The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #50963   Message #774496
Posted By: Bennet Zurofsky
30-Aug-02 - 05:36 PM
Thread Name: Aunt Molly Jackson family tree?
Subject: Aunt Molly Jackson family tree?
Can anyone help me to sort out the blood and marital relationships, if any, between Aunt Molly Jackson, the fine Kentucky singer of traditional and radical songs (many of which she wrote herself) and these other fine Kentucky singers of traditional and radical songs (many of which they wrote themselves):

Jim Garland (brother?) Florence Reese (sister-in-law?) Sarah Ogan Gunning (sister?)

This seems to have been a supremely talented family of singer-songwriters that is too little remembered today.

Aunt Molly, in particular, is one of the finest singers that Alan Lomax ever recorded and that she is too often overlooked. She not only wrote some of the most powerful radical songs the US has produced, she was also an excellent singer of traditional songs, including Child Ballads. Can anyone explain to me why there has never even been a single cd published of her singing? Rounder published a fine lp of her Library of Congress recordings back in the 1970's, but it never seems to have been republished as a cd and I don't think there is anything else that is even remotely available.