AP Hudson: Song Collection

Subject: AP Hudson: Song Collection
From: harpgirl
Date: 26 Dec 99 - 08:59 PM

...I stopped in Brisky Books in Micanopy Florida today to look at some of his extensive collection of ballad books. I found AP Hudson's collection of "Folksongs of Mississippi: and Their Background." I noticed many of them are in the DT. I am going to add some more since it appears as though the DT doesn't have them all. Can anyone tell me more about him? Or the songs? harpgirl

Subject: RE: AP Hudson: Song Collection
From: John Moulden
Date: 27 Dec 99 - 12:27 PM

This book was considered important enough to be republished in 1981 by Folklorica with a new Foreword by George W Boswell. Since it was originally published pre-1959 it will feature in DK Wilgus' Anglo-American Folk Song Scholarship (not a complete or entirely accurate citation). Wilgus' opinion about the worth of collections and commentaries generally accords with my own - naturally I will not venture to criticise him. Wilgus is a very good start if you want to know about collections.

Subject: RE: AP Hudson: Song Collection
From: harpgirl
Date: 26 Nov 02 - 07:06 PM

...speaking of books, I am quite frustrated because I have misplaced this book and I can not find it anywhere. Is it possible that a 'catter who may have visited my home borrowed it? I've never lost a book before...I can't understand how I lost this one. It was so precious!

Subject: RE: AP Hudson: Song Collection
From: harpgirl
Date: 26 Nov 02 - 07:19 PM

I can't believe that I have been looking for this book since shortly after I got it. I looked one last place just now, in my living room desk which has my collection of Gertrude Stein first editions behind glass. There it was!!!! Joy!!! Now I can post some more songs from it. I was sure I had loaned it to Pete Peterson. Now if Jenny will send me back my American Folksong book........hey Jenny have you got that one?

Subject: RE: AP Hudson: Song Collection
From: masato sakurai
Date: 26 Nov 02 - 08:19 PM

Hudson wrote the beginning of his collecting (similar story to Songcatcher) as follows:

In 1923 certain students in the University of Mississippi, while studying the English and Scottish popular ballads in an English course under my direction, recalled that they had known such ballads in the communities in which they were reared. One of them, Mr. Wessen M. Crocker, gave me from memory texts of "Barbara Allen" and several game songs, at the same time informing me that a cousin of his, Mrs. G.V. Easley, then living near the line between Calhoun and Lafayette counties, knew many more ballads and songs. Nearly two years later Mr. Crocker and I visited Mrs. Easley in her farm home. The result of the visit was the recovery, from oral recitation to me and later from manucripts written by Mrs. Easley, of twenty-five ballads texts. In the same year, too, other students, notably Mr. T.A. Bickerstaff and Miss Lois Womble, gave me additional ballad texts. Taking all these texts with me to Chicago, I showed them to Professor Charles Read Baskerville, Tom Peete Cross, and John M. Manly, of the Department of English of the University of Chicago. These scholars, two of whom had done notable work in the field of folk-song, found the collection interesting and promising and advised me to continue the work thus begun.
    --Arthur Palmer Hudson, Folksongs of Mississippi and Their Background (University of North Carolina Press, 1936, p. v)

The book contains no tunes, but he collected dozens of tunes, which were published in Folk Tunes from Mississippi (2nd ed., Federal Theatre Project, 1937; reprint ed., Da Capo Press, 1977). Folklore Keeps the Past Alive (University of Georgia Press, 1962) is a collection of three of his lectures on folk song. His Songs of the Carolina Charter Colonists 1663-1763 (originally published in 1962) is digitalized by The Colonial Records Project and is available online (CLICK HERE). He is co-editor (with Henry M. Belden) of The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. II (Folk Ballads from North Carolina) and vol. III (Folk Songs from North Carolina).

~Masato