Relationship between Folk & Country

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 06:44 PM

Jayto:

At that same camp, near Woodville, Texas, one of the staff members had a copperhead experience.   Staff were staying in four-man army surplus tents with wooden platforms. He walked out the open end of the tent, started to go down the steps and just just caught sight of a copperhead coiled in a warm spot right at the bottom step. I believe he did an Olympic-class jump, off one leg, no less. He cleared the snake by at least six feet.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Melissa
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 07:23 PM

I worked at a camp where another staff member said she wanted a copperhead..if one of us had a chance, she wanted us to kill it so she could make a hatband.
One evening I did see one on the path on my way to main camp. I wasn't sure she really wanted it and I certainly didn't want to kill it because it wasn't bugging me and it was on the path first.

So, I picked up a big rock and laid it on it's head. Figured I'd give it a fair chance to get away and let the staffer be responsible for releasing it if she didn't want it (if it stayed trapped)

Apparently you can trap them by putting a rock on their head.
She was pleased.

My other snake story (although I'm not sure what these snakes have to do with the topic at hand?) is that when parts of my state flooded in '93, people DID see knots of snakes in the river. I've never heard of that happening and I suppose it had something to do with the water moving quickly and the snakes being grabby..getting tangled on their equally grabby friends and relations.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 08:51 PM

TJ, Camp Urland?

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 12:01 PM

Uncle Phil:

I wish I could recall it. It was the summer of 1953. I remember that the camp was very near Woodville and on a small lake. That location was my first acquaintance with cottonmouths, while both canoeing and swimming. My dad attended that camp years earlier. I still have his patch collection, which includes at least three Urland patches. He was an Eagle Scout in Beaumont in the 1920's. His great-grandfather, John McGaffey, was the first white settler at Sabine Pass back in the 1820's.

I remember that there was a drive-in movie theater at the end of the road leading to the camp. On a Saturday night, we would walk out and sit in front of the projection booth/snack bar to watch movies. I remember it well, because on one such night, I felt something crawling up my leg and nearly had a heart attack. The fellows were all laughing when they saw it was a huge, but harmless rhinoceros beetle. Once, we found ourselves there on "Juneteenth," in the days when it was not a real bright move for white kids to be caught out on that particular night. Different times.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Jayto
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 12:08 PM

I recall fishing one day down on the Tennessee River back when I was a kid. I was sitting at the waters edge on a rock outcropping. My feet were dangling just a few inches above the water. I glanced down and a cottonmouth was directly under my feet in the water. I froze and my heart just about pounded out of my chest. It swam off like it didn't even notice me but I noticed it and then some. I think more people come closer to dying from fright than they do an actual bite lol (I mean that as a joke). Any of the poisonous snakes or snakes in general can be as sweet as a baby kitten I am not gonna touch them or get around them. We have local legends of hoop snakes has anyone ever heard of those or is that just a local myth.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 03:48 PM

Alan Lomax's "Cantrametrics" did a study of early Twenties country music and later
examples through the Forties, Fifties, Sixties and found very little difference in many
aspects of the singing and playing styles of the performers.

Mostly, the difference are recording company terms which service their demographics
rather than adequately describe the music they sell.

The term "folk" became a way of presenting the earlier revival pop-groups by these
recording companies. Hence, PPandM, Dylan, Weavers,Brothers Four, Brothers Karamosov etc. became "folk" whereas the traditional country musicians of the early Twenties were
not included in this designation.

"Hillbilly" was another recording company term taken from an early country singing group.

The lines of separation between country and folk are cosmetic. They all stem from the
same source.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 05:01 PM

Jayto:

Not only have I heard of the infamous "hoop snake," which my Dad used to insist on having us believe in, but I remember working on a forest fire crew during the summer of 1959 when our crew chief brought up an even "deadlier" reptile, the "snow snake." When one of the boys asked how to identify it, he said, "It's snow white, is only about 18 inches long and has red, beady eyes and no mouth." One of the more innocent among us asked, "No mouth? How can it hurt you?" The answer, "It crawls up your butt and freezes you to death!"

