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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 15 Oct 06 - 09:08 AM Meant to note, too, that Josiah Combs got the song from Monroe Combs and Sandburg got it from Gilbert R. Combs. Kind of makes you suspect "Moonshiner" was a family song with the Combses, though I don't know how each was related to the other. Bob |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 15 Oct 06 - 08:40 AM Terrific to find Combs' copy, 12-stringer. Couple of thoughts: Could "Moonshiner" might have split off from another song? Could it originally have been a floating verse in some other song family like "Rye Whiskey?" I didn't give much credit to the "Rye Whiskey" tie-in before, but now I'm wondering. Either that, or Combs' informant (or Combs himself?) might have put together a version that combined "Moonshiner" with one of the floating-verse songs that shares verses with "Rye Whiskey" such as "Way Up on Clinch Mountain"? Offhand I can't recall where that "My mind is to marry...you wounded my heart" verse comes from, but that is yet another southern Appalachian love lament. "Ofttimes I have wondered how women love men" is another. And there's a hint of "Behind the Stone Walls" in the next-to last verse, too. Given the odd verses in Combs' version, how much influence on this did Combs exert, or did his informant sing it exactly this way? Any way to find out? Bob |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: 12-stringer Date: 15 Oct 06 - 01:24 AM Roscoe Holcomb (a capella): I've been a moonshiner, ever since that I've been born I've drunk up all of my money and stilled up all of my corn. I'll go up some dark hollow and put up a moonshine still And I'll make you one gallon for a five dollo [sic] bill. I'll go up some dark hollow and get you some booze If the revenues [sic] don't get me, no money will I lose. Come on, all you moonshiners, and stand all in a row You look so sad and lonesome, lonesome, yes, I know. God bless them pretty women, I wish they all were mine Their breath smells so sweetly, like good old moonshine. From Josiah Combs' 1925 dissertation at the University of Paris, which seems to be the earliest recorded version (from Monroe Combs, Hindman, Knott Co, KY): I've been a moonshiner, for eighteen long year'; I've spent all my money for whiskey and beer. I buy my own whiskey, I make my own stew, If I get drunk, madam, it's nothing to you. I'll get up on some mountain, I'll put up my still; I'll sell you one quart, boys, for a one dollo bill; I'll get up on some mountain, the mountain so high; As the wild geese fly over, I'll bid them goodbye. Pretty Betsy, pretty Betsy, would you think it unkind For me to sit down by you and tell you my mind? My mind is to marry and never to part, For the first time I saw you, you wounded my heart. Oftimes I have wondered how women love men; Then again I have wondered how men could love them. They'll cause your heart trouble, and a many downfall; They'll cause you to labor in many a stone wall. The bluebirds are flying from branch to each tree, A-chirping and singing their sorrows away. Their breath smells so sweet-ly, like the dew on the vine -- God bless those moonshiners, I wish they were mine! |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Richie Date: 14 Oct 06 - 10:09 PM Does anyone have the lyrics to "Moonshiner" by Holcomb and Ward? Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40079, Roscoe Holcomb, The High Lonesome Sound, "Compiled from Folkways ablbums: The Music of Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward FA 2363, The High Lonesome Sound FA 2368, Close to Home FA 2374." Richie |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Hugh Walter Jennings Date: 14 Oct 06 - 07:35 PM Wow Bob, I appreciate you taking time to assemble all the info on it. Thanks to everyone as well. The only version I've heard performed is by a group of young guys in a band called Uncle Tupelo. It was listed as trad of course, and their arrangement of it was nice. They obviously redid the lyrics (or used Dylans' version, which I have not read) Here's a link ... moonshiner Anyhow, as much as I love the UT version, I'm sure I'd really enjoy older versions as well. Thanks again everyone, Hugh |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: Joe Offer Date: 14 Oct 06 - 02:34 PM Gee, I like it when you get involved in studying a song, Bob. Anybody know if there is a CD recording of Buell Kazee singing "Whisker Bill, the Old Moonshiner"? I didn't know how to group these songs. I have a group for Wild Rover, and another for Moonshiner / I'm a Rambler, I'm a Gambler, but they all seem to me to be