Here are two reviews from Amazon.com of Talley's "Negro Folk Rhymes":

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Talleys-Negro-Folk-Rhymes/product-reviews/0870496735/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoint


Absolutely essential!, May 13, 2000
By "thisnicknameisnottaken" (Australia)

"Anyone even remotely interested in folklore, folk music, or American history should get this book. It contains over 400 rhymes (some with music) collected in the early 1900s by Thomas W. Talley, a black chemistry professor from Tennessee. Most of the rhymes are American, but there are a few from Africa, Jamaica, and elsewhere.
This alone would be worth the price of admission, but this edition also contains a new essay on the work, plus an updated bibliography and index, plus the original introduction by Thomas W. Talley (an excellent 50-page essay which covers performance practice and even details of instrument construction), plus additional rhymes and music that didn't make it into the original edition.
Great to page idly through or to read cover-to-cover, this book would be a fantastic addition to anyone's collection."

**

The Best Collection of African-American Secular Folksongs,
December 7, 2006
By Andrew Calhoun (Chicago)
   
"Negro Folk Rhymes" is one of the great American poetry anthologies; and it is fascinating as it is heartbreaking, to see how racism affects folklore, and folk life. White collectors who also published in the 1920's, Newman I. White, Dorothy Scarborough, Howard Odum, weren't able to collect this quality and kind of material. White commented that "the negro's songs about his women makes an unflattering exhibit." Talley collected another kind of song, a song that possibly would never have been sung for white people in the 1920's. Many of these animal "nonsense" songs carry a double message about racism and injustice; and there is also a wealth of tender and beautiful love songs from both sexes, and the sweetest lullabies. Talley's book was published in 1922, complete with a thinly veiled, condescending racist introduction from a shrivel-souled academic named Walter Clyde Curry, who simply missed the essence and genius of these songs and poems. Charles K. Wolfe did a great service rescuing these melodies from manuscript. These are nothing like the blues, the melodies have the same wise/innocent quality of Scottish and Irish folksongs, though they're not quite like that either. There is many a striking melody - the one for "The Old Man's Song" in the Phrygian mode, rare in Western music. One gathers from Wolfe's introduction that there was a common folk/string band music among blacks and whites in the South, but the record companies emphasized the differences, putting the blacks in blues and gospel and the whites in country and bluegrass, and the world, unfortunately, followed. Contemporary and traditional folk and country music are now nearly entirely white genres, but their roots are equally black and white. The commercial world, for whatever purpose, strove to divide rather than unite Americans. Let us not be unaware of how this pertains today. I wish that these tunes and words appeared on the same page; anyone wishing to match these tricky tunes with the lyrics, and actually sing them, must make a xerox copy. Quibbles. This is a brilliant production and best read aloud; many rhymes are riddles which are better apprehended by the ear than the eye. "Milly Biggers" is as great a folksong as we have, from deep in slavery times."