Those relics rate right up there with left-handed monkey wrenches and sending someone out for 50 feet of shoreline.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Genie
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 07:18 PM

M.Ted said, "As far as "Lonesome Dove"--I'd be real interested to see where that snakebite story came from. It seems to me that if you were a cottonmouth in a rain swollen river full of cattle, you'd have a lot better things to do than bite an Irishman."

Like bite a Scotsman, maybe?

G ?

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Jayto
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 07:35 PM

lol Thank God somone else has heard of the dreaded Hoop Snake. When I was a kid the adults had us believing in those things. I just knew I'd run into one out in the woods and not be able to get away. For those of you that have never heard of them formed a hoop and could roll like a wheel lol. Of course they don't exist but adults like to tease kids about them.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Genie
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 07:40 PM

Then again, there are some good songs (folk and otherwise) about snakes.
As for being "stupid enough" to try to pick up a snake, I have to say I've done my share of that - so far with no results more dire than having a little garter snake piss all over my hand! (Pretty effective defense, that.)

But one time while swimming in the Sandy River near Portland, OR, I saw a darkish snake swimming by and reached out and caught it.   I don't thin we have water moccasins in this area, but I wasn't sure, and when the snake whipped around like it was contemplating letting me find out, I quickly released it.   LOL

Here's a snake folk song that MMario posted (in a thread of another title):
Shake A Snake

Then there's one that I think Belafonte did (?) about a woman who finds a poor snake nearly frozen in the winter and takes him home and feeds him and warms him by holding him to her breast, whereupon he bites her, and as she's dying she asks how he could do that after she'd been so kind to him, whereupon he replies (last line of song),

"Oh, shut up, silly woman!" said that serpent with a grin,
"You knew damned well I was a snake before you took me in!"

(I can't find it here at Mudcat, but I thought it had been posted somewhere.)

Seems even in folk music, the snakes get a bum rap.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: pdq
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 07:45 PM

That song is "The Snake" By Oscar Brown, Jr. Not exactly a folk song, but Cliff Waldron did it "bluegrass" in about 1969.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Jayto
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 07:50 PM

I am surprised snakes aren't more prevelant in Appalachian folk songs. Not just because we have plenty but because of the religous association. There are alot of religous folk songs from this region and I am really surprised snakes don't pop up more often in lyrics. I have never really thought about it until now but this thread has made me think about it. Thanks for the link I am about to check it out.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: pdq
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 08:18 PM

Bill Monroe did a song called "The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake", credited to one A. Rae Price, PhD. It's been done by some of the progressive bluegrass bands, and even gave the name to the group The Dreadful Snakes, an early vehicle for Bela Fleck and Jerry Douglas.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Jayto
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 08:27 PM

That is the song I was trying to think of. I could not remeber it's name it has been years since I heard it. Thank you very much. That is how this thread turned into a snake discussion lol

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Melissa
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 09:20 PM

Genie:
There's a Native American story like that song..a boy gets old enough to take a daywalk--stops by the elders on his way out and they remind him not to talk to Snake, who is beautiful, persuasive and speaks such pretty words.
Of course, while the boy is trekking around, he finds Snake laying on a rock and ends up carrying him in his bag.
Snake bites him, boy asks why.
Snake says something like 'why didn't you listen to your Elders? You knew I was a snake when you picked me up..'

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 09:47 PM

TJ-
I camped there about a decade after you did - on a cross-border cultural exchange of some kind from Louisiana. I don't remember the occasion or much about the camp, but, like your dad, I came home with a patch. Funny that a mention of Woodville, Texas caused the name of the camp to instantly pop into my mind nearly 50 years later.
- Phil

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Genie
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 10:36 PM

Thanks, PDQ.

I thought "The Snake" was the name of the song, but I also thought for sure it was somewhere in the DT or forum, but I could only find one listing for "snake" in either, when I did a power search.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 15 Feb 12 - 11:25 AM

I've just found that Archie Green's seminal article, "Hillybilly Music: Source and Symbol" (referred to by Stewie, above) is available online within the UNC Southern Folklife Collection's online exhibit of the same name:

Hillbilly Music: Source and Symbol is a virtual exhibit space of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It draws on images, songs, and texts presented during the April 2003 conference entitled Hillbilly Music Sources and Symbols: Country Music, Cultural Brokerage and O Brother, Where Art Thou? The original exhibit celebrated the publication of Country Music Sources (SFC/JEMF, 2002) by Guthrie T. Meade Jr., Dick Spottswood and Douglas S. Meade.