more-or-less the same song. Stewie's transcription of Daw Henson's "Moonshiner" is in this thread, and Stewie always does a good job of transcription. This particular recording, though, is very difficult to understand. -Joe- Here's the Traditional Ballad Index entry on this song: MoonshinerDESCRIPTION: "I've been a moonshiner for sev'nteen long years, I've spent all my money for whiskey and beer, I'll go to some holler, I'll put up my still...." "I'll eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm dry; If moonshine don't kill me I'll live till I die...."AUTHOR: unknown EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Sandburg) KEYWORDS: drink nonballad floatingverses FOUND IN: US(Ap) Ireland REFERENCES (7 citations): BrownIII 291, "Cornbread When I'm Hungry" (2 fragments; the "A" text combines "Moonshiner" with "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor"; "B" mixes "Moonshiner" with what appears to be a minstel song) Sandburg, pp. 142-143, "Kentucky Moonshiner" (1 text, 1 tune) Combs/Wilgus 187, p. 189, "Moonshiner" (1 text) Ritchie-Southern, p. 38, "God Bless the Moonshiners" (1 text, 1 tune) Lomax-FSNA 134, "Moonshiner" (1 text, 1 tune) Silber-FSWB, p. 229, "Moonshiner" (1 text) ADDITIONAL: _Sing Out_ magazine, Volume 29, #3 (1983), p, 1, "God Bless that Moonshiner" (1 text, 1 tune, from Currence Hammons) ST San142 (Full) Roud #4301 RECORDINGS: The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "The Moonshiner" (on IRClancyMakem01) Daw Henson, "Moonshiner" (AFS, 1937; on KMM) Roscoe Holcomb, "Moonshiner" (on Holcomb-Ward1, HolcombCD1) New Lost City Ramblers, "Moonshiner" (on NLCR08) CROSS-REFERENCES: cf. "Country Blues" (words) cf. "The Wagoner's Lad" (floating lyrics) cf. "Wild Rover No More" (floating lyrics) NOTES: An early 1960s recording of this song by Bob Dylan, long circulated as a bootleg but released in the 1990s, became justly famous in the folk revival as one of his finest performances, and inspired multiple covers of his version. Listening to the Daw Henson field recording, it seems very likely that this was Dylan's source. - PJS Last updated in version 2.4 File: San142 Go to the Ballad Search form Go to the Ballad Index Instructions The Ballad Index Copyright 2015 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: 12-stringer Date: 14 Oct 06 - 02:10 PM Inventory of the Combs Collection at UCLA shows a "Moonshiner" as #187, 5 stanzas, collected from Monroe Combs of Knott Co -- no date, but it was published in Combs' French dissertation, 1925, so evidently this predates the one in Sandburg by a few years. Wilgus further annotates to Lomax, Folk Songs of North America, p 257, and to Southern Folklore Quarterly II:160f. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 14 Oct 06 - 01:34 PM Not to hog the thread, but here's information on Daw Henson, who sings "Moonshiner" on the 7-CD box set, "Kentucky Mountain Music." Henson was recorded for the Library of Congress by Lomax. I don't know the date, but he would appear to be fairly modern & thus not among the song's originators. Info drawn from this thread: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=59656 The thread contains this quote from the CD booklet: "Daw Henson came from the crossroads of Billy's Branch in Clay County in the middle of what is now the Daniel Boone National Forest. Lomax apparently left no field notes about him, but seemed to appreciate his "mountain blues" style of singing with the guitar. His MOONSHINER, WALLINS CREEK GIRLS, and SWOFFORD BRANCH STILLS resemble the hard-living anti-sentimental songs of Cliff Carlisle or Billy Cox more than the older traditional pieces. His version of a genuine old ballad, LADY MARGARET AND SWEET WILLIAM, begins with an odd, modern guitar introduction that blends old with new." Bob |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 14 Oct 06 - 01:08 PM One correction: Buell Kazee's is not the minor key tune, Sandburg's is. Buell's tune was major, and went: D--D / E C D C .A .G .G .A . / C E C-.A .G repeated over for remaining line of verse. He told me "Very tiresome tune. I was having trouble with my trained voice" [trying to keep it out of the record]. "I could feel the struggle all the way through." He did not say where he got the song or if he added any verses. WHISKER BILL, THE OLD MOONSHINER Buell Kazee, Brunswick E 22500, April 19, 1927. I've been a moonshiner for seven long years, I've spent all my money on whiskey and beers, I'll go up some dark holler, I'll set up my still, I'll still you one gallon for a two dollar bill, Purty women, purty women, don't trouble my mind, If the whiskey don't kill me I'll live a long time. I'd