resemblance to an 1884 minstrel-era song by F. Belasco chosen "Hush Little Infant, Don't You Weep." There is no style to determine if that song was an original source, or itself based on an already-circulating folk song. Bernice Haynes besides sang some other version into Lomax's machine on May 21, 1939 near Varner, Arkansas, with a different tune and quite unlike words. That is currently the simply i available to hear on the Library of Congress web site, in a situation that looks suspiciously like a type of misdirection, since no ane knows or has copied the Haynes version. Annie Brewer's version of "Hush, Li'50 Baby" is labeled "restricted" in the itemize of the Library of Congress, though it is clearly the source of the words and the melody that people now know. All the common and high-profile versions are virtually identical to hers, although she sang "Momma" instead of the now-common "Papa." Other than that word, Brewer'south version became the source for numerous recordings past popular artists, and the song became known past millions of people who believed information technology be a folk song that they somehow just knew. Later on spending an unknown amount of fourth dimension within Brewer'south caput, information technology lived for 4 years on Lomax'due south aluminum disc, and and then was put into a serial of books, showtime with the John & Alan Lomax " Our Singing Country " in 1941. The song then appeared on a number of recordings, beginning with The Weavers in 1951, where they substituted "Papa" for "Mama," giving them "plausible deniability" of some sort equally to whether it was lifted from Brewer's version. The balance of the words and the tune are Brewer's, except for changing won't to don't, adding and before every verse, and changing "turns brass" to "is brass." That recording was followed past Bulge Ives, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, Jean Ritchie, Ed McCurdy, John Langstaff, Milt Okun, Sandy & Caroline Paton, Nina Simone, Mike & Peggy Seeger, Carly Simon & James Taylor, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Celtic Adult female and numerous others. Here is my Spotify playlist of 12 of those versions. (Interestingly, both Milt Okun and Mike Seeger sing "Momma", and "turns brass," staying closer to the Brewer version.) There are at present an almost uncountable number of lullaby recordings, children'due south music albums and "music for babies" vocal and instrumental versions– other than Nina Simone'south modified tune all of them characteristic the identical Annie Brewer tune and words slightly adapted by Pete Seeger, except on the last line where Brewer sings "You'll be the sweetest daughter in town." All the published and recorded versions out at that place are labeled "Public Domain," and Annie Brewer'due south contribution, though essential and undoubtedly the source of all the others, has been lost, ignored, forgotten or removed. Folksinger Pete Seeger'due south stepmother, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, was paid a dollar (actually $300 for 300 songs) in 1940 to heed to the aluminum recording disc, and to write the musical notation that was put in the volume (above), which is a fascinating story in its own right (that I intend to tell in another posting), since she was a highly-respected modernist composer, too as the mother of Mike & Peggy Seeger and the music editor of the 1941 book. (She inverse "suspension down" to "fall down" and left out a terminal unintelligible verse that ends "You'll even so exist asleep by half past nine.") Information technology's not much of a secret where the Weavers got the song, since Pete was in that grouping, his begetter worked for the Library of Congress, and his dad's second wife, that he married when Pete was 13, had the aluminum disc in the firm and listened to it repeatedly as she wrote the song down. Pete was eighteen when Brewer made the field recording, 22 when the book came out, and mayhap lived at home and so afterward dropping out of Harvard in 1938, and likely heard the Brewer recording himself. He worked in 1939 at the Annal of Folksong assisting Alan Lomax, though he was 32 and a founding member of the Weavers in 1951 when they put that vocal on their album Folk Songs of America and Other Lands . The previous yr the folk quartet had scored a huge #1 pop hit with the million-selling "Goodnight Irene," and they reached the top of the pop charts once again in early 1951 with Seeger's organization of "On Elevation of Old Smoky," too a "collected" and modified folk song. The 43-second-long a capella original Annie Brewer "Hush, Li'fifty Infant" (mind to it here) was issued by Rounder Records in 2001 on an album of field recordings, itemize #1829, titled "Deep River of Song: From Lullabies to Blues," with the copyright notice that the audio recording was owned and licensed by The Association for Cultural Disinterestedness, a 501(c3) non-profit corporation, "housed" at Hunter College in New York City. That entity was founded in 1983 past John Lomax'due south son Alan Lomax, at the age of 67, xx years before his decease. The song is said to exist under "sectional license to Rounder Records," which appears to mean that Rounder struck a deal with Lomax's corporation to re-issue songs from the annal, presumably including the Library of Congress, since that song has been ostensibly nether their control in the Archive of Folk Vocal since 1937. Oddly, the LOC explains quite carefully that "Items created by Library of Congress employees in the scope of their employment are U.S. Government works not