The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #55453 Message #1321219
Posted By: Stewie
09-Nov-04 - 04:06 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Nine Pound Hammer
Subject: RE: Lyr. & Origin: Nine Pound Hammer Songs
Chapter 9 of Archie Green's 'Only A Miner' has a full discussion of Charlie Bowman's 'authorship' of 'Nine Pound Hammer' and 'Roll On Buddy'. In respect of the former, Charles Wolfe sums up Green's findings in his note to the second volume of the Document 'Hill Billies' reissue series: Charlie Bowman taught his remembered words and tune to the group - 'it was put together by Bowman and his brothers based on songs he (Charlie) had heard black section hands singing in the mountains when he was a boy'. Bowman told Green in 1961 that he had 'no full-blown piece in mind before the session' in 1927. Green suggests the 'Nine Pound Hammer' tune 'originated in the singing of Gray Station Negro labourers', but Bowman seems to have modelled his 'Roll On Buddy (recorded in Oct 1928) on 'a mountain frolic melody usually called "Rock About My Saro Jane"'.
--Stewie.