Masato,

   In your note above you make the following observation:

"This song, sung by Emma Shelton, was recorded by Maud Karpeles in Flagpond, Tennesee, in September 1950 (originally on FOLKTRAX 907. Dr. Maud Karpeles, Appalachian Collection, North Carolina and Tennessee)."

    A year or so ago, I located this important collection in the Library of Congress, and finally obtained copies through Interlibrary Loan from a school in California. The quality of the original recordings and/or reproductions was not very good, but still worth the effort.

    This was Karpeles effort to go back and try to find people still living that she and Cecil Sharp had contacted in their original collecting expeditions. A number of them were still around. So this collection, only a part of which was commercially released as far as I know, amounts to the recorded version of Sharp's Southern Appalachian music. Most of the recorded versions are the same as the published versions in Sharp's collection.

    Do you, or does anyone else know, if these recordings have ever been re-released commercially or where the commercial rights to them might be these days? It would be wonderful if the Library of Congress or someone else would make all of these recordings available. I understand that the Library of Congress is in the process of transferring some of its folk music collections to CD. This would make is much easier and much less expensive to get copies from them. However there would probably be some complications with the LOC releasing this particular material since some of it has been previously released commercially and is probably copywrited. T.O.M.