subject to copyright in the United states..." which appears to say that because John Lomax was working for the authorities when he collected the song, neither his son'southward corporation or Rounder Records has a correct to its copyright. The only entity among those three who created anything was Annie Brewer. I'm not a lawyer, but this might say that because her version of that vocal was taken from her by someone who was working for the authorities, the sound recording is somehow owned by the regime, or perhaps not nether copyright. Because she did not file paperwork claiming it as hers, she also appears to have forfeited whatsoever claim to owning either the song itself, her system of it, or of the sound recording of her voice singing it. All of this cleverly obscures the fact that the version everyone knows is Brewer's with very modest variations, while we accept that various people took it and inverse it a picayune because it was just a folk song. None of Brewer'due south 12 collected songs are bachelor to hear in sound format from the LOC, though "Hush Fiddling Baby" and an original song of hers titled "Roosevelt Blues" accept appeared on commercial albums of compilations of field recordings, licensed by the Lomax system. When folk music producer Milt Okun recorded "Hush Little Infant" in 1957 for his America'southward Best-Loved Folk Songs LP on Baton records, information technology was presumably learned from either the Lomax book or the Weavers' recording, but was credited as Public Domain. Since Okun produced and helped create Peter, Paul & Mary 5 years afterward, it stands to reason that they learned the song from him, or from the Weavers directly, and nearly certainly not from the 1941 volume or a trip to the Library of Congress. Okun may have learned it from the volume, since he sang "Momma" and "turns brass," though similar the Weavers he added the give-and-take "And" in front of every verse, which Brewer did not do. When John Lomax put the song in his 1941 drove, he personally claimed the copyright to all the cloth in the book, with the sentence: "All rights reserved-- no part of this book may exist reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote cursory passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper." (I wonder if I am violating his copyright by reproducing his copyright detect.) The question poses itself of whether it is fair or reasonable that Annie Brewer surrendered her correct to buying of her version of the vocal every bit shortly equally Lomax captured it on a government field recording. Does she and her estate permanently forfeit any claim to whatsoever money the song generates? Does Lomax'south copyright merits include her words and tune, or just whatever new or written things were added? Because all this happened earlier the Copyright Deed of 1976, it is probably true that the only mode she would accept legal continuing to claim any ownership of the vocal was if she had filed paperwork with the Copyright Function prior to or soon after publication– and since Lomax presumably did that, he got the poker chips. Confusingly, Congress has still not completely weighed in on the issue of who owns sound recordings made earlier 1972, and for decades it has been based on state law. Especially in the instance of non-modern states similar Alabama, their legislatures oft never bothered to even write such a constabulary, which may exist the reason that the Lomax organization still controls that sound recording. Copyright laws involving folk songs are very subtle, and the handful of cases that have gone some distance through the courts make it articulate that most of the problems are not and then articulate or broadly applicative to all folk songs. Information technology's possible that you lot or I tin record or perform that song without violating anyone'due south intellectual property, just nosotros couldn't put Brewer's recording itself on an album compilation. In that location needs to be a good-sized chunk of money at pale before it is in anybody's best interest to hire lawyers, which could mean that this puzzling situation volition remain the mode it is as long every bit no one sues anyone. So when I bought an mp3 digital download of that song from Amazon for $one.29 in 2019, did Annie Brewer's estate deserve or get any of that coin? Should the recording be available for free listening or download on the LOC web site? Did the record visitor, the Library of Congress or the ACE go some or all of my money? There can't exist much money involved for sales of that recording, simply streaming royalties tin can add up, and so practise the mechanicals for all the other derivative recorded versions that are besides streaming and being sold. The aggregate sum of sales and streaming for all the folk songs from the all the collections that are circulating must generate a measurable corporeality of money every year. Is information technology generally going to salaries and office expenses for the non-profit organizations, as is often the case? The ACE website says that "ACE repatriates artists' rights and royalties to their estates and families, and returns our media collections to those who created them and their places of origin," yet a Google search for the phrases "©1937 by Annie Brewer," "© past Annie Brewer" render zero hits, other than books past another author of that name. I constitute this explanation: "The American Folklife Centre, the Librarian of The Library of Congress, and Anna Lomax Wood worked out a unique partnership past which the Library got the originals (and digital copies) of