The tune for the Proffitt song is interesting, isn't it? The Emrich book dates the Proffitt recording at 1939, and the Warner book gives the date as 1941 - so it may not be the same recording, but the words are identical in the two books. I transcribed the MIDI from the Warner book. I swear I've heard the tune with different lyrics. The Warner book refers to a Folk-Legacy recording, FSA-36. This is the Frank Proffitt Memorial Album, and it has a recording of "Single Girl" on it. I haven't heard this recording yet, but it's available on CD from Folk-Legacy Records.

Folk-Legacy has at least a couple Frank Proffitt recordings. Appleseed recently came out with Volume II of their Warner Collection, Nothing Seems Better to Me: The Music of Frank Proffitt and North Carolina. In my humble but biased opinion, the Folk-Legacy recordings are better. The Warner recordings were "collector" recordings, made to get the song down for transcription. Sandy Paton's Folk-Legacy recordings are much more enjoyable, since Sandy recorded the songs so that people could actually listen to them.

Frank Proffitt is not your ordinary folksinger. Many of his songs are quite different from the "standard" versions.

-Joe Offer-