I've not explored the whole site yet, but it looks like an outstanding resource.

~ Becky in Long Beach

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Feb 12 - 11:40 AM

I've always understood the distinction to be largely one of politics and philosophy, though there are significant exceptions in both camps. I always felt it a shame we never had an equivilient to Country in the UK really; maybe we do in Scoland & Ireland, but not in England which has such a rich heritage of Traditional Song which didn't find its way into the broader popular consciousness before it ended up in the academic ossuaries of the revival.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 12:57 AM

There was a huge country music thing going in England. Every miners welfare had a country and western night. There were many professional groups and artists making a full time living from country music - bands like the Hillsiders, Kelvin Henderson - solo artists like Tony Goodacre, Dave Curtis, Royston Jones, Mel Hague. The standard was incredibly high. Butlins Country weekends were well supported.

It was a very working class thing though. Weird really - I remember John Peel going crazy, really creaming his jeans - because some Dutch punk band were sing 'I raised a lot cane back in my youger days, and Mother used to pray my crops would fail....'. Peel obviously didn't realise it was a Merle Haggard song, Lonesome fugitive, that he could have heard evry night of the week at the country music club - which a middle class guy like Peel would never consider attending - the southside of Chicago - no problem, but no one was venturing into the southside of Doncaster.

I was amazed one day when i was supply teaching in Hucknall (a little mining town in Nottinghamshire), and I was taking a music lesson - every kid in the class knew all the words to Merle Travis's Dark as a Dungeon.

I'm not too sure that the rich tapestry of English folk music ever got past the rarefied places like the folk clubs and morris dancing clubs. Maybe in some places like the North East and Lancashire - maybe rural places - I never encountered it much on a street level. Not that its not very good music - but not many of the kids knew any folk songs where I was teaching. the Jamaican kids knew Yellow bird - and some of the songs that I recognised from Cliff of the Spinners doing. The Irish kids and the and the Indian kids seem to have some ethnic thing going - but not many English kids. A few rude playground and football chants - and that was it.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 07:25 AM

"I always felt it a shame we never had an equivilient to Country in the UK really; maybe we do in Scoland & Ireland, but not in England which has such a rich heritage of Traditional Song which didn't find its way into the broader popular consciousness before it ended up in the academic ossuaries of the revival."

I guess that this would be because commercial recording companies decided that 'Hillbilly Music' could be sold back at a profit to the kind of people already familiar with it. The singing tradition remained vibrant in the Southern Mountains well into the 20th century, at a time it was beginning to fall away, at least in England, so maybe there was a stronger market there for the likes of the Carter Family with many old ballads in their repertoire. Also the fact that instrumental accompaniment was rapidly becoming part of the music in the US would have made it more generally accessible.

Meanwhile, over here, no-one thought to make a hit record of Joseph Taylor. And if it hadn't been for the bad old folk revival, most of us would never have heard our old stuff at all. Bob Copper and Walter Pardon's peers were all listening to American music on their radios at the time.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: goatfell
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 07:44 AM

Country music is the same as folk music because both tell stories and are based on life.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 08:10 AM

I'm not saying the Folk Revival was bad, Brian - I'm just being realistic in how it operates in terms of social class, which is something Georgina Boyes confirms quite nicely in The Imagined Village. I might have certain issues with this, but who doesn't? The Left Wing Idealism of Folk rarely squares with the Red Neck realities of Country, though like I say there are significant exceptions.

In any case, when I talk about English Country Music, I'm dreaming of a genre that never happened because English Folk Song never became part of the popular consciousness the way that Scots, American or Irish did (though things do blur rather horribly in Hot-Pot country, but the less said about that the better). Instead, English folklife was primarily urban and randomly rooted in a multi-culturalism which accounts for the gloriously impure realities of true English popular music over the last half-century or so, which remains crucially English - everything from Mersey Beat to the Canturbury Scene to the post-punk glory days of Manchester to UK hip-hop - but also truly Global. I remember back in the day when The Fall recorded their rockabilly tribute to The Container Drivers people were speaking in hushed tones of Country & Northern.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Young Buchan
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 08:37 AM

The relationship of Country to Folk is that of Lizzie Borden to Andrew Borden.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 09:57 AM

"I'm not saying the Folk Revival was bad, Brian..."