Alan Lomax's works and ACE put them into broad circulation." How does Lomax's corporation notwithstanding command and maybe make money from this song that was taken from Annie Brewer 82 years ago when Lomax'southward father was an employee of the U.South. government, and 64 years earlier it was licensed to Rounder? Where does Annie Brewer'southward contribution or creative buying figure into the electric current condition and income of the song and the recording? I confess to wondering, even a little angrily, at what legal or economical forces gave Lomax or the LOC the legal right to appropriate ownership of Annie Brewer's song for nigh 100 years, or in virtual perpetuity as they collect their streaming royalties unchallenged? The 1941 folksong book sold poorly, and any royalty money it generated would take been a pittance. That consequence was consequent with Lomax'southward expectations and justifications, since both he and his son Alan repeatedly said that because they were working hard to preserve and propagate American folk music, they should not be faulted for claiming a modest compensation. Just the story of the paid and unpaid royalty money that all the hundreds of recordings of that vocal and others like it have generated is rarely discussed publicly, and something about this situation bothers me and maybe should bother y'all too. (Maybe a nice folklorist will stumble on this post and kindly explain to me why I should not exist troubled by whatsoever of this.) From what I have read about ownership of old photographs, any that Lomax took of Annie Brewer would presumably be considered to be holding of her estate, unless mayhap the photographer was working for the government. Peradventure because she was poor and blackness and had no lawyer or professional advice, is she permanently out of luck claiming whatever legal right to her likeness or music, even though the words and melody that seem to have come from her accept sold large numbers of recordings? Politicians talk today about reparations to attempt to right the wrongs of slavery, and there have been quite a number of instances where Native Americans have had significant amounts of country returned to them in one case it became clear that treaties were violated in the past. When the hugely-popular and very influential picture " O Brother Where Art Chiliad " came out in 2000, it contained "folk songs" in the Grammy-winning soundtrack. Music producer T-Os Burnett did something both honorable and unusual: he located and paid the original sources. Early in the movie, it featured a 1959 Alan Lomax field recording of "Po' Lazarus," that was recorded at Parchman Farm, the Mississippi Country Penitentiary, where inmate James Carter led a group of prisoners in singing while chopping logs at the prison. Burnett, Don Fleming and Lomax'south girl Anna tracked down the 75-year old Carter in a tenement in Chicago, and paid him $20,000 in royalty money, marking a very unusual event in what might exist termed "folk music reparations." It would be impossible to retroactively collect royalty money from all the recordings of "Hush, Little Baby" and to pay them to the heirs of Annie Brewer, if in that location are any, and the apply of the original audio recording in a movie is a legally different thing from recording a version of someone else's copyrighted vocal. Merely does that mean we only practise nothing, and let the song and its fellow "collected" folk songs go along to accrue streaming and download royalties worldwide while knowing total well that none of the money is going to the source of the music? Is anyone in accuse of making certain that happens– is there whatsoever "honour arrangement" in folklore vocal collecting? Alan Lomax was happy to collect 1/3 of the royalties from the Kingston Trio's hitting version of "Tom Dooley," though his merits to it wasn't much different from what happened to Annie Brewer. The source of "Tom Dooley," North Carolina banjo player Frank Proffitt, ended upwards with a 1/3 share, separate with the collector (heirs of Frank Warner) and the song'south publisher (Lomax.) The positive trend I think I come across, which I hope is really happening, is that the skewing of the folksong Deoxyribonucleic acid that was caused by the over-energetic folksong advocates of the 20th century is slowly righting itself. Young people are getting increasing access to the archives of old recordings, and are feeling costless to enjoy, learn, like or dislike what they find in that location, which is exactly what should take been happening all along. Folklorists should not play Folksong God or try to breed songs in captivity, and I suspect that the populist and sometimes socialist folksong collectors of the past might even agree wholeheartedly that the information forces should just let united states all hear the music that was taken from our "sources." To many of us, they are as sacred as the bones of ancestors are to Indians and other people with deep connections to the past. If you know more near this song or its saga allow me know. This is another posting where I'm trying to heighten issues, questions and awareness in the world of mod troubadours... You deserve a reward or a door prize for making it to the end. Please check dorsum to expect for new posts as I go them washed. I plan to comprehend a wide range of issues and topics. I don't have a mode for you to comment here, but I welcome your emails with your reactions. Feel free to cheer me on, or to disagree... Chordally yours, HARVEY REID ©2020 |
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