rather be single with no trouble on my mind Than to marry and worry with trouble all the time. I'll stroll up the holler to get you some booze, If the Revenues don't get me, no money I'll lose. It was Carl Sandburg's tune that was the interesting minor key. Based in A minor, it goes E / D A D B .G .G B D B A repeated over for second line. He groups his verses in four lines instead of two. KENTUCKY MOONSHINER Sandburg, American Songbag, 1927, 142-3 I've been a moonshiner for seventeen long years, I've spent all my money for whiskey and beers. I'll go to some holler, I'll put up my still, I'll make you one gallon for a two dollar bill. I'll go to some grocery and drink with my friends, No women to follow and see what I spends, God bless those pretty women, I wish they were mine, Their breath smells as sweet as the dew on the vine. I'll eat when I'm hungry, and drink when I'm dry, If moonshine don't kill me, I'll live till I die. God bless those moonshiners, I wish they were mine, Their breath smells as sweet as the good old moonshine. Those are the two earliest versions I know. Bob |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:20 PM Specifics: Buell Kazee, "Old Whisker Bill, The Moonshiner, Brunswick E 22500, April 19, 1927. Not recorded by anyone else during the 20s except an unissued 1929 Gennett take by Leonard Rutherford and John Foster as "Kentucky Moonshiner." I first heard it when Kazee sang it to me in summer 1955 at his home in Lexington, KY. Not a common song. It's another of the rare ones collected by Carl Sandburg in his "American Songbag," 1927 as "Kentucky Moonshiner," with the same minor tune (a beauty); he got it from Gilbert R. Combs. (related to folk collector Josiah Combs??) Slightly later versions: it's in Walter Peterson (The Kentucky Wonder Bean)'s 1931 folio "Mountain Ballads and Old Time Songs," but Walter, a radio singer with harmonica and guitar, never recorded it. Gus Meade thought it related to "Rye Whiskey" as given in the Lomaxes' "American Ballads and Folk Songs," 1934 p 170, but I disagree, it seems clearly a distinct song. You might think Kentucky-born radio singer Bradley Kincaid would have sung it. But he apparently didn't -- no recording of it, and no variant found in those of his music folios I've been able to trace, nor in Loyal Jones' Kincaid biography. There are other marginally related Moonshiner songs like the one Leonard Roberts printed in "Sang Branch Settlers," but only marginally. So the very few sources point to Kentucky origin. Can anyone trace it back earlier than Buell Kazee and Sandburg/Combs'/ separate but similar version? About the Irish version sung by the Clancys, with its peppy major-key tune, its "I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler" chorus related to the song of the same name and to "Wagoner's Lad," and its possible relationship to "The Wild Rover," I'm not qualified to say. It strikes me as a concoction, maybe recent. Maybe Liam Clancy could tell you if it's a real Irish original or not. Was the word "moonshiner" in use in Ireland at all for illegal whiskey makers? I wouldn't have thought so, but my Webster's gives "moonshine" as originating 1500, originally for moonlight, then for nonsense, finally for illegally distilled corn whiskey. "Moonshiner" is traced to 1860 with no indication of origin. That's as much as I've been able to find out. I'm tentatively leaning toward American origin, not Irish, for the song. But I could easily be wrong. Bob |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 14 Oct 06 - 10:19 AM The earliest version of it I know was recorded by Buell Kazee in the 1920s. Its tune was minor. Bob |
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Subject: RE: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 13 Oct 06 - 10:20 PM Not a very sophisticated search technique! Try instead typing moonshiner into the search engine here (link at the top of every page). It appears to be an American song, like so many which are assumed nowadays to be Irish because they were once recorded by the Clancy Brothers. The opening lines of some versions seem to be borrowed from 'The Wild Rover' (which itself only became "Irish" via the Clancys or the Dubliners; I forget which. See numerous discussions here for details). |
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Subject: Origins: origin of Moonshiner From: GUEST,Hugh Walter Jennings Date: 13 Oct 06 - 09:19 PM I searched " origin of moonshiner " no results, so I'm asking in hopes someone will know the true origin of the song. From google, I gather it may be of Irish origin ? Thanks in advance. |
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