No? "Academic ossuaries" isn't the most lavish of praise, in my book. The folk revival as I've known it for thirty-odd years, in all it's vibrancy, inventiveness, community spirit and eccentricity, is about as far from an Academic Ossuary as anything I could imagine.

There are, of course, academics who study English folk music, in the same way that there are academics who study just about any kind of music in the world, not excluding hip-hop, Merseybeat and Country.

And, incidentally, while I've heard plenty of redneck country music (some of the stuff on US Country radio stations is frankly scary), don't forget people like Steve Earle, the Dixie Chicks and Emmylou, who have defied that stereotype bravely.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 10:36 AM

If I thought the Revival was bad, I wouldn't have devoted so much of the last 36 years immersing myself in the perfect joy of the thing. The essential nature of Folk is as reactionary as it is radical, and entirely in keeping with its veneration of the fossil record which is exactly how it should be. So for all its vibrancy, inventiveness, community spirit and eccentricity, Folk remains a conceit of the more enlightened classes, the language of which will always be couched in terms of classification and taxonomy even by more casual practitioners, which wouldn't be the case in (say) UK Hip Hop which is a living breathing creative idiom in its own right. Outsiders may well study it, but their study would be of no interest to the punters. Unlike Folk, which is born from such study and wouldn't exist without it. This accounts for the demographics and the general rarity of the thing, and the all pervading preciousness & occasional (!) churlishness too. But I've got no problem with that whatsoever; I revel in the Academic Ossuaries; there is no greater joy. No Revival Singer of Traditional Songs can be so without being part Academic as well; it's surely integral to the nature of the thing to go rooting from variation to field recording to Broadside to historical record just to give the song the respect it deserves - just look at the Trimdon Grange and Gallows Ballad threads.

As for Country - like I say, exceptions prove rules, but it cuts both ways. There is a worrying increase in Right Wing Folk, just as there's a pleasing increase in Left Wing Country, but I always try and take a wider view of such things.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 11:05 AM

'An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary. The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb.'


Not a pony with one hump.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 11:37 AM

Not trying to start a fight, Suibhne - I know you love all this stuff. However...

"the language of which will always be couched in terms of classification and taxonomy even by more casual practitioners, which wouldn't be the case in (say) UK Hip Hop..."

That's not wholly untrue, and of course I plead guilty - although if I were playing a pub gig (which I don't do often these days but have some form at), I think I'd be soft-pedalling the classification and taxonomy. And I didn't hear too much of that at the Folk Awards (on TV) either - they were pretty much indistinguishable from any other kind of award ceremony.

On the other hand, traditional songs by their nature come from somewhere and someone, and it's not necessarily a matter of academic pretension to acknowledge the fact onstage - in much the same way that Dolly Parton, or Cedric Watson, or La Bottine Souriante, or Toumani Diabaté might do.

"This accounts for the demographics and the general rarity of the thing"

I don't think it does - it's more that it sounds so different from most of the music around us that a lot of people just can't get a handle on it.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 11:37 AM

Not a pony with one hump.

Good one, Al.

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 11:46 AM

"worrying increase in Right Wing Folk"

Not to us my friend!!

Subject: RE: Relationship between Folk & Country
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 12:33 PM

it's more that it sounds so different from most of the music around us that a lot of people just can't get a handle on it

That as well, but when do you meet someone with a casual interest in ballads? That said, the ballad gig we did at last year's Morpeth Gathering was packed out - a real mixed audience of folkies and muggles alike, many of whom we'd picked up on the Procession with our 25-minute peripatetic rendering of Earl Brand but that's another story...

I once disillusioned a couple of my fans by telling them that I didn't actually write my own material - that my stories & ballads were traditional. Even when I tried explaining things they thought I was somehow cheating & I never saw them again! A rare case I grant (fans?!) but it made me think...